The purpose of the framers of the Act seems clearly to have been to draw up a general measure whose terms should be those usual in the English common law and then rest on the assurance that the courts would interpret its meaning in the light of former practice. For some centuries restraint of trade had been considered illegal in England, but no contract was held to be contrary to law if it provided only a _reasonable_ restraint--that is, if the restraint was merely minor and subsidiary. The Sherman act was a Senate measure, was presented from the Judiciary Committee and was passed precisely as drawn up by it. In speaking from the Committee, both Edmunds and Hoar took the attitude which the latter expressed as follows: "The great thing that this bill does ... is to extend the common-law principles, which protected fair competition ... in England, to international and interstate commerce in the United States." Just how far the members of Congress who were not on the Judiciary Committee of the Senate shared in this view or really understood the bill can not be said. Indeed, many members of both chambers absented themselves when the bill came to a vote.[4] For a long time the Sherman Act like the Interstate Commerce Act was singularly ineffective and futile. Trusts were nominally dissolved, but the separate parts were conducted under a common and uniform policy by the same board of managers. The Standard Oil Company changed its form by selecting the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey as a "holding corporation." Stock of the members of the combination was exchanged for stock in the New Jersey organization, leaving control in the same hands as before. The "same business was carried on in the same way but 'under a new sign.'" The wide variety of conditions tolerated under the corporation laws of the several states made confusion worse confounded. In its early attempts to convict corporations of violation of the law, the government was uniformly defeated.