284
The Green Bag
apparent from year to year while the enforcement of the Sherman act goes on. The dissolution of the Standard Oil Company, in literal compliance with the terms of the decree, can have
the effect of re-establishing no real freedom of competition. The law can not itself create freedom of competition, which is an economic and not a legal status, without resorting to more drastic
artifices than any yet employed. It is even possible that the conscientious enforcement by the Supreme Court of the remedies afforded by the Sherman act may have the result of showing more clearly than could be proved in any other way, the fruitless character of our
anti-monopoly legislation. If the remedies now available must
prove abortive and cannot accomplish what is aimed at, the demand for an adequate statute and for adequate remedies must come to be recognized. As soon as Congress adopted a really sound anti-monopoly law, conserva tively, comprehensively and effectively drawn, it could proceed much further
in the direction of drastic relief without really departing from the path of safety. It is difficult to see how an effective remedy can be found until much heavier fines than any yet attempted are im
posed on corporations which have accu mulated,
by
illegal
means,
property
illegally in their possession and not to be considered enjoying the immunities and safeguards granted by the Con stitution.
Effective Government‘ BY HON. GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM' ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
R. C HA IRMA N and Gentlemen of the Daily Princetom'an: — I assume that when you invited me
public affairs, municipal, state and na tional. To be truly efficient, a government must be administered honestly and
to‘ be your guest this evening you ex pected me to talk to you about the rela
wisely. How these results shall be ac complished, you and men like you should
tions of college men to public questions.
in large measure determine. If you do not play an important part in the solu tion of this problem, then whatever pro ficiency you may have attained here in your studies, whatever prowess you may have displayed in athletic sports, you will have failed to realize the highest
As one busied in the tremendously im portant and equally absorbing business of government, I am greatly interested in meeting you who are coming out into the work-a-day world to assume your share of the duty and the privilege of making efiicient the conduct of our 1Written for delivery at the annual dinner of the Daily Princelmn'an, at Princeton, N. J., May 1. 1911. In his actual address, Mr. Wickersham fol lowed more or less this text, but without having it before him and without adhering rigidly to it. — Ed.
aim of university education.
I congratulate you on coming out into the world at this particular time in its history. Within your grasp is life, and life abundantly. In the words
