The Sherman Act: Sugar Trust Case.—Congress’ chief effort to regulate commerce in the primary sense of ‘‘traffic’’ is embodied in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the opening section of which declares ‘‘every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise,’’ or ‘‘conspiracy in restraint of trade and commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations’’ to be ‘‘illegal,’’ while the second section makes it a misdemeanor for anybody to ‘‘monopolize or attempt to monopolize any part of such commerce.’’ The act was passed to curb the growing tendency to form industrial combinations, and the first case to reach the Court under it was the famous Sugar Trust Case, United States v. E. C. Knight Co. Here the Government asked for the cancellation of certain agreements, whereby the American Sugar Refining Company, had ‘‘acquired,’’ it was conceded, ‘‘nearly complete control of the manufacture of refined sugar in the United States.’’ The question of the validity of the Act was not expressly discussed by the Court but was subordinated to that of its proper construction. The Court, in pursuance of doctrines of constitutional law then dominant with it, turned the Act from its intended purpose and destroyed its effectiveness for several years, as that of the Interstate Commerce Act was being contemporaneously impaired. The following passage early in Chief Justice Fuller’s opinion for the Court sets forth the conception of the federal system that controlled the decision: ‘‘It is vital that the independence of the commercial power and of the police power, and the delimination between them, however sometimes perplexing, should always be recognized and observed, for while the one furnishes the strongest bond of union, the other is essential to the preservation of the autonomy of the States as required by our dual form of government; and acknowledged evils, however grave and urgent they may appear to be, had better be borne, than the risk be run, in the effort to suppress them, of more serious consequences by resort to expedients of even doubtful constitutionality.’’ In short, what was needed, the Court felt, was a hard and fast line between the two spheres of power, and in a series of propositions it endeavored to lay down such a line: (1) production is always local, and under the exclusive domain of the States; (2) commerce among the States does not begin until goods ‘‘commence their final movement from their State of origin to that of their des- tination;’’ (3) the sale of a product is merely an incident of its production and, while capable of ‘‘bringing the operation of commerce into play,’’ affects it only incidentally; (4) such restraint as would reach commerce, as above defined, in consequence of combinations to control production ‘‘in all its forms,’’ would be ‘‘indirect, however inevitable and whatever its extent,’’ and as such beyond the purview of the Act. Applying the above reasoning to the case before it, the Court proceeded: ‘‘The object [of the combination] was manifestly private gain in the manufacture of the commodity, but not through the control of interstate or foreign commerce. It is true that the bill alleged that the products of these refineries were sold and distributed among the several States, and that all the companies were engaged in trade or commerce with the several States and with foreign nations; but this was no more than to say that trade and commerce served manufacture to fulfill its function.’’ ‘‘Sugar was refined for sale, and sales were probably made at Philadelphia for consumption, and undoubtedly for resale by the first purchasers throughout Pennsylvania and other States, and refined sugar was also forwarded by the companies to other States for sale. Nevertheless it does not follow that an attempt to monopolize, or the actual monopoly of, the manufacture was an attempt, whether executory or consummated, to monopolize commerce, even though, in order to dispose of the product, the instrumentality of commerce was necessarily invoked. There was nothing in the proofs to indicate any intention to put a restraint upon trade or commerce, and the fact, as we have seen that trade or commerce might be indirectly affected was not enough to entitle complainants to a decree.’’ Four years later came the case of Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. v. United States, in which the Antitrust Act was successfully applied as against an industrial com- bination for the first time. The agreements in the case, the parties to which were manufacturing concerns, effected a division of territory among them, and so involved, it was held, a ‘‘direct’’ restraint on the distribution and hence of the transportation of the products of the contracting firms. The holding, however, did not question the doctrine of the earlier case, which in fact continued substantially undisturbed until 1905, when Swift & Co. v. United States, was decided. The Swift Case.— Defendants in Swift were some thirty firms engaged in Chicago and other cities in the business of buying livestock in their stockyards, in converting it at their packing houses into fresh meat, and in the sale and shipment of such fresh meat to purchasers in other States. The charge against them was that they had entered into a combination to refrain from bidding against each other in the local markets, to fix the prices at which they would sell, to restrict shipments of meat, and to do other forbidden acts. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court on defendants’ contention that certain of the acts complained of were not acts of interstate commerce and so did not fall within a valid reading of the Sherman Act. The Court, however, sustained the Government on the ground that the ‘‘scheme as a whole’’ came within the act, and that the local activities alleged were simply part and parcel of this general scheme. Referring to the purchase of livestock at the stockyards, the Court, speaking by Justice Holmes, said: ‘‘Commerce among the States is not a technical legal conception, but a practical one, drawn from the course of business. When cattle are sent for sale from a place in one State, with the expectation that they will end their transit, after purchase, in another, and when in effect they do so, with only the interruption necessary to find a purchaser at the stockyards, and when this is a typical, constantly recurring course, the current thus existing is a current of commerce among the States, and the purchase of the cattle is a part and incident of such commerce.’’ Likewise the sales alleged of fresh meat at the slaughtering places fell within the general design. Even if they imported a technical passing of title at the slaughtering places, they also imported that the sales were to persons in other States, and that shipments to such States were part of the transaction. Thus, sales of the type that in the Sugar Trust case were thrust to one side as immaterial from the point of view of the law, because they enabled the manufacturer ‘‘to fulfill its function,’’ were here treated as merged in an interstate commerce stream. Thus, the concept of commerce as trade, that is, as traffic, again entered the constitutional law picture, with the result that conditions directly affecting interstate trade could not be dismissed on the ground that they affected interstate commerce, in the sense of interstate transportation, only ‘‘indirectly.’’ Lastly, the Court added these significant words: ‘‘But we do not mean to imply that the rule which marks the point at which State taxation or regulation becomes permissible necessarily is beyond the scope of interference by Congress in cases where such interference is deemed necessary for the protection of commerce among the States.’’ That is to say, the line that confines state power from one side does not always confine national power from the other. Even though the line accurately divides the subject matter of the complementary spheres, national power is always entitled to take on the additional extension that is requisite to guarantee its effective exercise and is furthermore supreme. The Danbury Hatters Case.—In this respect, the Swift case only states what the Shreveport case was later to declare more explicitly, and the same may be said of an ensuing series of cases in which combinations of employees engaged in such intrastate activities as manufacturing, mining, building, construction, and the distribution of poultry were subjected to the penalties of the Sherman Act because of the effect or intended effect of their activities on interstate commerce.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:41:44 +0000
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