plain misconception of both the letter and spirit of the Anti-trust Act. We say of the letter, because while seeking by a narrow rule of the letter to include things which it is deemed would otherwise be excluded, the contention really destroys the great purpose of the act, since it renders it impossible to apply the law to a multitude of wrongful acts, which would come within the scope of its remedial purposes by resort to a reasonable construction, although they would not be within its reach by a too narrow and unreasonable adherence to the strict letter. This must be the case unless it be possible in reason to say that for the purpose of including one class of acts which would not otherwise be embraced a literal construction although in conflict with reason must be applied and for the purpose of including other acts which would not otherwise be embraced a reasonable construction must be resorted to. That is to say two conflicting rules of construction must at one and the same time be applied and adhered to.

The obscurity and resulting uncertainty however, is now but an abstraction because it has been removed by the consideration which we have given quite recently to the construction of the Anti-trust Act in the Standard Oil Case. In that case it was held, without departing from any previous decision of the court that as the statute had not defined the words restraint of trade, it became necessary to construe those words, a duty which could only be discharged by a resort to reason. We say the doctrine thus stated was in accord with all the previous decisions of this court, despite the fact that the contrary view was sometimes erroneously attributed to some of the expressions used in two prior decisions (the Trans-Missouri Freight Association and Joint Traffic cases, 166 U. S. 290 and 171 U. S. 505.) That such view was a mistaken one was fully pointed out in the Standard Oil Case and is additionally shown by a passage in the opinion in the Joint Traffic Case as follows (171 U. S. 568): "The act of Congress must have a reasonable construction, or else there would scarcely be an agreement or contract among business men that could not be said to have, indirectly or remotely, some bearing on interstate commerce, and possibly to restrain it." Applying the rule of reason to the construction of the statute, it was held in the Standard Oil Case that as the words "restraint of trade at common law and in the law of this country at the time of the adoption of the Anti-trust Act only embraced acts or contracts or agreements or combinations which operated to the prejudice of the public interests by unduly restricting compe

tition or unduly obstructing the due course of trade or which, either because of their inherent nature or effect or because of the evident purpose of the acts, etc., injuriously restrained trade, that the words as used in the statute were designed to have and did have but a like significance. It was therefore pointed out that the statute did not forbid or restrain the power to make normal and usual contracts to further trade by resorting to all normal methods, whether by agreement or otherwise, to accomplish such purpose. In other words, it was held, not that acts which the statute prohibited could be removed from the control of its prohibitions by a finding that they were reasonable, but that the duty to interpret which inevitably arose from the general character of the term restraint of trade required that the words restraint of trade should be given a meaning which would not destroy the individual right to contract and render difficult if not impossible any movement of trade in the channels of interstate commerce-the free movement of which it was the purpose of the statute to protect. The soundness of the rule that the statute should receive a reasonable construction, after further mature deliberation, we see no reason to doubt. Indeed, the necessity for not departing in this case from the standard of the rule of reason which is universal in its application is so plainly required in order to give effect to the remedial purposes which the act under consideration contemplates, and to prevent that act from destroying all liberty of contract and all substantial right to trade, and thus causing the act to be at war with itself by annihilating the fundamental right of freedom to trade which, on the very face of the act, it was enacted to preserve, is illustrated by the record before us. In truth, the plain demonstration which this record gives of the injury which would arise from and the promotion of the wrongs which the statute was intended to guard against which would result from giving to the statute a narrow, unreasoning and unheard of construction, as illustrated by the record before us, if possible serves to strengthen our conviction as to the correctness of the rule of construction, the rule of reason, which was applied in the Standard Oil Case, the application of which rule to the statute we now, in the most unequivocal terms, reëxpress and re-affirm.

Coming then to apply to the case before us the act as interpreted in the Standard Oil and previous cases, all the difficulties suggested by the mere form in which the assailed transactions are clothed become of no moment. This follows because although it was held

in the Standard Oil Case that, giving to the statute a reasonable construction, the words "restraint of trade" did not embrace all those normal and usual contracts essential to individual freedom and the right to make which were necessary in order that the course of trade might be free, yet, as a result of the reasonable construction which was affixed to the statute, it was pointed out that the generic designation of the first and second sections of the law, when taken together, embraced every conceivable act which could possibly come within the spirit or purpose of the prohibitions of the law, without regard to the garb in which such acts were clothed. That is to say, it was held that in view of the general language of the statute and the public policy which it manifested, there was no possibility of frustrating that policy by resorting to any disguise or subterfuge of form, since resort to reason rendered it impossible to escape by any indirection the prohibitions of the statute.

Considering then the undisputed facts which we have previously stated, it remains only to determine whether they establish that the acts, contracts, agreements, combinations, etc., which were assailed were of such an unusual and wrongful character as to bring them within the prohibitions of the law. That they were, in our opinion, so overwhelmingly results from the undisputed facts that it seems only necessary to refer to the facts as we have stated them to demonstrate the correctness of this conclusion. Indeed, the history of the combination is so replete with the doing of acts which it was the obvious purpose of the statute to forbid, so demonstrative of the existence from the beginning of a purpose to acquire dominion and control of the tobacco trade, not by the mere exertion of the ordinary right to contract and to trade, but by methods devised in order to monopolize the trade by driving competitors out of business, which were ruthlessly carried out upon the assumption that to work upon the fears or play upon the cupidity of competitors would make success possible. We say these conclusions are inevitable, not because of the vast amount of property aggregated by the combination, not because alone of the many corporations which the proof shows were united by resort to one device or another. Again, not alone because of the dominion and control over the tobacco trade which actually exists, but because we think the conclusion of wrongful purpose and illegal combination is overwhelmingly established by the following considerations: a. By the fact that the very first organization or combination was impelled by a previously existing fierce trade war, evidently in

spired by one or more of the minds which brought about and became parties to that combination. b. Because, immediately after that combination and the increase of capital which followed, the acts which ensued justify the inference that the intention existed to use the power of the combination as a vantage ground to further monopolize the trade in tobacco by means of trade conflicts designed to injure others, either by driving competitors out of the business or compelling them to become parties to a combination-a purpose whose execution was illustrated by the plug war which ensued and its results, by the snuff war which followed and its results, and by the conflict which immediately followed the entry of the combination in England and the division of the world's business by the two foreign contracts which ensued. c. By the ever-present manifestation which is exhibited of a conscious wrongdoing by the form in which the various transactions were embodied from the beginning, ever changing but ever in substance the same. Now the organization of a new company, now the control exerted by the taking of stock in one or another or in several, so as to obscure the result actually attained, nevertheless uniform, in their manifestations of the purpose to restrain others and to monopolize and retain power in the hands of the few who, it would seem, from the beginning contemplated the mastery of the trade which practically followed. d. By the gradual absorption of control over all the elements essential to the successful manufacture of tobacco products, and placing such control in the hands of seemingly independent corporations serving as perpetual barriers to the entry of others into the tobacco trade. e. By persistent expenditure of millions upon millions of dollars in buying out plants, not for the purpose of utilizing them, but in order to close them up and render them useless for the purposes of trade. f. By the constantly recurring stipulations, whose legality, isolatedly viewed, we are not considering, by which numbers of persons, whether manufacturers, stockholders or employées, were required to bind themselves, generally for long periods, not to compete in the future. Indeed, when the results of the undisputed proof which we have stated are fully apprehended, and the wrongful acts which they exhibit are considered, there comes inevitably to the mind the conviction that it was the danger which it was deemed would arise to individual liberty and the public well-being from acts like those which this record exhibits, which led the legislative mind to conceive and to enact the Anti-trust Act, considerations which also

serve to clearly demonstrate that the combination here assailed is within the law as to leave no doubt that it is our plain duty to apply its prohibitions.

In stating summarily, as we have done, the conclusions which, in our opinion, are plainly deducible from the undisputed facts, we have not paused to give the reasons why we consider, after great consideration, that the elaborate arguments advanced to give a different complexion to the case are wholly devoid of merit. We do not, for the sake of brevity, moreover, stop to examine and discuss the various propositions urged in the argument at bar for the purpose of demonstrating that the subject-matter of the combination which we find to exist and the combination itself are not within the scope of the Anti-trust Act because when rightly considered they are merely matters of intrastate commerce and therefore subject alone to state control. We have done this because the want of merit in all the arguments advanced on such subjects is so completely established by the prior decisions of this court, as pointed out in the Standard Oil Case, as not to require restatement.

Leading as this does to the conclusion that the assailed combination in all its aspects-that is to say, whether it be looked at from the point of view of stock ownership or from the standpoint of the principal corporation and the accessory or subsidiary corporations viewed independently, including the foreign corporations in so far as by the contracts made by them they became coöperators in the combination-comes within the prohibitions of the first and second sections of the Anti-trust Act, it remains only finally to consider the remedy which it is our duty to apply to the situation thus found to exist.

The remedy.

Our conclusion being that the combination as a whole, involving all its coöperating or associated parts, in whatever form clothed, constitutes a restraint of trade within the first section, and an attempt to monopolize or a monopolization within the second section of the Anti-trust Act, it follows that the relief which we are to afford must be wider than that awarded by the lower court, since that court merely decided that certain of the corporate defendants constituted combinations in violation of the first section of the act, because of the fact that they were formed by the union of previously competing concerns and that the other defendants not dismissed from the action were parties to such combinations or promoted their purposes. We hence, in determining the relief proper to be