Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1902 — MINNESOTA BARRED OUT. [ARTICLE]

MINNESOTA BARRED OUT.

Bupreme Court Gives Decision Which Is a Victory for the Merger. The Supreme Court has refused to allow the State of Minnesota to file a bill of complaint against the Northern Securities Company. The court is of the opinion that it has not original jurisdiction. The State must begin its suit in the lower courts. It follows, therefore, that there is not to he a speedy determination of the question which the State of Minnesota is anxious to have passed on. That question is whether the laws of the State forbidding the consolidation of competing roads can be practically set at naught through the machinery of a corporation organized under the laws of another State. The question which the Attorney General of the United States will raise in the suit soon to he instituted by him is whether the Northern Securities Company does not come under that provision of the antl-trnst law which declares unlawful all combinations in restraint of trade. The Sgpreme Court lias decided that under the law all agreements in restraint of trade, even though not in unreasonable restraint of trade, ure unlawful.

Attorney General Wallace B. Dougina of Minnesota started the proceedings Jau. 7, when he tiled a bill of complaint in the case asking the Supremo Court to grant an injunction against the merger interests. It was asserted that the combination once effected the roads would cease to build spurs into lands owned by the State, causing the value of these tracts to depreciate. It was also set up that the scheme was one to avoid the laws of the Btate of Minnesota. ’ T ie bill was filed against J. J. Hill, W. I*. Clough, J. Plerpont Morgan and “other associates to the oratrix unknown.” This fight was begun by Gov. Van Sant of Minnesota and hinged largely on the question whether the Interests Incorporated under the laws of New Jersey could violate Minnesota laws.