Edward Douglass White

“ Congress, with full and exclusive power over the whole subject, has signified its purpose to forbid every restraint of interstate trade, in whatever form, or to whatever extent; but the court has assumed to insert in the act, by construction merely, words which made Congress say that it means only to prohibit the 'undue' restraint of trade. ”

“ We do not, for the sake of brevity, moreover, stop to examine and discuss the various propositions urged in the argument at bar for the purpose of demonstrating that the subject-matter of the combination which we find to exist, and the combination itself, are not within the scope of the anti-trust law, because, when rightly considered, they are merely matters of intrastate commerce, and therefore subject alone to state control. ”

“ There is no dispute that as early as 1893 the president of the American Tobacco Company, by authority of the corporation, approached leading manufacturers of plug tobacco and sought to bring about a combination of the plug tobacco interests, and upon the failure to accomplish this, ruinous competition, by lowering the price of plug below its cost, ensued. ”

“ The cigar company acquired many competitors (partherships and corporations) engaged in interstate and foreign commerce, taking the parties covenants against engaging in the tobacco business; and it has also procured the organization of controlled corporations which have acquired competing manufacturers, jobbers, and distributers in the United States, Cuba, and Porto Rico. It manufacturers, sells, and distributes a considerable percentage of domestic cigars; is the dominating factor in the tobacco business, foreign and domestic, in Cuba and Porto Rico, and is there engaged in tobacco planting. ”

“ Still further, the question would yet remain whether particular corporations which, when bereft of the power which they possessed as resulting from stock ownership, although they were not inherently possessed of a sufficient residuum of power to cause them to be, in and of themselves, either a restraint of trade or a monopolization or an attempt to monopolize, should nevertheless be restrained because of their intimate connection and association with other corporations found to be within the prohibitions of the act. ”

“ By the gradual absorption of control over all the elements essential to the successful manufacture of tobacco products, and placing such control in the hands of seemingly independent corporations serving as perpetual barriers to the entry of others into the tobacco trade. (e) By persistent expenditure of millions upon millions of dollars in buying out plants, not for the purpose of utilizing them, but in order to close them up and render them useless for the purposes of trade. ”

“ In stating summarily, as we have done, the conclusions which, in our opinion, are plainly deducible from the undisputed facts, we have not paused to give the reasons why we consider, after great consideration, that the elaborate arguments advanced to affix a different complexion to the case are wholly devoid of merit. ”

“ We, hence, in determining the relief proper to be given, may not model our action upon that granted by the court below, but, in order to enable us to award relief coterminous with the ultimate redress of the wrongs which we find to exist, we must approach the subject of relief from an original point of view. ”

“ The necessity of relief as to all these aspects, we think, seemed to the government so essential, and the difficulty of giving to the act such a comprehensive and coherent construction as would be adequate to enable it to meet the entire situation, led to what appears to us to be in their essence a resort to methods of construction not compatible one with the other. And the same apparent conflict is presented by the views of the act taken by the defendants when their contentions are accurately tested. ”

“ By the constantly recurring stipulations, whose legality, isolatedly viewed, we are not considering, by which numbers of persons, whether manufacturers, stockholders, or employees, were required to bind themselves, generally for long periods, not to compete in the future. ”

“ First, Because in this case it is obvious that a mere decree forbidding stock ownership by one part of the combination in another part or entity thereof would afford no adequate measure of relief, since different ingredients of the combination would remain unaffected, and by the very nature and character of their organization would be able to continue the wrongful situation which it is our duty to destroy. ”

“ It acquired in exchange for $3,647, 725 stock all shares of United States Cigar Company (which had previously acquired and owned the business of important competitors) , and subsequently took the conveyance of the plant and assets. The majority shares always have been held by defendant, the American Cigar Company. ”