ossing
were things early recognized as criminal in England, and these
statutes embody much of what is sound in the present legislation
against trusts.

Forestalling was very apt to be done in a _staple_, that is, in the
town which was specially devoted to that article of trade; so that
the laws of forestalling got very much mixed up with the laws of the
staple; but forestalling would equally mean going into any market and
buying up all the production. If the article was produced abroad, the
forestaller would try to buy up the entire importation.

(1352) We now find another statute; it applies to wines and liquors
"and all other wares that come to the good towns of England," and the
penalty imposed by that law was that the forestaller must forfeit the
surplus over cost to the crown and be imprisoned two years. We are
still enforcing remedies of that kind in our anti-trust laws, only
instead of having him forfeit the surplus to the crown we usually have
him pay damages, sometimes treble damages to the persons injured. In
the Beef Trust case, the parties were duly convicted, and instead of
being imprisoned, they were fined $25,000. In other words, we still
have not the courage to go to the length that our ancestors did in
enforcing the penalties of these unlawful combinations. Of course it
is a much more difficult thing to have forestalling and engrossing
laws against foreign importations than against home productions; and
so to-day we have not tried, except by a tariff, forestalling laws
against foreign importations, but we have attempted to apply them very
much as to home productions. In England, however, the statute at that
time said that a person who bought up all the foreign product must
forfeit all the profits to the state. Now this is nothing but the
"Iowa idea" of two years ago. It was suggested very urgently by
Governor Cummins that there should be a law providing that where a
trust got complete control of a certain industry in this country its
surplus profit should be forfeited either indirectly by the taking
off of the tariff, or by way of a franchise tax, that is, of a United
States tax upon its franchises, which could be increased in such a way
as to tax it out of existence if it persisted. The latter remedy is at
the root of President Taft's new corporation tax, but Congress has not
yet applied the former, although it was very seriously advocated that
there should be statutes which should indirectly forfeit