Pierce Butler

“ The absence of contractual relation between the manufacturer and retailer does not matter. The sale by the wholesaler to the retailer is the initial step in the business completed by the interstate transportation and delivery of the paper. Presumably the seller has then determined whether his source of supply is a mill within or one without the state. If the contract of sale provided for shipment to the purchaser from a mill outside the state, then undoubtedly it would be an essential part of commerce among the states. ”

“ The effective combination to restrain price competition on one side of the state line is not consistent with the absence of such restraint on the other. The organized maintenance of uniform prices in business local to the states lends probative significance and weight to facts pointing in the direction of like restraint in the interstate territories. The use of the association prices by all the salesmen in making sales in interstate territories is not necessarily to be regarded as coincidence. ”

“ Dealers in paper in each of the five principal jobbing centers in the states on the Pacific Coast have a local association. These centers are Seattle and Tacoma taken as one, Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. And there is a general association known as the Pacific States Paper Trade Association, whose members are the paper dealers in these centers, including most, but not all, of the members of the local associations, and some who do not belong to a local association. ”