George Howard Earle, Jr.

“ Taught in the school of experience and adversity, the early English and American patriots learned the salutary lesson that the development of peoples, as well as their happiness, depended more upon liberty—that is, the power to control and govern themselves, rather than to be controlled or governed by anybody else—than upon any other single thing ; and they, therefore, in drafting our Constitution, always viewed government as an evil made necessary by the weakness and defects of human nature, and never extended it beyond that necessity. ”

“ That all men naturally love freedom, however ignorant they may be of that eternal vigilance and the necessary measures to preserve it, and where their folly has caused them to lose it, always try to return to it. Liberty destroying price fixing, of necessity, an invasion of property and thus of its synonym "Liberty," never can long continue without an application of the unmitigated terror established in the French Revolution, that so completely annihilated every principle of constitutional right. ”

“ To tax excess profits is no wiser than it would be in a siege to draw troops for the reinforcement of a weak point, from still weaker points, or to stop circulation to the least nourished part of the body. But it is astounding, with all these conditions before our eyes, that even a far greater evil is actually being contended for; that the very life blood of the economic body of the community is to be sucked from it by a construction that will make capital, and its natural and slow variation through the years, subject to a still greater and more disastrous spoliation. ”

“ The sole distinction between the Nash and Harvester cases is the very simple distinction between the possible and the impossible,—between those things which can best be determined by juries and those which cannot be certainly defined by anybody—matters covering so broad a ground as to require the judgment of all men acting with a free and untrammeled use of their judgments,—and which, even with this great aid, constantly leads to grave error. In many things, men must act upon standards of the reasonable conduct of the average man under the same, or nearly like circumstances ”

“ The Lever Act, therefore, is one of "the instances" of which the law "is full," and its "standard" is one of complete freedom, undisturbed by unlawful restraints or monopoly, and governed alone by the results of free competition and the resulting "market price." It is, therefore, as plain as the noonday sun that what is being asked is not at all that men be punished for violating a known defined "standard," of which they should have knowledge, but for adhering to it and continuing to obey the mandates again and again given to them by the Supreme Court itself. ”

“ Well has the Supreme Court said that such guessing is not a judicial function, that: "To compel men to guess on peril of indictment what the community would have given for their wares, if the continually changing conditions were other than they are, to an uncertain extent; to divine prophetically what the reaction of only partially determinate facts would be upon the imagination and desires of purchasers, is to exact gifts that mankind does not possess." ”

“ The proof that a man has paid one price and has charged a hundred per cent. more and upward for the same goods, standing alone, really means absolutely nothing. The real question is whether he has properly guessed what the replacement price will be; and that, of course, he can only do, in most cases, by mere surmise. His wealth consists in his commodities, and he is going straight to ruin, if deceived by the depreciation of the counters of exchange, he fail not to replace that real wealth with a sum fully adequate to secure an equivalent amount. ”

“ If by industry, improvement and invention, a plant producing 1,000 barrels a day of a commodity can be increased, without increase of cost to the consumer, to 10,000 barrels a day, it is of enormous advantage to the public whether there be an immediate decrease in price or not. The stimulus, therefore, that should be given, for such increase of production must not only reduce scarcity, but must increase competition, and ultimately reduce prices. ”

“ Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren—taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians. Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress hath she called forth. ”

“ As this can never be done in the case of commodities, beyond a reasonable doubt, this "war power" must, in times of stress, make legal the absurdity of attempting to aid the nation, by punishing its business men for what always must be mere guessing; and seek to impair their efficiency and patriotism by keeping them in constant anxiety lest what they have to "guess at" may seem to be wrong to others, also guessing, but having less knowledge. Such guesses, business men know, are, in a great majority of cases, sure to be wrong even to the point of their ruin! ”

“ For this country to be great, happy and prosperous, it must be really free ; and freedom, just as justice, consists in distributing power and opportunity as equally as possible, and as much controlled by everybody's individual, untrammeled discretion as the nature of things will permit. I am as much opposed to undue centralization as I am to Socialism or Nihilism, and for an identical reason : They are all enemies of liberty ; and it is only through liberty that mankind can reach the highest forms of development. ”