ness enterprise of the country. * * * The vendees did not incapacitate themselves from carrying on business just as they had previously done and in the same locality. * * * The vendees did not incapacitate themselves from carrying on business. * * * Their business was rather facilitated by the arrangement." It is impossible that the Chief Justice had not this decision in mind as he had shortly before expressly followed it in Gibbs vs. Gas Company,[1] where he himself says: "It is also too well settled to admit of doubt that a corporation cannot disable itself by contract from performing the public duties which it has undertaken and by agreement compel itself to make public accommodation or convenience subservient to its private interests." In view of all this, it is absolutely impossible to say that he was finding that it was lawful and "sanctioned" by the States, or any of them, to deprive the country of its industrial agencies, to destroy business, stop commerce and production, that national trade might be limited and the profits of monopoly be swollen!
No State ever sanctioned such public evil, and no judge ever knew this better than the Chief Justice. The whole case manifestly turned on the careful findings of its facts: the fact that the purpose was to profit by production, not by restraining commerce either directly or indirectly. For otherwise, the question of "indirection" could not possibly have been raised at all, since complete lawfulness is its very foundation.
This can, however, fortunately now be demonstrated by two later opinions of the Chief Justice. No sooner
- ↑ 130 U. S. 410 (1889).
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