The decision of the Federal Court in the suit brought for the dissolution
of the United States Steel Corporation holds out some hope to business
men that the persecution of big business in this country merely because
it is big, is to cease. The case has to go to the Supreme Court of the
United States, but the decision of this tribunal in the Cash Register
Company case leads to the reasonable inference that it will uphold the
decision of the lower court in the Steel Corporation case. The essence of
the Cash Register decision is that the mere ability to commit the crime
of combination in restraint of trade is not equivalent to the commission
of the crime. The Cash Register Company, by reason of its bigness, could,
had it been so inclined, put smaller concerns out of business by unfair
competition; but the evidence adduced failed to prove that it had done
so. The lower court gave it a clean bill of health, and the Supreme Court
tacitly approved the verdict of the lower court. The government lawyers
denounced the Cash Register Company in unmeasured terms virtually on the
ground that its size made it a menace to competition, but the courts
refused to hold it guilty because it possessed power which it did not
exercise.
Nothing could show up in a clearer light the folly of the Government’s
persecution of big business. To dissolve a corporation, or to penalize
it, simply because it possesses the power to commit an offense which it
does not commit, would be equivalent to ordering the arms of a stalwart
citizen cut off lest he use his fists to pound some weaker citizen to a
jelly. The attitude of this administration towards business, if we judge
it by some of the prosecutions for which it stands responsible, is that
success in business is an evidence of an evil disposition and a menace to
all other business. If the Federal Courts have successfully called a halt
upon this piratical attitude towards the country’s industry and commerce,
the people of the country have reason to thank God for the Federal Courts.