FEDERAL ANTI-TRUST LAW AND THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT

Authors

Howard E. Wahrenbrock, University of Michigan Law School; Member of the bars of Illinois and the United States Supreme Court

Abstract

The economic struggle for existence - the competitive system - which has been principally depended upon to equate the production and consumption of economic goods, is not self-sustaining. Extreme forms of that struggle - engrossing, forestalling, regrating, contracts in restraint of trade, monopoly, unfair competition, to mention some forms at the higher stages of legal development - have had to be restrained by law. Their restriction has been called for to protect the poor and economically weak from oppression by the rich and economically powerful; under a system of complete laissez faire, competition would bring about the elimination of the weaker competitors until eventually a single victor remained in the undisputed possession of the field and able to exact monopoly prices at the expense of consumers who wanted or needed his product. Therefore the effort has been made to use competition and, while allowing it to go far enough to equate production and consumption and bring about the most effective utilization of economic resources and energies for the satisfaction of the maximum of human wants, to try at the same time to arrest the competitive process before it reaches the stage where it will destroy itself.

Recommended Citation

Howard E. Wahrenbrock, FEDERAL ANTI-TRUST LAW AND THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT, 31 Mich. L. Rev. 1009 (1933).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol31/iss8/2