George Howard Earle, Jr.

“ What value determines is not how much a thing is desired, but how much any one is willing to give for it. * * * Thus it is that there is no measure of value among men save competition or the higgling of the market, a matter that might be worth the consideration of those amiable reformers who so lightly propose to abolish competition. It is never the amount of labor that has been exerted into bringing a thing into being that determines its value, but always the amount of labor that would be rendered in exchange for it. ”

“ That "free competition" thus becomes a necessary constitutional, "unalienable" right of all mankind, as through it alone their other "unalienable" rights can be ascertained, protected or enforced. For men can neither measure "just compensation" nor reach that certain definition or "standard" upon which to act, without which criminal punishment can neither be just nor constitutional. ”

“ They are in fact but a selling of our birthright of Freedom for a mess of pottage, which in turn is withdrawn as a necessary economic effect of them; are always an offense against Liberty, which, therefore, makes it impossible that we should be too grateful to those patriots who devised the Supreme Court of the United States, that has saved us from such danger throughout all the years of the Constitution. ”

“ It is always the result, like contract, of a meeting,—an agreement of minds; not the view of one, unaccepted by another, but a result regulated solely by "the relative intensity of the desires of the whole community." "Value" deals only with the actual, never with imaginary conditions other than the facts. ”

“ These have, consequently, always been "unalienable" constitutional rights of every free man living under and helping to govern our free Republican nation. That property, to this extent, at least, becomes and is a synonym for "Liberty," so that wherever arbitrary governmental impairment of the "value" of private property is found, by "price fixing" or other despotic ukase or decree, property and constitutional liberty have been invaded—and Communistic slavery has, to that extent, been substituted for the Republican Government of free men under constitutional protection. ”

“ Its ultimate determination always finally rests upon what men are willing to give for a commodity, rather than incur the exertion necessary to create it for themselves. Value, therefore, can no more be defined, or known than a contract can, until an actual and accomplished meeting of more than one mind! ”

“ Not by making them Communistic slaves, not by the injustice of giving unequivalent return for what is taken, but by the encouragement, that perhaps more encourages production than anything else, of knowing that they will not be unjustly treated as to the results of their toil when created. ”

“ And since they are entitled constitutionally to "perfect equality of value" for property taken, and clarity of "standard," if charged with crime, their property cannot possibly be taken, or their Liberty destroyed by imprisonment, through the device of forcing them on behalf of a prosecuting government to guess what they and others might agree upon; their only constitutional right and guide being what has been actually and as a fact agreed upon by free men, acting in a free market and through "free competition." ”

“ The foregoing detailed discussion has failed of useful purpose, if we have not reached a result that can be clearly and succinctly stated for ascertained truth must always tend to succinctness and simplicity of statement. ”

“ It will thus be seen that neither seller nor any jury acting subsequently can constitutionally fix "value," nor be criminally punished for failure to satisfactorily perform forced attempts beyond the power of human minds. ”