These facts have led many observers to believe that the bill in question represented an underhanded attempt, by large corporations, especially the United States Steel, practically to remove the Sherman Anti-trust Law from the statute book. Mr. E. H. Gary and Mr. George W. Perkins spent many days in Congress while the bill was under discussion, though they did not once openly appear before the committee. No criticism affecting the good faith of Mr. Low and Professor Jenks, the most active open advocates of the bill, was put forth. The discussion disclosed the fact, however, that the Sherman Act, as it stands at present, has many friends. Organizations interested in curbing the unlawful activities of labor unions insisted that that law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, is practically the only protection American industry has against the boycott. Repeal or seriously modify it, they declared, and a régime of labor union terrorism far surpassing any hitherto known in any country, would at once begin. The plan of Mr. Gompers and his associates to shelve this law, they insisted, was merely part of their general scheme to remove all legal restraints from the operations of labor unions. Opinions did not seem quite so unanimous as to the wisdom of the Sherman Act in its bearings upon corporations. Though many declared that this measure is too sweeping and drastic, and should be amended, no one has yet suggested any practical way of framing a new law. No one who has studied the problem of trust regulation, it is believed, has thus far hit upon a plan that, while it gives greater leeway to the corporations, protects the public from arbitrarily high prices and other exactions. There is thus a growing conviction that the act passed by the great constitutional lawyers of 1890 represents the best attainable result in this direction. It has not stopped the growth of trusts, it is true; but whether that is because it does not furnish the means or because it has not been sufficiently enforced, is the disputed question. "What is needed," recently said ex-Senator Edmunds, the man who was the real author of the Sherman Act, "is not so much more legislation as competent and earnest administration of the laws that exist." [J] In the Debs case the Circuit Court based its decision almost entirely upon the Sherman Law. The Supreme Court of the United States, in affirming this decision, rested mainly on the broader question of the interference with the United States mails. Justice Brewer, however, who wrote the decision, specifically said that this fact did not mean that the Supreme Court dissented from the grounds on which the lower tribunal had decided the case.