COMBES, Justin Louis Émile: Vindication under scandalous charges. See (in this Volume) FRANCE: A. D. 1904 (JUNE-JULY). --------COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL: Start------ COMBINATIONS: AUSTRALIA: A. D. 1909. Decision of the Federal High Court on the Anti-Trust Law. Prosecutions by the Government. "The first case brought under the Federal Anti-Trust Law ended in June last in a decision of the High Court to the effect that two important sections of the Act were ultra vires, as the Constitution only empowered the Commonwealth to regulate foreign and inter-State trade and gave it no authority to interfere with trade within a State. The Federal Government is now instituting proceedings against 27 firms which are alleged to belong to a coal combine trading with other countries and among the States of the Commonwealth. Each firm has been called upon to answer certain questions under the Act in question." _Reuter Telegram, Melbourne, September 27, 1909._ {113} COMBINATIONS: Canada: A. D. 1909. Merger of Dominion Iron, Steel, and Coal Companies. Cement Combination. The following is a Press despatch from Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 13, 1909: "The formation of the Canada Steel Corporation, the proposed $70,000,000 merger of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company and the Dominion Coal Company, was made possible by the agreement of James Ross of Montreal, president of the Dominion Coal Company, to transfer to a syndicate of Toronto capitalists a portion of his holdings of the coal company stock. Final arrangements regarding the stock transfer will be made here to-day. President Ross owns coal company stock of a par value of $5,000,000, and, although he does not dispose of all this, he is to transfer enough to give control of the coal company to the Toronto capitalists, who have already acquired a controlling interest in the steel company. The plants of the Dominion Iron and Steel Company and the Dominion Coal Company are in Cape Breton, where they give employment to thousands of men, and where they have caused little fishing villages to spring up into flourishing cities." Announcement of the completion of the merger was made in December. COMBINATIONS: CANADA: A. D. 1910. Anti-Trust Bill in the Dominion Parliament. A strongly constructed measure for controlling and regulating commercial and industrial combinations, to check restraints of trade and undue enhancement of prices, was brought into the Dominion House of Commons on the 18th of January, 1910, by the Minister of Labor, Mr. Mackenzie King, and its passage was said to be assured. Mr King’s explanation of the Bill, as summarized for the Associated Press, was as follows: