ives in price cutting,
or taking into consideration in any way what the court called "some
imaginary normal standard of freights and prices." And of this case
the lawyer is forced to say: "Undoubtedly the excellent opinion just
quoted represents the law everywhere," even tho there are other cases
difficult to harmonize with it.[8]

To the economist, not bound in like manner by legal precedent, such
a verdict was from the first impossible. The court appears to have
considered that only the rights of the private litigants, the tramp
steamship owners, were involved, not the rights and interests of the
shipping public; it considered the immediate and not the ultimate
effects of the "smashing" of rates; it allowed itself to be deceived
by the appearance of acts that in outer form were competition,
but that had as their purpose the strengthening and maintenance of
monopoly. These acts are forms of the "unfair" practices that will be
mentioned later.[9]

Sec. 7. #Increasing regard for results of competition.# Despite the
binding precedents, the courts in some later decisions have refused
to look upon competition as good regardless of its motives and of its
consequences. In a federal case[10] the judge, in a brief and acute
dictum, recognized the evil of a rate war that would result from
threats of definite cuts. They impair "the usefulness of the railroads
themselves, and cause great public and private loss." The court's
opinion was no doubt largely influenced by the fact that railroad
rates were already subject to regulation: "Every precaution has been
taken by state legislatures and by the congress to keep them just and
reasonable,--just and reasonable for the public and for the carriers."

In a state case[11] the facts were that a man of wealth started a
barber shop and employed a barber to injure the plaintiff and drive
him out of business. The court recognized that while, as a general
proposition, "competition in trade and business is desirable," it
may in certain cases result in "grievous and manifold wrongs to
individuals"; and in this case the "malevolent" man of wealth was
declared to be "guilty of a wanton wrong and an actionable tort."
The economists can but pronounce this judgment admirable so far as it
goes, but it is remarkably confined to a consideration of the private
legal rights of the injured competitor, and gives hardly a hint of
a higher criterion for judging competitive acts, that of the general
wel