It is interesting to note that the Government, in attacking the great company, charged it with doing both the apparently forbidden things, drawing from the Supreme Court the suggestion that these charges were paradoxical and presented contradictions. Said the Court: “In one, competitors (the independents) are represented as oppressed by the superior power of the Corporation; in the other, they are represented as ascending to opulence by imitating that power’s prices, which they could not do if at disadvantage from the other conditions of competition.” And the Court naturally asks, respecting competition: “Are the activities to be encouraged when militant and suppressed or regulated when triumphant, because of the dominance attained?” This same idea was suggested by Judge Gary in his testimony before the Stanley Committee, where he said: It has seemed to me that the Sherman Law, so-called, has two different provisions that, in their application, are more or less antagonistic one to the other. One provision is against monopoly and the other is against restraint of trade. If one manufacturer should undertake to enter into any combination or agreement, expressed or implied, to fix prices, to restrict output, to divide territory, it would be considered an arrangement in restraint of trade and inimical to that provision. On the other hand, except for some basis whereby destructive competition could be avoided, whereby the old methods of doing business under which, as you probably know, a few only of the steel companies were allowed to survive and do business, and a large majority were wrecked; if we should enter into that kind of competition, it would mean that a large percentage at least of the manufacturers of steel would be wrecked; and that would secure to the survivors, to a greater or less extent, a monopoly; and our effort was to find a position between those two extremes and what we have done has been open and aboveboard, whether right or wrong. We have met and laid our business on the table, so to speak, telling one another frankly and freely just what we were doing, and while that has not maintained prices, that has not prevented a good deal of cutting by different ones at different places and times; while it has not controlled the business in any sense of the word, yet it has had a very steadying influence, and has prevented the destructive competition to which I have adverted. That is the frank and honest statement of facts, whether they are justified or not.