ciations. It was admitted by the supreme court in the sugar refineries case[1] that congress did not confine itself to the common law sense of the term "as implying an exclusive control, by authority, of one branch of industry without legal right of any other person to interfere therewith by competition or otherwise, but it includes engrossing as well, and covers controlling the market by contracts securing the advantage of selling alone or exclusively all, or some considerable portion, of a particular kind of merchandise or commodity to the detriment of the public; and that such contracts amount to that restraint of trade or commerce declared to be illegal." Evidently, then, if the laws aim not at the contract, but at the fact of irresponsible power, they need some expansion.
The generally unserviceable character of the anti-trust legislation must convince us that the question is no more settled than it was before the legislators began to grapple with it—at least existing laws do not settle it. As Von Halle says, "More may be expected finally from the decisions of the courts. Legal judgments depend upon the conception of public policy; and as this conception is subject to change, the law-creating action of the courts is likely to change also. That this is possible, and indeed is done by a process of quiet and natural progress, is the very thing that constitutes the strength of the English common law."[2]
It may be that these anti-monopoly laws, futile although most of them are, will serve a purpose in bringing into the courts a problem that needs solution. A victory has undoubtedly been gained in compelling the trusts to become incorporated, and in making so much of their business public. Then, too, the general recognition of the right of the state to prohibit that which is opposed to public policy is likely to have most salutary results. While, in the case under consideration, the exercise of authority has been directed to the maintenance of conditions of free competition, the policy itself is the reverse of laissez faire,
