The Idaho Springs Siftings News

BUCHTEL ON TAFT'S FAMOUS OPINION.

Making the Sherman Anti-Trust Law Effective.

By Gov. Henry A. Buchtel in Clay's Review.

It is sometimes said by our Democratic friends that Judge Taft has not in him the elements of a reformer. The fact is that he has never been anything else but a reformer, that is, a man working on progressive lines for the betterment of social and political conditions in our country. An illustration of it is seen in a notable decision which he handed down while presiding over the Sixth Judicial Circuit, which court was recognized as the most distinguished subordinate court in the United States during his incumbency.

For eight years after its passage, the Sherman anti-trust law was a dead letter. The Attorney General of the United States had announced that the law was inadequate and he had given up all effort to enforce it. After eight years a certain powerful combination was arraigned before Judge Taft. The case was that of the United States against the Addyston Pipe & Steel Company. This company collected tax from every city in the nation that needed to lay a foot of cast iron pipe.

After the hearing, Judge Taft gave out a month to the writing of his decision. It was really a treatise on that entire branch of the law in all its phases and is the ablest work extant on that subject today. He began with the old common law on contracts and followed it through each stage of growth and development to the last law regarding contracts in restraint of trade. He rewrote his opinion ten times.

The defendants were found guilty and fined. Of course the defendants appealed, but the Supreme Court copied Judge Taft's decision in full and handed that decision down as the decision of the Supreme Court. That decision is now the precedent in all the courts of the land.

It was Judge Taft, therefore, who made a law out of the Sherman anti-trust act, which was counted a dead letter during eight years of Democratic rule.