It will well repay us now to make a careful study of all these anti-trust statutes, for the purpose of seeing whether they have introduced any new principles into the law, and also in what manner they express the old.  Up to two or three years ago one might have said that not a single case had been decided in the courts of any State or of the Federal government against trusts or combinations, which might not have been decided the same way under common-law principles had there been no anti-trust legislation whatever.  As is well known, the great exception to this statement is the interpretation of the Federal Act by the Supreme Court of the United States, declaring that any contract in restraint of trade was unlawful under it, although it would have been reasonable and proper at the common law.  Later indications are, as President Taft has said, that the courts will see a way to modify this somewhat extravagant position by reintroducing the common-law test, viz.:  Whether the contract is done with the purport (or effect) of making a monopoly for destroying competition, or whether such result is trivial and incidental to a reasonable and lawful business arrangement.  The earliest statutes, those of Michigan, Kansas, and Nebraska, in 1889, denounce the following principles:  “All contracts, agreements, understandings, and combinations ... the purpose or object of which shall be to limit or control the output, to enhance or regulate the price, to prevent or restrict free competition in production or sale.”  This, the Michigan statute, merely states the common law, but goes on to declare such contract, etc., a criminal conspiracy, and any act done as part thereof, a misdemeanor, and, in the case of a corporation, subjects it to forfeiture of its charter.  The law makes the exception, nearly universal in the Southern and Western States, that this anti-trust legislation shall not apply to agricultural products, live stock in the hands of the producer, nor to the services of laborers or artisans who are formed into societies or trades-unions—­an exception which, of course, makes it class legislation, and has caused the whole law to be declared unconstitutional, so far as I know, by the highest court of every State where it has been drawn in question, and under the Fourteenth Amendment also by the Supreme Court of the United States; and in this spirit President Taft has just acted in preventing a joint resolution of Congress appropriating money to prosecute trusts from exempting labor unions.  The Kansas statute is substantially like the Michigan, but more vague in wording (Kansas, 1889, 257).  It denounces arrangements, contracts, agreements, etc., which (also) tend to advance, reduce, or control the price or the cost to the producer or consumer of any productions or articles, or the rate of insurance or interest on money or any other service.  The Maine law (Maine, 1889, 266, 1) is aimed only against the old-fashioned trust; that is to say, the entering of firms or incorporated companies into an agreement or combination, or the assignment of powers or stock to a central board, and such trust certificates or other evidences of interest are declared void.  The Alabama statute of 1891 is to similar effect.