For something over two decades we have had on the statute books of this country a law which forbade all combinations in restraint of interstate commerce. During the greater portion of this period, too, most of the states have had laws which distinctly forbade the formation of trusts and monopolies. Taken together, this legislation, not to mention the common law, would appear to cover fairly well the possible field of trust activity. What has been the result ? Occasionally one of these combinations has been driven from a state or obliged to dissolve, but sooner or later there was usually discovered an organization which, however different in outward appearance, still behaved in a manner most suspiciously like the old banished trust. In fact, not only were the old trusts not effectually broken up after the passage of this legislation, but new trusts were formed more rapidly than ever before. Thus we may fairly say that, up to last year, the trusts, after twenty years of laws which were supposed to annihilate them, had become more numerous, stronger, and more firmly intrenched than ever before. Last year, among others, two of the most prominent of these trusts were declared illegal and they are now being broken up into parts. Yet there are many who, in view both of past experience, and of the apparent opinion of the business world so far as reflected in the stock market quotations for securities of these trusts, are pessimistic enough to assert that this time too we shall obtain only another change of form. Moreover, there are still others who declare that even if the purpose of the law be at last attained, nevertheless the whole policy of annihilation which underlies our laws is wrong and should be reversed. In view of these circumstances is it not time