What the Anti-Trust Laws Should Be
| Author | Walter Gordon Merritt |
| Published date | 01 January 1930 |
| Date | 01 January 1930 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000271623014700126 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
195
What
the
Anti-Trust
Laws
Should
Be
By
WALTER
GORDON
MERRITT
Member,
New
York
Bar,
New
York
City
HE
unintelligent
are
those
who
speak
hasty
and
absolute
judg-
ments-such
is
the
substance
of
one
of
Mr.
Bertrand
Russell’s
remarks.
Those
who
ponder
the
scope
and
wisdom
of
our
anti-trust
laws
may
well
take
this
commentary
to
heart,
for,
in
the
ma-
jority
of
cases,
the
ordinary
observer
has
not
even
inventoried
the
important
factors
which
should
be
given
consider-
ation
before
reaching
a
conclusion
in
respect
to
such
laws.
THE
REGULATION
DILEMMA
Collective
action
or
organization
in
commerce
and
social
life
is
one
of
the
useful
developments
of
modern
times
which
has
expanded
so
rapidly
that
we
are
not
yet
attuned
to
its
capacity
for
good
or
ill.
In
degree,
if
not
in
kind,
it
presents
new
problems
without
ade-
quate
understanding
or
experience
to
meet
them.
We
do
know,
however,
that
the
power
and
capacity
of
combinations,
whether
of
business
men
or
workers,
are
greater
than
the
sum
total
of
the
power
and
capacity
of
the
members
of
the
combination,
and
that
some
checks
or
regulations
seem
neces-
sary
to
assure a
fair
measure
of
eco-
nomic
justice
and
commercial
liberty.
In
a
society
which
seeks
justice
and
liberty,
the
unorganized
are
not
wan-
tonly
to
be
preyed
upon
by
the
organ-
ized.
In
modern
commercial
develop-
ment-the
intricacies
of
which
make
for
interdependence
between
all
units
of
our
social
structure-no
indispen-
sable
or
valuable
service
can
be
permit-
ted,
by
any
form
of
coercive
combina-
tion,
to
&dquo;hold
up&dquo;
the
remainder
of
society.
Since
human
power
does
not
always
stop
at
the
portals
of
justice
some
restraints
are
necessary.
The
underlying
social
question,
there-
fore,
is
the
maintenance
of
reasonable
safeguards
for
the
protection
of
the
rights
of
the
individual
in
business
and
the
rights
of
society
as
consumers.
To
this
problem,
there
are
two
basic
ap-
proaches.
The
first
is
thoroughly
to
supervise
and
regulate
all
industrial
activities,
so
that
no
combination
can
charge
oppressive
prices,
impose
oppres-
sive
wages
or
otherwise
unfairly
con-
duct
itself.
That
means
a
large
degree
of
governmental
management.
There
are
many
who
would
venture
gaily
down
the
trail
of
this
experiment
with
confidence
that
law
and
government
would
keep
the
trail
clear
of
such
out-
standing
inequalities
and
maladjust-
ments
as
now
figure
in
our
daily
ex-
perience.
Others
shrink
from
such
a
course.
Generally
speaking,
as
ob-
jections
to
any
such
policy,
all
indus-
trial
organizations,
whether
of
employ-
ers
or
employees,
point
to
the
inepti-
tude
of
government
as
a
manager
of
business,
the
dangers
of
overloading
the
ship
of
state
with
too
many
duties,
the
crimping
of
individual
initiative
and
the
curtailment
of
liberty.
Amer-
ica’s
spirit
of
self-reliance
and
its
pre-
vailing
political
philosophy
are
not
friendly
to
such
a
program.
The
second
approach,
which
is
the
one
followed
in
this
country,
is
to
pro-
tect
freedom
of
competition
and
in-
dividual
enterprise
from
voluntary
or
involuntary
restraints,
and
rely
upon
the
economic
forces
of
supply
and
de-
mand
to
regulate
the
conduct
of
busi-
ness combinations.
Such
is
the
purpose
of
our
anti-trust
laws.
If
the
Govern-
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