The Legal World It was argued that there must be an exclusion or attempt to exclude others from interstate trade by means at least tortuous under the common law or under statutes other than the Sherman law. Attorney-General Wickersham objected to this interpretation, and said that decisions of the court had demonstrated that "monopolizing" was brought about by acts of individuals in endeavoring to engross to them selves all of a given commodity and that it had become a question of intent. When the hearings in the Standard Oil case were begun, Mr. Milbum, in taking up his de fense, explained the decree of dissolution issued
by the Circuit Court. He especially urged the disaster and difficulty which would follow its afl'irmation. A history of the great combination followed.
Acquisitions never had been made,
Mr. Milburn told the court, with an intent to restrain or to monopolize interstate trade. Most of the purchases were made, he said, before 1879. His speech on the 12th took up three hours. On the 13th, Frank B. Kellogg, special assist ant to the Attorney-General, began an address to the court in an effort to show that the Stand ard Oil Company of New Jersey should be dis solved. "I have listened with admiration," said he, "to the charming story of growth and centralization of this benevolent institution. It was told as only a great advocate could tell it. But I mean to tell to the Court the cold facts. And I say on my oath as a member of this bar,
and I regard that highly, that the equal of this record in oppression is not to be found in the commercial history of this country." D. T. Watson of Pittsburgh contended on the 16th that the properties conveyed were non competitive before 1899 and remained exactly as they had been after that year. The reason he advanced for the Circuit Court holding that the conveyance was illegal was that it believed it had to follow the decision of the Supreme Court in the Northern Securities case. But the Stand 0rd Oil case, he argued, differed from that suit.
A second point that Mr. Watson made was that the decree practically confiscated property, be cause it did not allow the subsidiary companies to pay dividends to the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and that the stock of the com pany became practically worthless. Attorney-General Wickersham began his clos ing remarks for the Government as soon as court convened on the 17th. Mr. Wickersham said Congress framed the Sherman anti-trust law to strike at just such monopolies as the Standard
Oil Company had built up. The effect of the
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conveyance, he said, “was to rivet the control of one hand over the twenty companies, a con trol that neither death, taxes nor financial ruin could rend. Before, the separation of the stock
integrated of one of the thecertificate control. holders By thiswould reorganization have dis~ a perpetual immortal element was accorded to the control."
Frank B. Kellogg, special counsel for the Government, resumed the argument he had begun on Friday and devoted nearly two hours to a recital of the alleged unfair practices of the corporation. Mr. Kellogg was reviewing the action of the different states that had ousted the Standard Oil Company, when Chief Justice White asked what there was in the absence of affirmation of the decree in this case to prevent the states from continuing the work of ousting the alleged monopoly. On its face the question appeared to suggest the capacity of the states to deal with the alleged trust problem without the necessity of the intervention of the federal Government. To this Mr. Kellogg replied that the action of the various state governments had the effect simply of excluding the Standard Oil from intrastate commerce, leaving it free to continue in interstate commerce. John G. Johnson, leading counsel for the Standard Oil organization, concluded on the 18th in a brilliant oratorical efiort the long oral argument. The acquisition, in the course of conducting business, of competitors was not in restraint of trade nor tending toward monopoly, Mr. Johnson argued. Monopolizing is the ex clusion of others illegally from their business, he declared. The final assault on the constitutionality of the corporation tax provisions of the Payne
Aldrich tariff act began on Jan. 17. Maxwell Evarts and Julian T. Davies, both of New York, argued that the tax was unconstitutional. On the following day Solicitor-General Lehmann de fended the law in an argument which took up nearly three hours. He declared that the tax was not upon an instrumentality of a state, a franchise to a corporation, but was upon the exercise of the right procured by the corporation. The hearing was continued on the 19th, when Moorfield Storey and Burton E. Eames con tended the Massachusetts real estate "trust," so-called, was not within the scope of the act. One of the most spectacular legal battles ever waged between capital and organized labor reached its final stages Jan. 27 when the Supreme Court of the United States took up for oral argu ment the famous litigation by the Bucks Stove &
