Harvester Dissolution?

The filing by Attorney General Daugherty in the Federal District Court at St. Paul of a petition seeking the separation of the International Harvester Company into three independent corporations marks a reopening for primarily political purposes of a case supposedly settled by the original decree dissolving the company, which was entered November 2, 1918. The Attorney General states that the latter has proved inadequate to restore competitive conditions in the interstate business in agricultural machinery. The filing of the petition in the Court in St. Paul is of course a belated and futile effort to convince the irate voters of that state of the "trustbusting" attitude of the Administration.

This case is brought under the Sherman Anti-Trust law, with the claim that the International Harvester Company is a "combination in restraint of interstate trade and commerce," and that through its increasing monopolistic control, "the farmers of the United States would be deprived of free and open competition in the manufacture and sale of harvesting machines."

The first governmental steps against the Harvester Company were instituted in 1911, when officials attempted to arrange for a voluntary dissolution. This failing, a petition for dissolution was filed by the Government in 1912, and was granted by the District Court in 1914. The case was next twice appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court and reargued. In 1918 the case was remanded to the District Court, and the final decree issued November 2, 1918. By this decree, the Company was forced to sell out three lines of harvesting machines and its Osborne and Champion plants. But on May 4, 1920, the Federal Trade Commission reported to the U. S. Senate that, despite this decreed separation, the Company still dominated the harvesting machinery field, and advised the further separation of the Company's McCormick and Deering lines from its steel business, by making three separate companies of them.