e same year by a law creating a Federal Trade Commission
empowered to inquire into the methods of corporations and lodge
complaints against concerns "using any unfair method of competition." In
only one respect was the severity of the Democratic policy relaxed. An
act of 1918 provided that the Sherman law should not apply to companies
engaged in export trade, the purpose being to encourage large
corporations to enter foreign commerce.

The effect of this whole body of anti-trust legislation, in spite of
much labor on it, remained problematical. Very few combinations were
dissolved as a result of it. Startling investigations were made into
alleged abuses on the part of trusts; but it could hardly be said that
huge business concerns had lost any of their predominance in American
industry.

=Labor Legislation.=--By no mere coincidence, the Clayton Anti-trust law
of 1914 made many concessions to organized labor. It declared that "the
labor of a human being is not a commodity or an article of commerce,"
and it exempted unions from prosecution as "combinations in restraint of
trade." It likewise defined and limited the uses which the federal
courts might make of injunctions in labor disputes and guaranteed trial
by jury to those guilty of disobedience (see p. 581).

The Clayton law was followed the next year by the Seamen's Act giving
greater liberty of contract to American sailors and requiring an
improvement of living conditions on shipboard. This was such a drastic
law that shipowners declared themselves unable to meet foreign
competition under its terms, owing to the low labor standards of other
countries.

Still more extraordinary than the Seamen's Act was the Adamson law of
1916 fixing a standard eight-hour work-day for trainmen on railroads--a
measure wrung from Congress under a threat of a great strike by the four
Railway Brotherhoods. This act, viewed by union leaders as a triumph,
called forth a bitter denunciation of "trade union domination," but it
was easier to criticize than to find another solution of the problem.

Three other laws enacted during President Wilson's administration were
popular in the labor world. One of them provided compensation for
federal employees injured in the discharge of their duties. Another
prohibited the labor of children under a certain age in the industries
of the nation. A third prescribed for coal miners in Alaska an
eight-hour day and modern safeguards for life and health. T