, to use these concessions not to bleed them, but for
their benefit."

"In other words, the Consolidated Companies is a good trust, and the
others are bad trusts?"

"Exactly."

"The Sherman Act, if I read it correctly, makes no distinction."

"But the Government does."

"And to that extent unlawfully discriminates," the Senator said,
emphatically.

"What would be the effect upon the country if the Sherman Act were
enforced literally?" Gorham asked.

"That is not for me to say."

"Perhaps the Attorney-General will give us his opinion," Gorham
persisted.

The Attorney-General had been listening to the discussion with much
interest.

"There can be but one answer to that question," he replied; "it would
produce an industrial reign of terror, and yet I am frank to say that,
from a legal standpoint, I believe Senator Hunt is correct in his
statement that the Government unlawfully discriminates in drawing any
distinction between good and bad trusts; but let me say further, that it
is my definite opinion that the Sherman Act, as it now stands, is a
menace to the country. That Act, literally interpreted, would break up
every trust into smaller corporations. It is based on a hasty inference
that great consolidations are of necessity monopolies. Even if we
disintegrated a great corporation like the Consolidated Companies, for
instance, into a large number of smaller corporations, we should not
have solved the problem. There would always be methods by which a common
understanding could be reached, and, in the disintegration, producing
concerns would lose much of the efficiency in serving the public which
has already been demonstrated by the Consolidated Companies. I have
answered your question frankly, giving you my opinion from a legal and
also from a personal standpoint."

"Was there not a time," Kenmore asked, "when the public in England was
as much afraid of the formation of business partnerships as our public
has been afraid of trusts?"

"Yes," the Attorney-General replied; "our own trust legislation is
nothing more than a modern repetition of certain laws which centuries
ago were in force in England, and were designed to prevent the formation
of co-partnerships in business."

"Yet partnerships were formed in spite of the law, were they not?"
insisted Kenmore, "and it was discovered that the prices of goods did
not go up."

"We are digressing," the senator from New York interrupted. "As I
understand it, we