Thurman's Kamp
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which Chief Justice Hughes called "a charter of economic freedom," is 50 years old this year. And 1940 is the first of those 50 years in which Congress permitted the Department of Justice to spend more than $1,000,000 on its enforcement. It is the first year since the trustbusting days of Roosevelt I and Taft (Standard Oil, American Tobacco, Northern Securities, etc.) in which the Government has put on a real Sherman Act show. It is also a year of war, whose outbreak, in the words of Assistant Attorney General Thurman Wesley Arnold, "was immediately followed . . . by an outbreak of funeral orations over anti-trust enforcement." But last week No. 1 Trustbuster Arnold gave the Sherman Act the liveliest week of its liveliest year. As the funeral orations grew louder and more insistent, he danced the aging law away from its grave, through the tombstones, almost out the cemetery gate.
Among the impatient mourners were not only businessmen, 23 of whom (and 15 corporations) were indicted for Sherman Act violations last week. There were also farmers, labor leaders, even New Dealers —especially those inner circlers who are trying to help (or steer) the Defense Advisory Commission in rearming the U. S. A maverick New Dealer, Thurman Arnold necessarily regards the Defense Commission as his natural enemy. It stands for more cooperation among businessmen than he trusts, reminds him unpleasantly of NRA; besides, it may do him out of a job. This week, as Washington's defense parade threatened to march right over him, Thurman Arnold struggled into a uniform of his own design, tried to align himself with the procession. He published a book, The Bottlenecks of Business (Reynal & Hitchcock; $2.50), whose theme was that the enforcement of the Sherman Act is the U. S.'s best defense against Hitler. He also went right on prosecuting.
The Giggling Professor. When the New Deal rediscovered "monopolies" in 1937-38 and picked Thurman Arnold to go after them, the appointment was regarded by old-fashioned trustbusters of the Borah school as a rather bad joke. Arnold was a cynic, a word-juggler, a clown. With a background of Wyoming sheepherding, Princeton ('11) and Harvard Law ('14), he had returned from the war to help General Smedley Butler drive the prostitutes from New Orleans. Said he: "I didn't even make a dent in the town." His cynicism and love of low comedy were augmented back in Wyoming, where he became the sole Democrat in the Legis lature, and was elected mayor of Laramie by nine votes. Later he taught law at Yale, did a few jobs for AAA and SEC on the side. He also wrote two books — Symbols of Government (1935), Folklore of Caitalism (1937) — which combined a rigorous political iconoclasm with a good deal of intellectual clowning. One of their chief targets was the Sherman Act, which he called a "preaching device." Trusts, said he, are a social necessity, like houses of prostitution ; the Sherman Act was merely intended to express society's disapproval.