Moreover, where the combination has really been guilty of
misconduct the law serves a useful purpose, and in such cases as those
of the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, if effectively enforced, the law
confers a real and great good.
Suits were brought against the most powerful corporations in the land,
which we were convinced had clearly and beyond question violated the
Anti-Trust Law. These suits were brought with great care, and only where
we felt so sure of our facts that we could be fairly certain that
there was a likelihood of success. As a matter of fact, in most of the
important suits we were successful. It was imperative that these suits
should be brought, and very real good was achieved by bringing them, for
it was only these suits that made the great masters of corporate capital
in America fully realize that they were the servants and not the masters
of the people, that they were subject to the law, and that they would
not be permitted to be a law unto themselves; and the corporations
against which we proceeded had sinned, not merely by being big (which
we did not regard as in itself a sin), but by being guilty of unfair
practices towards their competitors, and by procuring fair advantages
from the railways.
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