Very well. Now, if you say to one side of that equation, "You may make the value or the price of this iron by your combination for wages in the whole Republic or on the continent, but the man for whom you have made the iron shall not arrange with his neighbors as to the price they will sell it for, so as not to destroy each other," the whole business will certainly break, because the connection between the plant, as I will call it for short, and the labor that works that plant, is one that no legislation and no force in the world--and there is only one outside of the world that can do it--can possibly separate. They cannot be divorced. Neither speeches nor laws nor judgments of courts nor anything else can change it, and therefore I say that to provide on one side of that equation that there may be combination and on the other side that there shall not, is contrary to the very inherent principle upon which such business must depend. If we are to have equality, as we ought to have, if the combination on the one side is to be prohibited, the combination on the other side must be prohibited, or there will be certain destruction in the end.... On the one side you say that it is a crime and on the other side you say it is a valuable and proper under-taking. That will not do, Mr. President. You can not get on in that way. It is impossible to separate them; and the principle of it therefore is that if one side, no matter which it is, is authorized to combine, the other side must be authorized to combine, or the thing will break and there will be universal bankruptcy. That is what it will come to. [Illustration: SENATOR GEORGE F. EDMUNDS, GENERALLY REGARDED AS ONE OF THE GREATEST CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYERS OF HIS TIME. THE SHERMAN ACT, AS IT STANDS AT PRESENT, IS VERY LARGELY HIS WORK]