Brief for the United States (1914)

wIk^; her il has since (•lianL;c(l. Tlic intent of a statute at its passage must eontinno. Ft does not automat ically adjust itself to tlie variations of the puhlie pulse, and a Judicial adjustment would ])e an usurpati(Ui. In our Xatioiial Govermneiit such thini^s are for Congress alone. The defendants claimed that the ohject of the organization was to build u]) the foreign trade. The court replied: Tt would not b(^ lawful to restrain the interstate trad(^ in onh^r to build up the foreign trade. H'he fact that the General Film Co. had authority under its charier to acquire other concerns constitutes no defense to a charge of ^iolating the Sherman Act. In Shawnee Compress Co. v. Anderson (209 U. S., 423), the Supreme Court held a certain lease valid so far as the mere power to execute it was concerned, but that it became invalid when it tended directly and in a substantial manner to suppress competition under the common law, the Sherman antitrust law and the laws of Oklahoma. In the decision in the Tobacco case, ^Ir. Chief Justice White recognized the fact that the legality of the corporate f(U'm of combinaticm had not been previously passed upon by the coui-t, and that therefore it became necessary for it to make a more comprehensive a])plication i^f the statute in the Tohdcca case, if it were to grant an effective remedy, than it had done in any previous case.