Opinion of the Court. 362 U.S. District Court since under that Rule the finding that there were no contractual arrangements should "not be set aside unless clearly erroneous." But Rule 52 has no application here. The District Court premised its ultimate finding that Parke Davis did not violate the Sherman Act on an erroneous interpretation of the standard to be applied. The Bausch & Lomb and Beech-Nut decisions cannot be read as merely limited to particular fact complexes justifying the inference of an agreement in violation of the Sherman Act. Both cases teach that judicial inquiry is not to stop with a search of the record for evidence of purely contractual arrangements. The Sherman Act forbids combinations of traders to suppress competition. True, there results the same economic effect as is accomplished by a prohibited combination to suppress price competition if each customer, although induced to do so solely by a manufacturer's announced policy, independently decides to observe specified resale prices. So long as Colgate is not overruled, this result is tolerated but only when it is the consequence of a mere refusal to sell in the exercise of the manufacturer's right "freely to exercise his own independent discretion as to parties with whom he will deal." When the manufacturer's actions, as here, go beyond mere announcement of his policy and the simple refusal to deal, and he employs other means which effect adherence to his resale prices, this countervailing consideration is not present and therefore he has put together a combination in violation of the Sherman Act. Thus, whether an unlawful combination or conspiracy is proved is to be judged by what the parties actually did rather than by the words they used. See Eastern States Retail Lumber Dealers' Assn. v. United States, 234 U. S. 600, 612. Because of the nature of the District Court's error we are reviewing a question of law, namely, whether the District Court applied the proper standard to essentially undisputed facts. See Interstate 29 Opinion of the Court. Circuit v. United States, 306 U. S. 208; United States v. Masonite Corp., 316 U. S. 265; United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U. S. 364; United States v. du Pont, 353 U. S. 586; and also United States v. Felin & Co., 334 U. S. 624; Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U. S. 147. The program upon which Parke Davis embarked to promote general compliance with its suggested resale prices plainly exceeded the limitations of the Colgate doctrine and under Beech-Nut and Bausch & Lomb effected arrangements which violated the Sherman Act. Parke Davis did not content itself with announcing its policy regarding retail prices and following this with a simple refusal to have business relations with any retailers who disregarded that policy. Instead Parke Davis used the refusal to deal with the wholesalers in order to elicit their willingness to deny Parke Davis products to retailers and thereby help gain the retailers' adherence to its suggested minimum retail prices. The retailers who disregarded the price policy were promptly cut off when Parke Davis supplied the wholesalers with their names. The large retailer who said he would "abide" by the price policy, the multi-unit Peoples Drug chain, was not cut off. In thus involving the wholesalers to stop the flow of Parke Davis products to the retailers, thereby inducing retailers' adherence to its suggested retail prices, Parke Davis created a combination with the retailers and the wholesalers to maintain retail prices and violated the Sherman Act. Although Parke Davis' originally announced wholesalers' policy would not under Colgate have violated the Indeed, if Peoples resumed adherence to the Parke Davis price scale after the interview between its vice-president and Parke Davis' assistant branch manager, p. 34, supra, shows that Parke Davis and Peoples entered into a price maintenance agreement, express, tacit or implied, such agreement violated the Sherman Act without regard to any wholesalers' participation. Opinion of the Court. 362 U.S. Sherman Act if its action thereunder was the simple refusal without more to deal with wholesalers who did not observe the wholesalers' Net Price Selling Schedule, that entire policy was tainted with the "vice of . . . illegality," cf. United States v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., 321 U. S. 707, 724, when Parke Davis used it as the vehicle to gain the wholesalers' participation in the program to effectuate the retailers' adherence to the suggested retail prices. Moreover, Parke Davis also exceeded the "limited dispensation which [Colgate] confers," Times-Picayune Pub. Co. v. United States, 345 U. S. 594, 626, in another way, which demonstrates how far Parke Davis went beyond the limits of the Colgate doctrine. With regard to the retailers' suspension of advertising, Parke Davis did not rest with the simple announcement to the trade of its policy in that regard followed by a refusal to sell to the retailers who would not observe it. First it discussed the subject with Dart Drug. When Dart indicated willingness to go along the other retailers were approached and Dart's apparent willingness to cooperate was used as the lever to gain their acquiescence in the program. Having secured those acquiescences Parke Davis returned to Dart Drug with the report of that accomplishment. Not until all this was done was the advertising suspended and sales to all the retailers resumed. In this manner Parke Davis sought assurances of compliance and got them, as well as the compliance itself. It was only by actively bringing about substantial unanimity among the competitors that Parke Davis was able to gain adherence to its policy. It must be admitted that a seller's announcement that he will not deal with customers who do not observe his policy may tend to engender confidence in each customer that if he complies his competitors will also. But if a manufacturer is unwilling to rely on individual self-interest to bring 29 Opinion of the Court. about general voluntary acquiescence which has the collateral effect of eliminating price competition, and takes affirmative action to achieve uniform adherence by inducing each customer to adhere to avoid such price competition, the customers' acquiescence is not then a matter of individual free choice prompted alone by the desirability of the product. The product then comes packaged in a competition-free wrapping-a valuable feature in itself-by virtue of concerted action induced by the manufacturer. The manufacturer is thus the organizer of a price-maintenance combination or conspiracy in violation of the Sherman Act. Under that Act "competition not combination, should be the law of trade," National Cotton Oil Co. v. Texas, 197 U. S. 115, 129, and "a combination formed for the purpose and with the effect of raising, depressing, fixing, pegging, or stabilizing the price of a commodity in interstate or foreign commerce is illegal per se." United States v. SoconyVacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 223. And see United States v. McKesson & Robbins, Inc., 351 U. S. 305; Kiefer-Stewart Co. v. Seagram & Sons, Inc., 340 U. S. 211; Eastern States Retail Lumber Dealers' Assn. v. United States, 234 U. S. 600. The District Court also alternatively rested its judgment of dismissal on the holding that ". even if the unlawful conditions alleged in the Complaint had actually been proved, since 1956 they no longer existed, and [there is] no reason to believe, or even surmise, the unlawful acts alleged can possibly be repeated . 164 F. Supp. 827, 830. We are of the view that the evidence does not justify any such finding. The District Court stated that "the compelling reason for defendant's so doing [ceasing its efforts] was forced upon it by business and economic conditions in its field." There is no evidence in the record that this was the reason and any such conclusion must rest on speculation. It does not appear even that Opinion of the Court. 362 U.S. Parke Davis has announced to the trade that it will abandon the practices we have condemned. So far as the record indicates any reason, it is that Parke Davis stopped its efforts because the Department of Justice had instituted an investigation. The president of Dart Drug Company testified that he had told the Parke Davis representatives in August that he had just been talking to the Department of Justice investigators. He stated that the Parke Davis representatives had said that "they [knew] that the Antitrust Division was investigating them all over town," and that this was one of their reasons for visiting him. The witness testified that it was on this occasion, after the discussion of the investigation, that the Parke Davis representatives finally stated that if Dart would stop advertising, Parke Davis "would resume shipment, in so far as there was an Antitrust investigation going on." Moreover Parke Davis' own employees, who were called by the Government as witnesses at the trial, admitted that they were aware of the investigation at the time and that the investigation was a reason for the discontinuance of the program. It seems to us that if the investigation would prompt Parke Davis to discontinue its efforts, even more so would the litigation which ensued. On the record before us the Government is entitled to the relief it seeks. The courts have an obligation, once a violation of the antitrust laws has been established, to protect the public from a continuation of the harmful and unlawful activities. A trial court's wide discretion in fashioning remedies is not to be exercised to deny relief altogether by lightly inferring an abandonment of the unlawful activities from a cessation which seems timed to anticipate suit. See United States v. Oregon State Medical Society, 343 U. S. 326, 333. The judgment is reversed and the case remanded to the District Court with directions to enter an appropriate |