Stanley Forman Reed

“ Nondiscriminatory pricing tends to weaken competition in that a seller, while otherwise maintaining his prices, cannot meet his antagonist's price to get a single order or customer. But Congress obviously concluded that the greater advantage would accrue by fostering equal access to supplies by competing merchants or other purchasers in the course of business. [5]
The first enactment to put limits on discriminatory selling prices was the Clayton Act in 1914, 38 Stat. 730, § 2. Section 11 enabled the Commission to use its investigatory and regulatory authority to handle price discrimination. ”

“ The need to allow sellers to meet competition in price from other sellers while protecting the competitors of the buyers against the buyers' advantages gained from the price discrimination was a major cause of the enactment of the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act. ”

“ The public policy of the United States fosters the free-enterprise system of unfettered competition among producers and distributors of goods as the accepted method to put those goods into the hands of all consumers at the least expense. ”

“ That still consists of the provision that wherever a lawful lower price of a competitor threatens to deprive a seller of a customer, the seller, to retain that customer, may in good faith meet that lower price.'
We see little difference. The seller may still, under the Court's interpretation, discriminate in sales of goods of like quantity and quality between buyers on opposite corners, so long as one gets a lower delivered price offer from another seller, no matter where located. The 'actual core of the defense' remains intact. ”

“ Events in the course of the proposed legislation in the Senate and House have pertinence. The Senate inserted the original ineffective language of the Clayton Act in its exact form in the Senate bill. In the same draft it adopted an amendment similar to the proviso ultimately enacted. 80 Cong.Rec. 6426, 6435. In the House, Representative Patman explained his view of the dangers in the original proviso. ”