ITEMS OF INTEREST June 22, 1912 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Arbuckle Brothers have written a letter to Senator O'Gorman asking him to help pass a Senate bill placing sugar on the free list and saying that the present tariff costs the people of the United States between one hundred and one hundred and fifty million dollars a year, while it enriches the Havemeyers, the Mormon church, the American Sugar Refining Company, and speculators in the common stock of the American Beet Sugar Company. Arbuckle Brothers operate a cane sugar refinery in Brooklyn with a capacity of seven thousand barrels of refind sugar a day. They say that the lower prices which free raw sugar would entail would increase consumption and more than offset any importation of refined sugar; that the cost of canned goods would be reduced and that tons of fruit rot every year which, in farm houses, would be preserved if the price of sugar were lowered by free raw sugar." They charge that the price of beet sugar in the West, controlled by the American Sugar Refining Company, is kept artificially high on a par with imported sugar protected by the tariff, and they assert that the argument that a high tariff encourages domestic industry is fallacious.

For the purpose of destroying the alleged substantial monopoly of the so-called aluminum trust, an agreed decree was entered in the United States district court at Pittsburgh, Pa., last week, against the Aluminum Company of America. Following closely the prayer of the federal government in its civil antitrust suit filed a week ago, charging the corporation with monopolizing the industry, the decree abrogates alleged unlawful contracts and restrains the defendant company from negotiating similar pacts or pursuing unfair methods toward competitors. The decree was agreed to by the Aluminum Company as a result of protracted negotiations with Attorney-General Wickersham prior to the filing of the suit. The company is forbidden to participate in any combination or agreement to control the output or prices of aluminum. It is enjoined from combining, by stock ownership or otherwise, with other manufacturers for this purpose. The decree places a long list of specified unfair methods to competitors under the ban of the court.

With the declaration that the commerce court was not to substitute itself for the interstate commerce commission, the supreme court of the United States, in decision after decision last week, reversed the commerce court and upheld the commission. The principal decisions were announced by Chief Justice White and concurred in by the entire court. Jurisdiction of the commerce court over complaints of shippers, denied by the commerce commission, as well as over those recognized by the commission through affirmative orders for relief, was denied by the supreme court.

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