William R. Day

“ The Central Pacific Railroad extends from the Bay of San Francisco to Ogden, Utah, with a branch extending north from Roseville, in Central California, to the northern boundary of California; and to Kirk, in Oregon, and a branch extending south from Lathrop, in Central California, to Goshen, Cal., and a branch extending south from Hazen, in Nevada, to Mojave, in California, and a branch from Fernley in Nevada, to Susanville, Cal., and a short line in Oregon from Oakridge to Natron. ”

“ These two great systems are normally competitive for the carrying trade in some parts from the East and Middle West to the Coast, and for the traffic moving to and from Central and Northern California, including a great volume of ocean-borne traffic which lands on the coast destined across the continent to the Atlantic Seaboard and intermediate Western and Eastern points, or is destined from the latter points to foreign ports via San Francisco or other Pacific Coast points. ”

“ These cases, collectively, establish that one system of railroad transportation cannot acquire another, nor a substantial and vital part thereof, when the effect of such acquisition is to suppress, or materially reduce the free and normal flow of competition in the channels of interstate trade. ”

“ The defendants contend that the suit is barred by laches on part of the government in failing to institute it earlier. Without deciding that this defense is available when an action is brought under an act of Congress embodying, as does the Sherman Act, an expression of public policy enforceable by criminal prosecution and by civil suit instituted by the Attorney General, we are unable to discover that laches exists in the failure to more promptly prosecute the suit. ”

“ Such combinations, not the result of normal and natural growth and development, but springing from the formation of holding companies, or stock purchases, resulting in the unified control of different roads or systems, naturally competitive, constitute 'a menace and a restraint upon that freedom of commerce which Congress intended to recognize and protect and which the public is entitled to have protected.' Northern Securities Co. ”

“ The dominating control was maintained from the fact that the stock had not been transferred by its true owners on the company's books, and much of it was held in the name of employees who were used in voting it by the original promoters, their successors and survivors. ”