Under the rulings of the Supreme Court, combinations and conspiracies which restrain trade and develop monopolies are those which, broadly speaking, deprive the public of the benefits of free competition. This act recognizes the competitive system as the one industrial ideal, and outlaws anything that interferes with a free, unobstructed flow of trade. A trust that gets control of the larger part of a particular product and manipulates the output so as to prevent trade from flowing in its natural course--that is an illegal restraint. Labor unions that combine to divert artificially this same course of trade--as they unquestionably do when they persuade the public not to have business relations with particular persons or corporations against which they have declared a boycott--also engage in an illegal restraint. The Sherman Law aims only to protect the public against these unnatural influences; to restore business to normal conditions. With corporations, the final test as to whether they restrain trade or not is whether their effect is to increase prices. If they do not increase prices, then they do not restrain trade and consequently do not violate the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court has insisted upon one important modification of this principle. The effect upon prices must be immediate and not remote. An arbitrary agreement that definitely fixes the prices of a product is clearly illegal; an agreement which, in the last analysis, might tend to influence prices, would not necessarily be so. [Illustration: SETH LOW, EX-MAYOR OF NEW YORK, WHO, AS PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, ADVOCATES THE AMENDMENT OF THE SHERMAN LAW] _Railroads Stopped from Making Rate Agreements_