Felix Frankfurter

“ In these circumstances, legislators may well have thought combinations of farmers and stockmen presented no threat to the community, or, at least, the threat was of a different order from that arising through combinations of industrialists and middlemen. At all events legislation like that of Texas rested on this view, curbing industrial and commercial combinations, and did not visit the same condemnation upon collaborative efforts by farmers and stockmen because the latter were felt to have a different economic significance. ”

“ They do not relate to abstract units A, B and C, but are expressions of policy arising out of specific difficulties, addressed to the attainment of specific ends by the use of specific remedies. The Constitution does not require things which are different in fact or opinion to be treated in law as though they were the same. And so we conclude that to write into law the differences between agriculture and other economic pursuits was within the power of the Texas legislature. ”

“ The sensitiveness of the economic mechanism, the risks of introducing new evils in trying to stamp out old, familiar ones, the difficulties of proof within the conventional modes of procedure, the effect of shifting tides of public opinion-these and many other subtle factors must influence legislative choice. ”

“ We find no constitutional bar against excluding farmers and stockmen from the criminal statute against combination and monopoly, and so holding, we conclude that there was likewise no bar against making the exemption partial rather than complete. ”

“ Pressure for this legislation came more particularly from those who as producers, as well as consumers, constituted the most dispersed economic groups. [1] These large sections of the population-those who labored with their hands and those who worked the soil-were as a matter of economic fact in a different relation to the community from that occupied by industrial combinations. Farmers were widely scattered and inured to habits of individualism ”