The above statement gives the effect and not precisely the form of the proposed legislation. What its authors really hoped to accomplish was executive discrimination between those combinations and those restraints of trade which were reasonable and those which were unreasonable. They based their measure upon the theory that certain combinations, even many whose tendency is to restrain trade and increase prices to the consumer, may still work for the public interest. The word "reasonable" has played an important part in the history of the Sherman Act. In several cases the corporations, in contesting the law, have made the claim that this act did not prohibit all combinations in restraint of trade, but only those which were "unreasonable." They set up this defense most strongly in the famous Trans-Missouri case, already described. Eighteen railroads, it may be repeated, had formed an association for the purpose of fixing freight rates. James C. Carter, who argued the case, strongly asserted that such an agreement was beneficial both to the railroads and to the public; the history of railroads having conclusively proved that cut-throat competition inevitably led to bankruptcy and demoralization in railroad service. He therefore claimed that the proposed restraint in trade was "reasonable" and consequently not prohibited by the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court, by a majority of five to four, rejected this theory. The Sherman Act, it pointed out, in express language made illegal "_every_ contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade"; and made "_every_ person" who was a party to such contract a criminal. It left absolutely no leeway--it did not discriminate in the remotest degree between those which were reasonable and those which were not. Since then all demands for the modification of the act have hinged upon this one point. _Andrew Carnegie on Combinations_