This litigation dragged along until December 23, 1908, when the Supreme Court of Missouri, in an opinion written by Judge Woodson, and concurred in by all seven judges barred the Standard and Republic companies from Missouri "for all time," and ordered the Waters-Pierce Company, which was a Missouri corporation dissolved on or before January 15, 1909, unless by that date it presented satisfactory evidence that it intended to operate as an independent concern. In addition each of the companies was fined $50,000, and Judge Lamb in a separate opinion stated that the Waters-Pierce Company should be fined $1,000,000. Judge Graves, however, suggested that the Waters-Pierce Company should not be dissolved because the minority stockholders in it could not help themselves. He also urged the imposition of heavier fines on the Standard and Republic companies.

The Standard Oil Company of Indiana, on January 1, 1909, asked the Supreme Court of Missouri for a rehearing of the ouster action, and on February 1, 1909, filed this petition:

This respondent is willing to place itself and its business under the vigilant eye of the State and subject to the supervision and control of the court, if it will aid in the solution of a difficult situation. If such arrangement be acceptable, the owners of the majority stock of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company will place that stock in the same situation.

It is, therefore, proposed that in lieu of the judgment of ouster against the Indiana Company, that:

A new Missouri corporation be formed which shall take over all the Missouri property of the Indiana company, and succeed to all its business in this State. All the stock of the new company, less enough to qualify Directors, shall be issued to, and for four years stand in the names of two persons as trustees; one selected by the State and the other by the Indiana company, both selections to be approved by this court.

Those Trustees shall act as officers of this court and, subject to its control and direction, shall so vote the stock, and keep vigilant supervision over the affairs of the company so as to see that it conducts them in a way fair, just, lawful, and proper treatment is accorded to the public as well as to the property, company, and its real owners. If ever, as to any action to this end taken or pursued, the said Trustees cannot agree, the controversy shall be submitted to the Judges of this court, or some one named by

them as an arbitrator, the decision of the Judges or their arbitrator to be final.

This respondent would prefer not to form a new company. It would prefer to remain in the State and have appointed such Trustees, giving them by irrevocable power of attorney full power of supervision over the conduct of its business in Missouri, as that outlined with respect to a new company.

The stock of the Waters-Pierce Company, owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, shall be sold and transferred to and become the property of the Missouri company thus formed; or, in lieu thereof, it shall be transferred to and held by said Trustees for the same period.

The Supreme Court of the United States on April 1, 1912, sustained the Missouri court's action in ousting the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, and the Republic Oil Company of New York, and approved of the fines.

An ouster decree of the Supreme Court of Tennessee against the Standard Oil Company of Kentucky was affirmed by the Federal Supreme Court on May 2, 1910. The proceedings were begun in 1907.

The Standard Oil Company of Kentucky had oil stored in tanks in Tennessee, from which it procured a supply to serve merchants throughout various sections of the State. The Evansville Oil Company of Evansville, Ind., sent a salesman to Gallatin to sell oil. He obtained a number of orders, whereupon the agent of the Standard Oil offered to give the merchants ten gallons of oil per barrel to countermand their purchase orders with the Evansville Oil Company. Four of them accepted.

The Standard Oil Company of Kentucky and two of its agents were indicted under the State Anti-Trust act. One of the agents was convicted, but the company escaped punishment on the ground that it could not be fined under the act, but could only be ousted. Ouster proceedings were then begun against it, the charges being based on the Gallatin transaction. The State courts issued an ousting decree from which an appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States.

This appeal was based on the argument that the alleged criminal agreement, if it were an offence, was an offence against the Federal law, the Sherman anti-trust law, and not an offence against the laws of Tennessee; that the statute was unconstitutional, and because the statute of limitation was effective.

E. T. Young, as Attorney-General of the State of Minnesota brought suit against the Standard Oil Company to revoke its license to do business in Minnesota on the ground that the

company was guilty of unfair competition by charging lower prices at competitive points for the purpose of destroying the business of competing companies. The Standard Oil Company demurred on the ground that the law was invalid and unconstitutional, being class legislation, and this demurrer was sustained by Judge George L. Bunn of the Ramsey County District Court, before whom the case was first tried.

The State Supreme Court on May 20, 1910, declared valid the Minnesota law forbidding discrimination in charges for commodities sold throughout the State, and reversed the order of Judge Bunn and remanded the case for a new trial.

The State of North Carolina in December, 1910, prosecuted the Standard Oil Company for alleged violation of the anti-trust law. In that proceeding the Standard Oil Company was charged with lowering the price of illuminating oil at Raleigh to 714 cents a gallon while maintaining the price of 112 to 121⁄2 cents a gallon in other towns in North Carolina, where it had no competition.

Tax Assessor Henry Hinse of Bayonne, N. J., in his report made to the County Board of Equalization of Taxes in 1909, increased the valuation of the Standard Oil property from $7,600,000 to $13,000,000. The oil company without delay entered a protest against the increase of valuation of the property at Constable Hook. There was a reduction of the assessment and the Standard Oil Company's taxes in 1911 amounted to but $7,842.

THE TOBACCO MONOPOLY

The Government's petition against The American Tobacco Company, and its sixty-seven subsidiary corporations, and a number of individual defendants, was filed in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, on July 10, 1907. The bill drafted on the lines of the complaint against the Standard Oil Monopoly, alleged that The American Tobacco Company, and the other defendants were maintaining a combination in restraint of

interstate trade and foreign commerce in the manufacture and sale of tobacco.

The Government's petition among other things, asked:

That the court adjudge the American Tobacco Company, the American Snuff Company, the American Cigar Company, the American Stogie Company, the MacAndrews & Forbes Company, and the Conley Foil Company, each a combination in restraint of inter-State and foreign trade and commerce; and decree that each one of them be restrained from engaging in inter-State or foreign commerce, or if the court should be of opinion that the public interests will be better subserved thereby, that receivers be appointed to take possession of all the property, assets, business, and affairs of said defendants and wind up the same, and otherwise take such course in regard thereto as will bring about conditions in trade and commerce among the States and with foreign nations in harmony with the law.

The preliminary formalities having been complied with and all the defendants having put in answers denying the violations alleged in the petition, John A. Shields was appointed special examiner to take the testimony. This work which commenced in November, 1907, was not completed until March 22, 1908, when the record in the case which embraced 4,000 typewritten pages was submitted to Judge E. Henry Lacombe of the United States Circuit Court.

At the argument before Judges Lacombe, Coxe, Noyes and Ward, sitting in the United States Circuit Court which began on May 19, 1908, the Government was represented by Special United States Attorneys-General James C. McReynolds and E. P. Grosvenor. The American Tobacco Company had as its counsel former United States Circuit Judge William J. Wallace, W. W. Fuller, DeLancey Nicoll and Junius Parker. The Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britian and Ireland, one of the defendants, was represented by former Judge William B. Hornblower, W. W. Miller and John Pickrel of Richmond, Va.; Joseph Hood, a solicitor, of London, was present as counsel of the BritishAmerican Company, and Solomon M. Stroock appeared for the United Cigar Stores Company.

Opening the argument Mr. McReynolds stated that the provisions of both the Sherman and Wilson acts applied to the case on trial. He

charged that the American Tobacco Company and its allied corporations had conspired and operated in restraint of trade; that it formed a combine which was both unlawful and criminal, and that it was an unlawful combination even before the passage of the amended anti-trust law as it now stands. He further declared that the combination violated both the Wilson and Sherman acts in that it not only tended to monopolize trade in its particular line but that it interfered with the free operation of commerce. He cited several cases in support of his contentions and also various decisions of the United States Supreme Court. And if the laws, he said, that had been passed for the purpose could confer the power to regulate commerce they could and did confer the power to lay down rules by which commerce could be regulated.

Concluding his argument on the law principles involved Mr. McReynolds reviewed the story of the trust's gradual encroachments toward monopolizing the trade, both output and sale, in pipe tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, cheroots, snuff, &c. He submitted to the Court as a Government exhibit a complete table showing the increase in percentage since 1890, the year of the trust organization, of the various forms of tobacco product. He then told of the organization of the American Snuff Company, the stock of which was owned by the American Tobacco Company, and also the progress in the manufacture and sale of cigars not only in this country but in Cuba, Porto Rico and elsewhere in the West Indies. He also described how the alliance between the Imperial Tobacco Company and the British-American Company was consummated in England.

In his summing up, Special Government Prosecutor McReynolds declared that:

The independent retailers could not compete with a concern which was backed by all the capital of the American Tobacco Company. This company, he said, had tried to conceal its connection with the United Cigar Stores Company. He read a letter written to one Eastabrook, in Boston, which assured Eastabrook that the American Tobacco Company had no connection with the United Cigar Stores Company, which, Mr. McReynolds said, displayed and pushed the goods made by the American Tobacco Company. He also read another letter written by one of the subsidiaries of the American company to a London agent, telling the latter to be careful not to expose the connection between the two.

Mr. McReynolds went on to explain the absence of certain testimony in the record.

If I should attempt to prove here all the things that these people have done in the past few years it would make a record that would take seventeen or eighteen years to go through. Many of the independent manufacturers were not called. I questioned the right of bringing here a man who was fighting hard for his commercial life, and of forcing him to reveal his