, a person who bought
all the leather in Cordova was guilty of forestalling as well as the
person who bought all the sherry that was to be made in Spain in the
ensuing year--what we call the buying of futures. This is certainly
very unpopular, and we find most of our States legislating against it;
yet, of course, many economists argue that it is only by allowing
such contracts that the price of any article can be made stable and a
supply stored in years of plenty against years of famine. The first
historical example of forestalling and engrossing is to be found in
the book of Genesis. Joseph was not, I believe, a regrator, but he
was one of the most successful forestallers and engrossers that ever
existed, and made a most successful corner in corn in Egypt; and his
case is cited as a precedent in the Great Case of Monopolies above
mentioned. James C. Carter tells us[1] that all these laws are
contrary to modern principles and were repealed a century ago. I
cannot find that such is the case. On the contrary, they were made
perpetual in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth, and we find perfectly
_modern_ trust legislation as early as Edward I, in 1285. In 1892 I
find legislation already in nineteen States and Territories; North
Dakota, indeed, having already a constitutional provision. Three
States at least, Kansas, Michigan, and Nebraska, seem to have been
before the Federal Act, their laws dating from 1889; while several
States have statutes in 1890, the year in which the Sherman Act was
enacted. There has hardly a year passed since without a good many
statutes aimed against trusts, though they have shown a tendency
to decrease of late years, and it is especially noticeable that
anti-trust legislation is apt to cease entirely in the years following
a panic, as if legislatures had learned the lesson that too much
interference is destructive of business prosperity; I find that by
1908 just about half the States had embodied a prohibition of trusts
in their organic law.[2]

[Footnote 1: "Law, Its Origin, History, and Function," N.Y., 1907.]

[Footnote 2: These provisions will be found digested in the writer's
"Federal and State Constitutions," pp. 339-341.]

One of the principal earlier objects of the trust was to evade the
corporation law. To-day they specially aim at becoming a legal
corporation. In like manner their earliest object and desire was to
escape all Federal supervision and interference by legislation or
other