The; Legal World monlhly Analysis of Leading Events The Sherman anti-trust law continues to occupy a prominent place in the public attention. There have been some
wholesome indications of a moderate
attitude toward monopoly, but this atti tude cannot yet be said to be predomi nant.
Governor
Woodrow
Wilson,
speaking at Red Bank, N. J., Oct. 11, expressed his opposition to indiscrimi nate prosecutions under the trust act, and regretted that sound business should be forced to continue in a panicky state. Governor Simeon E. Baldwin, in an address at Bridgeport, Conn., Oct. 19, declared that the Government was
collecting evidence of more supposed vio lations of the Sherman act than it could
possibly prove. The great discretion en trusted to the President, to prosecute or not to prosecute corporations, placed upon him, he said, a great responsibility.
States Circuit Court at Trenton, N. J. Another development of the month was
significant. The plan of the American Tobacco Company for reorganization was to be fought by the Attorney-Generals of Virginia and North and South Caro lina, and also by a group of independent
tobacco men. The dissatisfaction with the plan for reorganization seemed to be due to a conviction that a legal freedom of competition is not sufficient, that economic freedom of competition also must be created by law. To turn from economic t0.govern
mental issues, there seem to be increas ing symptoms of popular impatience with constitutional restraints. Emphatic
protest against a delegated system of government has been ofiered by the people of California, who adopted con stitutional amendments Oct.
12 pro
On the other hand, the radical tendency
viding for the initiative and referendum judicial recall, and woman suffrage.
is still in apparent control of the situa
Theodore Roosevelt, taking care that
tion.
no one should accuse him of advocating
President Taft, in his speeches
in the West, has proclaimed the old fashioned doctrine of free competition as a panacea for all ills, by saying that we have got along without monopoly in the past, and can therefore always get
along without it, notwithstanding that this does not follow, in view of changed conditions in every great country of the
the recall, vaguely asserted at Carnegie
Hall, New York, Oct. 20, that judges should be controlled by the people, because certain courts “are steeped in some outworn political or social philos
ophy and totally misapprehend their relations to the people, and to the public needs."
world. Attomey-General Wickersham has claimed that the Supreme Court de
Despite the agitation of the judicial recall, there are signs of a tendency
cisions in the Standard Oil and Tobacco
toward improvement of the adminis tration of the courts. Justice Mor schauser told lawyers in the New York Supreme Court at White Plains, Oct. 4,
cases ring the death knell of monopo lies. The activity of the Government reached a climax Oct. 26, when a suit
to dissolve the United States Steel Cor
poration was brought in the United
that if they were not ready to go to trial with their cases at once he would
