ees, receiving in return
therefor trust certificates, with a claim to the net earnings of the
corporation, but without real voting power; and there are cases in
which such trusts were sought to be held invalid and enjoined in
equity, sometimes with and sometimes without success.

Before going into the details of anti-trust legislation, it would be
well to sketch its history on the broadest possible lines. Legislation
began first in the States some years before the Federal Anti-trust
Law, or Sherman Act, first enacted in 1890. These earlier statutes,
including the Sherman Act itself, made illegal all contracts or
combinations between persons or corporations in restraint of trade;
and their direct result was to compel the formation of the gigantic
modern trust as we now understand it. Had the Sherman Act, instead of
being called "An Act to Protect Trade and Commerce Against Unlawful
Restraints and Monopolies," been entitled "An Act to Compel the
Formation of Large Trusts by all Persons Engaged in Similar Lines of
Business," it would have been far more correctly described in its
title. For whereas, before this act persons or corporations could make
contracts or arrangements among themselves which were good and valid
working agreements unless so clearly monopolistic as to be held
unreasonable restraint of trade at the common law (which, indeed,
so far as I know, was never done in any American court), after
the Sherman Act was passed all such contracts, combinations, or
arrangements, even when reasonable and proper, were made illegal and
criminal. The only escape, therefore, was to bring all such persons
and corporations in the same trade together in one corporation, and
this is precisely what we now term a trust. Before 1890, in other
words, a trust was really an agreement, a combination of individuals
or corporations usually resting upon an actual deed of trust under
which the constituent parties surrendered their property or the
control of their property to a central board of trustees; since 1890
this kind of trust has practically disappeared and been replaced by
the single large corporation, either a holding company which holds
the stock of all constituent companies, or under still more modern
practice, because more likely to stand the scrutiny of the courts,
a huge corporation, with a charter given by the liberal laws of New
Jersey, West Virginia, or other State, which actually holds, directly,
all the properties and b