460
The Green Bag
control of commerce among the states or with foreign countries in any particu
of them based
upon slow precedent;
lar line of industry is secured or threat
live, is at any particular time what it
For this race, the law under which they
ened, expose those who are concerned
is then understood to be, and this under
in such efforts to the penalties prescribed in the second section of the act, because
standing of it is compounded of the cir
they are engaged in monopolizing or at tempting to monopolize such commerce.
theories of legal consequence they have never cared to follow out to their con
“It is also now settled that no form of corporate organization merger or
used as parts of the practical running
consolidation, no species of transfer of title, whether by sale, conveyance
machinery of their politics — part5 to be fitted from time to time, by interpre
or mortgage; and no lapse of time from
tation, to existing opinion and 50081 condition.’ General “If thisinlaw," conclusion, declared the “designed Attomeyto
the date of the original contract, con spiracy or combination, can bar a federal court of equity from terminating
an unlawful restraint or compelling the disintegration of a monopolistic com bination." Mr. Wickersham quoted from Gov ernor Woodrow Wilson's work,
“The
cumstances
clusions.
of
the
time.
Absolute
Their laws have always been
protect the people of this country from the evils of monopoly and to preserve the liberty of the individual to trade freely, shall now be clearly understood; if its true purpose shall be recognized
and its beneficent consequences realized “ ‘It is one of the distinguishing the twenty years of slowly develop‘?d
State," the following:—
characteristics of the English race, whose political habit has been trans
interpretation and widening precedent
mitted to us through the sagacious generation by whom this Government was erected, that they have never felt themselves bound by the logic of laws but only by a practical understanding
For the law will henceforth be used’
will not have been without great value to employ Dr. Wilson's language. 35 a part of the running machinery Of our political system, adapted to the needs of our social condition.”
Address of Mr. Justice Holmes to the Harvard Alumni Association [The following speech was made by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of the Su preme Court of the United States, to an audience of several thousand Harvard graduates at the outdoor exercises in the college yard last Commencement Day. The address, which was received as a message from the war class of '61, made a deep and lasting impression because of its poetic sentiment and beauty of diction.—-Ed.]
MR. PRESIDENT and Brethren of the Alumni: — One of the recurring sights of Alaska,
glacier cracks and drops into the 968 The last time that I remember witness ing the periodic semi-centennial plunge
I believe, is when a section of the great
of a college class was when I heard