passed judgment within this time, all these contracts and combinations would automatically receive a certificate of good character. In their interest, the Sherman Act would practically be repealed. In the main, this provision referred to contracts made and combinations to be formed in the future; another section practically extended immunity to all contracts and combinations now in existence. Nearly all trusts organized in the last forty years, and all restraining agreements, were to become valid. The government was to have a year in which to institute proceedings against such corporations as declined to register. If it failed to do so within this time, then these combinations could never be attacked on any ground whatever, and became regularly fixed institutions. As there are about five hundred corporations popularly known as trusts and myriads of trade agreements now forbidden, the law department, it was suggested, would have its hands full if it attempted to bring suit against them all within twelve months. Moreover, after the passage of the proposed act, the government could not proceed against any combination except on one ground--that it was an unreasonable restraint of trade. Under the Sherman Act, it will be remembered, it can prosecute without any reference to the question as to whether the restraint is reasonable or not. If the act had passed, in other words, the position of the government would have been this: within a year it could have assailed the trusts only on the grounds of unreasonableness; after the expiration of a year it could assail them on no ground whatever. A saving clause, however, provided that the government could prosecute all actions already begun. That is, it could follow up to the end the pending cases against the Standard Oil, the American Tobacco Company and other corporations against which it has already started suit. It could not prosecute, however, the United States Steel Corporation, for it has instituted no proceeding in that direction. It was the Attorney of the United States Steel Corporation, Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson, who had a large hand in framing the bill.