ROOSEVELT’S FIGHT AGAINST TRUSTS

Southland Times, Issue 23377, 8 December 1937, Page 5

ROOSEVELT’S FIGHT AGAINST TRUSTS

SUPREME COURT DECISION FAVOURABLE (Received December 7, 11.5 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 7. By a decision interpreted as an important victory for the Administration’s anti-trust campaign, the Supreme Court upheld the Government’s right to prosecute the charges against the Aluminum Company of America, brought on April 24. The Supreme Court thus rebuffed corporations’ efforts to halt the Federal suit for dissolution.

The largest action against a trust since the Standard OU case in 1911 occurred on April 24, when the United States Government filed a suit asking for the dissolution of the Aluminium Company of America, which has a capital of 174,000,000 dollars (about £34,800,000), alleging that the trust was controlled by Mr Andrew Mellon, his relafives and his associates. The defendants include the company. Mr Mellon’s relatives and the Aluminium Company of Canada. The complaint, which was filed by the order of the Attorney-General (Mr Homer S. Cummings), describes the company as a holding corporation for a group of companies in all parts of the world which has stifled competition in the entire industry. Its profits, from its incorporation to December 31, 1934, total 155.000,000 dollars, over and above dividends of 105,000,000 dollars. "Profits of such a size from supplying the public with an article of prime necessity for which it has, and will have, an increasing demand and for which there is no available substitute are excessive, and are the result of the monopolization of industry,” says the complaint.