A short time after this signal victory of Macy's, certain large manufacturers of patented articles, who for a time had sustained in the lower courts their claim to a fixed retail price standard, sought definitely to control Macy retail prices upon their products. Macy's, however, defied them, and the Victor Talking Machine Company, one of the leading adherents of price maintenance, brought an action in the United States courts to compel Macy's adherence to the rules for resale at a certain price. Again there was a royal battle and again Macy's triumphed signally, for on final appeal, the United States Supreme Court again decided in favor of the store in Herald Square, on every one of its contentions. Macy's then retaliated and brought suit against the Victor Company, under the Sherman Law. In a bitterly contested action, which culminated in one of the longest trials before a jury on record--consuming more than ten weeks--Macy's recovered a judgment of $150,000, and a counsel fee of $35,000; after which no paths apparently were left open to the manufacturers who sought to maintain the retail prices that suited them best. Court decisions seemingly blocked all possible pathways. One path did remain, however--legislation. Effort was made to pass a measure down at Washington to permit and sustain retail price maintenance, which in reality meant the emasculation of the Supreme Court's decisions. When that measure came to a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Committee of the House one of the Macy partners, accompanied by Mr. Wise, the store's counsel, and Mr. E. A. Filene, the well-known Boston merchant, came before it in opposition. Up almost to that hour, Macy's had gone it alone. Now the attention of the country was focussed upon its fight and the National Retail Dry Goods Association came in with both its sympathy and its active co-operation--hence the appearance of Mr. Filene, who made a most excellent argument in support of the Macy contention. It was shown definitely to the members of this House committee that many, if not all, branded and patented articles took a retail profit of from fifty to seventy-five per cent. The member of the Macy firm took a watch nationally advertised at $2.50 and duplicated it with a watch which his store sold at sixty-five cents, going so far as to take the two watches apart so as to show conclusively that the one was quite as good as the other. Certain other commodities went under similarly critical analyses. When the hearing was completed, the committee laughed the bill out of court. Since then the question of price maintenance by the original producer has been permitted to drop. Macy's had won its hard-fought fight; won it cleanly and honestly. By performance it had made good its statements that it proposed wherever it was humanly possible to undersell its competitors. That was no idle phrase.