Sherman Antitrust Act – dwkcommentaries

Reactions to the Hepburn Act Regarding Railroads’ Freight Rates, July-December 1906

As discussed in a prior post, the Hepburn Act, which became law on June 29, 1906, empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), upon complaint, to replace a railroad’s increased freight rates if the ICC determined found them to be “unreasonable” with what the ICC decided were “just and reasonable” rates.

This statute presented a new problem for the railroads. How could they justify any such increase in freight rates to the public at large, including major shippers, and thereby deter any complaint and, if challenged, justify the new rates to the ICC?

This post examines the reactions to the new Act in the last half of 1906 and President Roosevelt’s Annual Message to the Congress on December 3, 1906. Subsequent posts will look at developments on the issue of freight rates in 1907 and 1908.

Public Reactions to the Hepburn Act

On August 16^th, Melville E. Ingalls, the Chairman of the Big Four Railway and a Cincinnati bank president, said at a public meeting of bankers that “the greatest menace to American business and banking interests is found in the various trade laws, particularly the Hepburn and the Sherman [Antitrust] acts.”[1]

Later that same month William Jennings Bryan, the unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1896 and 1900, in a speech to a crowd of 10,000 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden impliedly argued that the Hepburn Act did not go far enough. Bryan said, “I have reached the conclusion that there will be no permanent relief on the railroad question from discrimination between individuals and between places, and from extortionate rates, until the railroads are the property of the Government and operated by the Government in the interests of the people.”[2]

Bryan’s suggestion was rejected the next day in a New York Times editorial saying that the newspaper was “entirely confident that the Interstate Commerce [A]ct, the [Sherman] Anti-Trust [A]ct , . . ., the Elkins Anti-Rebate [A]ct, and the Hepburn [Act] . . . , the enforcement of which measures has been wonderfully facilitated by recent decisions of the Supreme Court, . . . supply adequate remedies . . . [to] protect the people from [railroads’] . . . insolence and their rapacity, and put a stop to unfair [rate] discrimination. . . . Mr. Bryan’s new doctrine of public ownership for the railroads . . . is [a] revolution . . ., and incalculable disaster would attend [such a revolution].” Moreover, the editorial stated the newspaper did “not believe that either the Democratic Party, or any great part of the membership of either party, is ready to accompany [Bryan] upon this perilous adventure in radicalism and centralization.”

Similar negative reactions to the Bryan proposal were expressed by leaders of the Democratic Party and most other newspapers. The New York Evening Post, however, said it thought the public ownership idea “will probably attract more voters, . . . than it will affright.”

Another indirect attack on the Hepburn Act from a different perspective was made on November 10, 1906, by James J. Hill, the President of the Great Northern Railway.[3] In what the New York Times called “an indignant outburst” against public agitation against America’s railroads.[4] Hill complained that the railroads were considered “outlaws” and that they had “not been getting justice in this country.” In the 1904 election “the two great political parties [were] preaching the doctrine of the operation of the railroads by the Government . . . . Is that the way to get men to put more money in the country’s railroads?” Hill pleaded for “a halt to this treatment of the railroad.”

Hill also admitted that the entire country was “suffering from want of transportation facilities to move its business without unreasonable delay. The prevailing idea with the public is that the railways are short of cars, while the fact is that the shortage is in tracks and terminals to provide a greater opportunity for the movement of the cars.” He continued, “The traffic of the country is congested beyond imagination. The commerce of the country is paralyzed, which, continued, means slow death.”

To remedy this situation, Hill asserted, “will cost at least [a total of $ 4 billion to $ 5 billion or $1 billion] per year for five years. Why, there is not money enough [or] . . . rails enough in all the world to do this. [It also is impossible to get the labor to do this work.]”

Soon after Mr. Hill’s speech, two separate investigations of railroads in which Mr. Hill had major interests were announced:

On November 20^th the ICC said it was opening an investigation into the impact on railroad freight rates by Hill’s control of the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific and the Burlington railways.[5]
On November 28^th, the Minnesota Attorney General said he was considering bringing charges against the Great Northern for alleged duplicate issues of capital stock and, therefore, “watering” of stock in connection with its building new branch lines for a subsidiary.[6]

President Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress (December 3, 1906)

On December 3, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt delivered to the Congress his written Annual Message. It echoed Hill’s sense of railroads being unjustly attacked and impliedly criticized Bryan’s public-ownership proposal. Roosevelt said “the men who seek to excite a violent class hatred against all men of wealth. They seek to turn wise and proper movements for the better control of corporations and for doing away with the abuses connected with wealth into a campaign of hysterical excitement and falsehood in which the aim is to inflame to madness the brutal passions of man kind.” Such men are “sinister demagogues and foolish visionaries.”

The President, however, commended the Congress on taking “long strides in the direction of securing proper supervision and control by the National Government over corporations engaged in interstate business.” In particular, he said, the “passage of the [Hepburn] railway rate bill [was] . . .an important advance.” In the upcoming congressional session, “it may be best to wait until the laws have been in operation for a number of months before endeavoring to increase their scope, because only operation will show with exactness their merits and their shortcomings and thus give opportunity to define what further remedial legislation is needed.”

In addition, Roosevelt said the Hepburn Act “has rather amusingly falsified the predictions, both of those who asserted that it would ruin the railroads and of those who asserted that it did not go far enough and would accomplish nothing. During the last five months the railroads have shown increased earnings and some of them unusual dividends; while during the same period the mere taking effect of the law has produced an unprecedented, a hitherto unheard-of, number of voluntary reductions in freights and fares by the railroads.”

Nevertheless, Roosevelt continued, there will “ultimately be need of enlarging the powers of the [ICC]. . . to give it a larger and more efficient control over the railroads.” Such enhanced control will “prevent the evils of excessive overcapitalization, and will compel the disclosure by each big corporation of its stockholders and of its properties and business, whether owned directly or through subsidiary or affiliated corporations. This will tend to put a stop to the securing of inordinate profits by favored individuals at the expense whether of the general public, the stockholders, or the wage-workers.”

Indeed, said Roosevelt, adoption of such measures is the “best way to avert the very undesirable move for the governmental ownership of railways.

Roosevelt also expressed disagreement with the Supreme Court’s March 1904 interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the Northern Securities case as barring all combinations of businesses. He said, “It is unfortunate that [the Sherman Act] should forbid all combinations, instead of sharply discriminating between those combinations which do good and those combinations which do evil.” Therefore, he urged Congress to give serious consideration to amending the Sherman Act to do just that.[7]

On other issues affecting the railroads, Roosevelt called for the “passing [of] the bill limiting the number of hours of employment of railroad employees. The measure is a very moderate one, and I can conceive of no serious objection to it.” Another measure he supported was improving the recent “employers liability law” so that it placed “the entire ‘risk of a trade’ upon the employer.”

Conclusion

President Roosevelt’s Annual Message did not end the public (and private) debate about federal regulation of railroads, and especially their freight rates. It merely was a prelude to continued debate in 1907 and 1908 as we will see in future posts.

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[1] Trade Laws Denounced, N.Y. Times (Aug. 17, 1906).

[2] This discussion of Bryan’s speech and the reactions it provoked is based upon the following: Bryan’s Stand: End the Trusts, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); 10,000 Swelter as Bryan Speaks, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); Overflow Meeting Had a Small Crowd, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); Editorial, Mr. Bryan’s New Party, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); Leaders Oppose Bryan’s Public Ownership Plan, N.Y. Times (Sept. 1, 1906); Newspapers Views, N.Y. Times (Sept. 1, 1906); From the New York Evening Post, N.Y. Times (Sept. 1, 1906).

[3] Hill, as previously discussed, was the co-creator of the Northern Securities Company and a co-defendant in the U.S. successful antitrust case against the creation and operation of that company.

[4] Justice for Railways, Demanded by J. J. Hill, N. Y. Times (Nov. 11, 1906).

[5] Hill’s Three Roads To Be Investigated, N.Y. Times (Nov. 21, 1906).

[6] May Attack Hill Stocks, N.Y. Times (Nov. 28, 1906).

[7] A New York Times editorial said this call for changing the Sherman Act Roosevelt’s “wisest counsel” in the Message. (Editorial, President’s “Coherent Plan,” N.Y. Times (Dec. 5, 1906).) As it turned out, there was no need for such an amendment when nearly five years later the Supreme Court ruled that the original Sherman Act only banned “unreasonable” combinations and restraints of trade.

Federal Regulation of Railroads During U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s First Term (1901-1905): The Northern Securities Case

As mentioned in an earlier post, one of President Theodore Roosevelt’s major efforts to enhance federal regulation of railroads in his first term was his Administration’s commencement of an antitrust lawsuit under the Sherman Act against the Northern Securities Company, which combined the stocks of two competing railroads from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast.

These two roads were the Great Northern Railway running from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington while the Northern Pacific Railway ran from St. Paul (and separately from Ashland, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota) to Seattle and Tacoma, Washington and Portland, Oregon. In addition, the two of them jointly owned the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which connected St. Paul with Chicago. [1]

The Legal Background

The late 19^th century was an era of “trusts” and of “combinations” of businesses and of capital organized and directed to control of the market by suppression of competition in the marketing of goods and services, the monopolistic tendency of which had become a matter of public concern.

To meet this problem, the U.S. in 1890 enacted “An act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies,” 26 Stat. 209, ch. 647 (1890). The statute is commonly referred to as the Sherman Act in recognition of its principal author or sponsor, Senator John Sherman, Republican of Ohio. The statute provided, in part, as follows:

“Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states . . . is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract, or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor . . . .” (Section 1)

“Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states . . . shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor . . . . ” (Section 2)

The prescribed penalty for such misdemeanors was a fine up to $5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding one year or both. In addition, the circuit courts (n/k/a district courts) were “invested with jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations” of the statute (Section 4), and persons injured in their business or property by any violations could sue the perpetrators for treble damages and attorneys’ fees (Section 7).

The goal of the Sherman Act was to prevent restraints of free competition in business and commercial transactions that tended to restrict production, raise prices, or otherwise control the market to the detriment of purchasers or consumers of goods and services.

The Formation of Northern Securities

On November 13, 1901 (only two months after Roosevelt became President), J. P. Morgan, who controlled 21 railroads, including the Northern Pacific, and James J. Hill of the Great Northern [2] announced the formation of the Northern Securities Company to be a holding company for the common stock of the two competing railroads, This new combination was the second largest company in the world with annual revenues of $100 million and covering commerce from Chicago to Seattle and extending to China over Mr. Hill’s shipping lines.

A New York newspaper saw the new company as another step toward universal monopoly.

The Commencement of the Lawsuit

On February 19, 1902 (only three months after the formation of the Northern Securities Company), the Roosevelt Administration announced plans to commence the antitrust case alleging that the formation and operation of Northern Securities constituted a restraint of interstate commerce in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In addition to the two railroads, the U.S. planned to sue James J. Hill of the Great Northern and seven directors of the Northern Pacific, including J. P. Morgan and George F. Baker. [3]

The U.S. stock market immediately registered significant declines with similar reactions in London, Paris and Berlin markets. In response, J. P. Morgan starting buying stocks in great quantities and helped to stop a panic.

The next evening Morgan and 12 other wealthy men met with Roosevelt at the White House without discussing the lawsuit, i.e., the elephant in the room. The next morning, however, the subject was broached when Morgan returned alone to the White House for a meeting with Roosevelt and the Attorney General, Philander Chase Knox. Morgan asked why the Government had not just called and asked him to correct any irregularities with the charter of Northern Securities, but Knox merely said the Government wanted to stop the company, not to fix it up. Afterwards Roosevelt said, “Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator who either intended to ruin all his interests or could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.”

Philander Chased Knox — Philander Chase Knox

The Case in the Circuit Court

The bill in equity (or “complaint” in today’s terminology) thereafter was filed with the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Minnesota.[4] The complaint charged that the Northern Securities was an illegal “combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states” (Sherman Act § 1).

The next April 9^th (1903), the Circuit Court’s four Circuit Judges unanimously upheld the validity of the Government’s complaint (United States v. Northern Securities Co., 120 Fed. 721 (Cir. Ct., Dist. Minn. 1903)) . The court in an opinion by Judge Thayer first entered the following findings of fact as established by the pleadings and evidence:

The Great Northern and Northern Pacific owned railroad lines from Minnesota to Puget Sound that are parallel and competing lines.
These two railroads in 1901 jointly acquired 98% of the capital stock of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway.
Thereafter in 1901 James J. Hill, J. P. Morgan and six other men, all of whom were defendants in the case and collectively had practical control of the two principal railroads, arranged to place a large majority of the stock of the two railroads in a holding company, Northern Securities, and that was done.
As a result, the control of these two railroads was put into a single person and thereby “destroyed every motive for competition” between them.
Those “who conceived and executed this plan . . . intended . . . to accomplish these objects.”

The court then concluded that the Congress “deliberately employed words of such general import [in section 1 of the Sherman Act] as, in its opinion, would comprehend every scheme that might be devised to accomplish that end.” In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court had held that the Act “applies to interstate carriers of freight and passengers . . .; that [the Act does] not mean in unreasonable or partial restraint of trade or commerce, but any direct restraint thereof; that an agreement between competing railroads . . . [to fix their rates is] a contract in direct restraint of commerce . . .; and [that the Act is constitutional].”

Therefore, the court entered a decree that the defendants had violated section 1 of The Sherman Act and that Northern Securities was enjoined from acquiring additional stock of the two railroads, from voting its holdings of those shares and from exercising or attempting to exercise any control or direction over the two railroads. Northern Securities, however, was permitted to rescind its acquisitions of the stock of the two railroads.

The Case in the Supreme Court

The case then went directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, [4] which on December 14, 1903, heard arguments. Attorney General Knox appeared for the Government and made what many thought was a brilliant argument without any questions from the Justices.

In March 1904, the U.S. Supreme Court, 5 to 4, affirmed the Eighth Circuit and ordered the company dismantled. (Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197 (1904).) The Court’s plurality opinion by Mr. Justice John Marshall Harlan and supported by only three of the other Justices concluded that “the evidence . . . shows a violation of the . . . [Sherman Act, which] declares illegal every combination or conspiracy in restraint of commerce among the several states . . . and forbids attempts to monopolize such commerce or any part of it.”

In so concluding, the Harlan opinion emphasized that the Court’s prior decisions had established that “every contract, combination, or conspiracy in whatever form, of whatever nature, and whoever may be parties to it, [that] directly or necessarily operates in restraint of [interstate] . . . commerce” is illegal. Those prior decisions, said the Harlan opinion, also determined that the statute is not limited to unreasonable restraints of trade; that railroads operating in interstate trade are covered by the statute; and that every contract, combination or conspiracy that would extinguish such competition is illegal. (Emphasis added.)

Mr. Justice David Josiah Brewer concurred in the judgment affirming the lower court’s conclusion of antitrust violations, but disagreed with the rationale of the Harlan opinion because of fear that it “might tend to unsettle legitimate business enterprises, stifle or retard wholesome business activities, encourage improper disregard of reasonable contracts, and invite unnecessary litigation.” Instead, said Justice Brewer, the statute only covered “contracts which were in direct restraint of trade, unreasonable, and against public policy.” (Emphasis added.)

A dissenting opinion was filed by Mr. Justice Edward Douglas White and joined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Justices Rufus Wheeler Peckham and Oliver Wendell Holmes. This opinion concluded that the constitutional power of the federal government over interstate commerce did not extend to cover Northern Securities Company’s acquisition of the common stock of the two railroads.

Holmes also filed a separate dissenting opinion that was joined by the other three dissenters. Holmes asserted that the antitrust statute only outlawed combinations in restraint of trade, not of competition and that he saw no evidence of an attempt to monopolize some portion of U.S. trade or commerce. He also expressed relief that “only a minority of my brethren [the four Justices who subscribed to the opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan] adopt an interpretation of the [statute] . . . which . . . would make eternal the bellum omnium contra omnes [the war of all against all], and disintegrate society so far as it could into individual atoms . . . . [Such an interpretation] would be an attempt to reorganize society . . . . I believe Congress was not entrusted by the Constitution with the power to make . . . [such a law], and I am deeply persuaded that it has not tried.”

The high court’s action was a major victory for the administration and put the business community on notice that although this was a Republican administration, it would not give business free rein to operate without regard for the public welfare.

W. C. Brown’s Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Decision

Soon thereafter (May 24, 1904), W.C. Brown, my maternal great-great-uncle, in a speech to the Illinois Manufacturers Association that was covered by the New York Times commented on the Supreme Court’s decision. He said, “Propositions looking to the betterment of [railroad] service, having no other object, and impossible of any other result, have been misunderstood and have been fought inch by inch with a perseverance and zeal worthy a better cause.” As a result, Brown continued, it was “not impossible that the language of the majority of the Supreme Court [in the Northern Securities case] may . . . seem to reflect the clamor of the public, rather than the calm, judicial review of a great question.” [5]

Brown added that by “amendment or by judicial interpretation the question of reasonable restraint of commerce, as against any restraint whatever, must become part of the Sherman . . . [Act], and must be considered in its enforcement, or obstacles to commercial and industrial progress are likely to be interposed the gravity of which no one can foresee.” (Emphasis added.)

This commentary was preceded by Brown’s proclaiming that “[e]xcept for the birth of Christ, no event has meant so much to humanity as the U.S. Declaration of Independence;” that the recent U.S. war with Spain was “as holy, as high and unselfish in purpose as ever inspired a people;” and that the U.S. had the “satisfaction of having borne its share of the burden of carrying Christianity, civilization and education to those who sit in the darkness of ignorance and superstition.”

Brown also issued a stern warning that apparently emerged from his growing up in thinly populated Iowa and Illinois and that ignored his presumably elegant life in New York City (and earlier in Chicago). Brown said, “The most serious menace that clouds our national horizon today, ominous now and increasing in size and anger and portent, is the rapid growth of our cities . . . . No man can regard the growth of the great centers of population, with their sinister, dangerous, preponderantly influence in the politics of the State and Nation, without alarm.” He added, “The remedy for this evil and the safety of the Nation was building up, encouraging, and increasing our agricultural population.”

It should also be noted that at the time of this speech, Brown was a Vice President of the New York Central Railway, two of whose directors were defendants in the case: J. P. Morgan, a principal architect and beneficiary of the formation of the Northern Securities Company, and George F. Baker.

Subsequent Supreme Court’s Interpretations of the Sherman Act

Seven years later, in 1911, the approach to interpreting the Sherman act advocated by Justice Brewer and W. C. Brown was in fact adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911), the Court, 8 to 1, stated that only combinations and contracts unreasonably restraining interstate or foreign commerce were illegal under the Sherman Act. Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in this case and the author of the Court’s opinion in Northern Securities, said the Rule of Reason was a departure from previous Sherman Act case law, which purportedly had interpreted the language of the Sherman Act to hold that all contracts restraining trade were prohibited, regardless of whether the restraint actually produced ill effects.

Thereafter the Court unanimously reaffirmed the Rule of Reason in two cases: United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U.S. 106 (1911) (section 2 of the Sherman Act did not ban the mere possession of a monopoly but only the unreasonable acquisition and/or maintenance of monopoly); Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U.S. 231 (1918) (agreement between rivals limiting rivalry on price after an exchange was closed was reasonable and thus legal).

Subsequent Supreme Court cases established the concept of per se violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. These are “agreements, conspiracies or trusts in restraint of trade” that have been found to have a “pernicious effect on competition” or “lack any redeeming virtue” and include competitors’ agreements to fix their prices or divide markets between them and concerted refusals to deal.

For other alleged violations of section 1 of the Sherman Act, the courts engage in a “rule of reason” analysis to evaluate the intent and purpose of the conduct, the facts peculiar to the business and industry, the history of the conduct and its effect on competition. If the result of this judicial analysis is the conduct unreasonably restrains trade, it is a violation of section 1.

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[1] This post is based upon Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex at 59-65, 87-95, 219, 304-05, 313-16 (Random House; New York; 2001); MIller Center, Theodore Roosevelt: Domestic Affairs; and the other sources cited below.

[2] The James J. Hill House is a St. Paul mansion now open to the public and operated by the Minnesota Historical Society.

[3] J.P. Morgan and George F. Baker were also directors of the New York Central Railway, and I was a beneficiary of Baker’s wealth as a George F. Baker Scholar at Grinnell College, 1957-1961. Morgan’s Manhattan Library is now the Morgan Library & Museum that is open to the public.

[4] As of 1903 nine U.S. circuit courts had jurisdiction over trials of all civil suits initiated by the U. S. Government in different parts of the country, and the circuit court that covered the State of Minnesota (the Eighth Circuit) had four Circuit Judges (Henry C. Caldwell, Walter H. Sanborn, Amos M. Thayer and Willis Van Devanter). As of January 1, 1912, these courts were abolished, and the previously established U. S. district courts assumed jurisdiction over all civil and criminal cases in the federal courts.

[5] W.C. Brown, Address before the Meeting of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, Chicago, Illinois (May 23, 1904); Supreme Court Influenced, N.Y. Times (May 24, 1904).