new issues, and Congress was unable to adjourn until certain temporary war measures were enacted. Then, on October 24, the long Congress came to a close, after having been continuously at work for 567 days-the longest period in the history of the country.

The House sent over to the Senate three trust bills. But only two finally became laws. The Railway Capitalization bill was lost in the Senate. However, the other two laws-the Federal Trade Commission and the Clayton Omnibus Anti-trust act-included the larger part of the President's programme.

The Trade Commission Act establishes a Federal Trade Commission similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission, with the following duties and powers:

1. It transfers to this Commission the powers and duties of the Bureau of Corporations and increases these duties in relation to the investigation of the affairs of corporations and of business methods and practices in general and in particular.

2. It is empowered to prevent unfair competition and to investigate, upon application of the Attorney-General, and to make recommendations for the readjustment of the business of any corporation alleged to be violating the Anti-trust act, in order that it may thereafter conduct its business in accordance with law.

3. It is authorized to classify corporations and make rules and regulations for the enforcement of the act. 4. It is charged with the duty to investigate trade

conditions in and with foreign countries, where associations, combinations, or practices of manufacturers may affect our foreign trade, and to report thereon to Congress.

5. It makes the Commission an accessory to the courts for the preparation and execution of their decrees in anti-trust cases.

The Clayton Anti-Trust Act is an omnibus measure, combining various provisions for curbing trust activities. Its purpose is to complete the destruction of existing monopoly and to prevent the birth of further monopoly. Its specifications are as follows:

1. Price discriminations and tying-contracts are made unlawful when they substantially lessen competition.

2. It forbids the existence of holding companies when they restrain commerce or tend to establish monopoly. 3. Interlocking directorates among banks with resources of more than $5,000,000 must cease after two years.

4. It provides that no one shall be an officer or director of more than one bank, and no person shall be a director in two or more large corporations if the corporations are competitors.

5. It provides that in case of private damage suits under the anti-trust laws, the decree in any government suit against the same defendant shall constitute prima facie evidence for the purposes of the private suits.

A comparison of these specifications with the recommendations of the President in his address to Congress on January 20 will show how completely his recommendations were finally embodied into law.

CHAPTER VII

THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

President Wilson outlined in his inaugural address with some degree of particularity the things that he considered ought to be altered in order that every process of our national life might again square with the standard "we so proudly set up at the beginning." But after eighteen months of hard work-a work of restoration, what is the result?

The pressure of the European war has been so severe that men's minds have been wrenched violently away from those days when the President and Congress were approaching new affairs and perfecting the means by which this government may be put at the service of humanity. Therefore, the marvelous achievements in their totality have drifted out of men's consciousness. Some remember that period because of one act, while others because of a wholly different act. But the permanent benefit to the whole country will have to be measured later, when all adjustments have been completed and society, as a whole, responds to this new safeguarding of property and individual rights. Not until then can the historian adequately appraise the benefits to this nation. But what changes were made

in the functions of government that made the first half of Wilson's administration the end of an era?

The country at large believed that the old protective tariff in operation for so many years violated the just principles of taxation and cut the country off from its proper part in the commerce of the world. A new tariff law, therefore, was enacted in which neither lobby nor special interests had a hand in the making, but in which the people of the United States-laborers as well as manufacturers have a fair opportunity to judge whether such a measure that has been an issue for a century is a panacea for industrial evils in this modern business age. Moreover, an income tax law was coupled with this new tariff law in order to meet the expected deficiency in the revenue and throw more of the burden of support upon great wealth rather than upon labor.

In the place of the old laissez faire doctrine of individual license, that had resulted in a comparatively few men, more powerful than the rest, gaining control of the processes of government and the industrial life of the people, a government by commission was inaugurated. Commissions were clothed with authority to exercise "a watchful interference" over the selfish designs of men and protect the liberties of the people by preserving free and fair competition in this industrial age. This change in the processes of government is perhaps the most farreaching in its consequences of any legislation since the beginning of the nineteenth century.