Reward for a Trustbuster

When he came to Washington in 1953 as Assistant Attorney General in charge of antitrust activities, hulking (6 ft. 2 in., 250 Ibs.) Stanley Nelson Barnes, just resigned from Los Angeles' Superior Court, brought with him some clear ideas about how the nation's antitrust laws should be administered. Said he: "I mean to enforce them with good judgment, to accomplish the purpose of the legislative enactments, and I mean to do it without persecution." Under this general policy of reasonability, Barnes, in his three years in office, became one of the most successful U.S. trustbusters since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Last week he was rewarded for his service: President Eisenhower named him judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, covering seven Far West states (plus Alaska, Hawaii and Guam).

Barnes entered the Justice Department amid predictions that many of the 144 antitrust cases inherited from the Truman Administration would be dropped by the Republican Administration. Barnes set that notion to rest. He has disposed of 107 of the inherited cases--but only eleven were dismissed by motion of the Government. Thirty-one of the cases were won by the Government in court, eight were lost, and 57 were settled by consent decrees reached in pretrial negotiations.

Barnes believes that monopolistic tendencies can be better squelched by negotiation than by criminal prosecution, and it is in his settlements that he has scored his biggest wins, e.g., the Eastman Kodak Co. agreed to open the field of color film processing to hundreds of small firms.

Under Barnes the Antitrust Division has filed 104 new cases against some giants of U.S. business, among them, Pan American World Airways and the Radio Corp. of America. Last week, three days after his nomination to the federal bench was announced, Stanley Barnes warned General Motors Corp. that it might be wise to give up one or more of its divisions (see BUSINESS). And while awaiting his confirmation as judge, Barnes plans to institute at least one more new action: a suit aimed at ending G.M.'s domination of the bus manufacturing industry.

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