Senator Edmunds' logic absolutely killed any attempt to place capital and labor upon different footings, Instead of adopting this proposed amendment, the Senate referred the whole question of trust legislation to the Judiciary Committee, of which Senator Edmunds was chairman. Mr. Edmunds and his colleagues threw into the waste basket all the pending trust bills and their amendments and struck out on new lines. As a consequence, Senator Edmunds became the chief author of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. His most active associates, were Senator Hoar and Senator George. The one man who had practically nothing to do with the statute as it stands to-day was Senator Sherman himself. He played an important part in the preliminary discussion and in framing the measures which served as a basis for this discussion; but the bill as it was finally adopted by Congress bore little resemblance to his. The amendment upon which he laid especial stress--that of exempting laboring and agricultural organizations from the operation of the Anti-trust Law--was absolutely ignored. As finally adopted, the act did not prohibit labor unions per se or combinations of labor unions formed to accomplish lawful ends; it did, however, strike at certain labor union practices. That this was the clear intention of the Senate is evident from a statement made by Senator Edmunds in a newspaper interview as far back as 1892. "The Sherman Law," said Mr. Edmunds, "is intended to cover and I think will cover every form of combination that seeks in any way to interfere with or restrain free competition, whether it be capital in the form of trusts, combinations, railroad pools, or agreements, or labor through the form of boycotting organizations that say a man shall not earn his bread unless he joins this or that society. Both are wrong; both are crimes and indictable under the Anti-trust Law." _Unsuccessful Efforts to Destroy the Law_ For eighteen years the anti-trust statute has represented American policy and American law in federal regulation of combinations in restraint of trade. In that period the act has been repeatedly assailed from many legal standpoints. It has been passed upon more than two hundred and fifty times by the federal courts, and has been considered fifty-five times by the United States Supreme Court. The greatest constitutional lawyers of this generation--such men as Edward J. Phelps, James C. Carter, John F. Dillon, and Francis Lynde Stetson--have attempted to destroy it and have not succeeded. The greatest railroads and corporations, on the one hand, and the largest and most influential labor unions, on the other, have both failed in their attempts to secure exemption from its operation. [Illustration: JUDGE GEORGE GRAY OF DELAWARE, WHO, AS UNITED STATES SENATOR, IN 1890, TOOK AN IMPORTANT PART IN FRAMING THE SHERMAN LAW]