When U.S. industry mobilizes for war production, the antitrust laws are among the first casualties. Reason: industrywide production allocations and patent pools, which are taboo in peacetime, are essential for the close integration of industries needed for big-scale war production. Last week came the first sign that antitrust prosecutions would again be eased upor perhaps shelved completelyas they were during World War II. Lanky, eager Herbert Bergson, 44, the U.S.'s most vigorous trustbuster since the early New Deal days of Thurman Arnold, resigned his job.
In two years as head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, Bergson had filed 135 suits,...