Basic Antitrust Concepts

It is the function of this paper to summarize and evaluate chapter I of the Report of the Attorney General’s National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws. It will first be necessary to note briefly the circumstances attendant upon the appointment of the committee, its delegated function, its conception of its task and its working methods. No helpful critique of its accomplishments can be made unless its purpose and mode of operation are taken as the starting point. While many tasks remain to be done in the study of the antitrust laws, the committee’s work should be appraised only from the standpoint of the tasks which it set for itself. After such a recapitulation of the history of the committee, there will be set forth a series of black-letter statements summarizing the conclusions reached by the committee in chapter I, together with an explanatory or critical comment on each.