bination with them to lessen and destroy competition in the sale of the enumerated farm implements and giving satisfactory evidence thereof to the court, the judgment of ouster should be suspended. The company was given until March 1, 1912, "to file its proof of willingness" to comply with the judgment. It was also adjudged that upon a subsequent violation of the statute "the suspension of the writ of ouster shall be removed" by the court "and absolute ouster be enforced," and to that end the court retained "its full and complete jurisdiction over the cause." 237 Missouri, 369.

A motion is made to dismiss on the ground that plaintiff in error in its answer simply denied that it had violated the anti-trust laws of the State, and, it is contended, that by not alleging in its answer that those laws violated the Constitution of the United States it waived such defense. It is further contended that because the Federal right was not asserted in the answer the Supreme Court of the State could not have considered and did not consider or decide it. Decisions of the Supreme Court of Missouri are cited to sustain the contentions. The decisions declare the proposition that constitutional questions must be raised at the first opportunity or, as it is expressed in one of the cases (Brown v. Railway Co., 175 Missouri, 185, 188), "the protection of the Constitution must be timely and properly invoked in the trial court."

In Milling Company v. Blake, 242 Missouri, 23, 31, it is said: "The rule of this court is that so grave a question [constitutional question] must be lodged at the first opportunity, or it will be deemed to have been waived. If it can be appropriately and naturally raised in the pleadings, and thereby be a question lodged in the record proper, such is the time and place to raise it," and that it is too late to raise the question after judgment in a motion for new trial. In Hertzler v. Railway Co., 218 Missouri, 562, 564, it was held: "The motion for a new trial was not

the first door open for the question to enter, and in our later decisions we have ruled that a question of such gravity must be raised as soon as orderly procedure will allow. This, in order that the trial court may be treated fairly and the question get into the case under correct safeguards and earmarked as of substance and not mere color."

It is manifest, we think, that the court only intended to express the condition of appellate review to be that in the trial court constitutional questions should not be reserved until the case had gone to judgment on other issues, and then used to secure a new trial. The principle of the rulings is satisfied in the case at bar. It is, as we have seen, an original proceeding in the Supreme Court and upon the report of the commissioner which brought the case to the court for decision of the issues and questions involved in it the Federal questions were made "under correct safeguards and earmarked as of substance and not mere color." It is true the court has not referred to them in its opinion, but we cannot regard its silence as a condemnation of the time or manner at or in which they were raised. The motion to dismiss is, therefore, denied.

The assignments of error necessarily involve a consideration of the statutes. The relevant provisions are contained in § 10301 of the Revised Statutes of the State of 1909, and § 8966 of the Revised Statutes of 1899.

Section 10301 provides, "that all arrangements, contracts, agreements, combinations or understandings made, or entered into between any two or more persons, designed or made with a view to lessen, or which tend to lessen, lawful trade, or full and free competition in the importation, transportation, manufacture or sale" in the State "of any product, commodity or article, or thing bought and sold," and all such arrangements, etc., "which are designed or made with a view to increase, or which tend to increase the market price of any product, commodity or article or thing, of any class or kind whatsoever

bought and sold," are declared to be against public policy, unlawful and void, and those offending "shall be deemed and adjudged guilty of a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and punished" as provided.

Section 8966 provides that arrangements, etc., such as described in § 10301, having like purpose, and all such arrangements, etc., "whereby, or under the terms of which, it is proposed, stipulated, provided, agreed or understood that any person, association of persons or corporations doing business in" the State, "shall deal in, sell or offer for sale" in the State "any particular or specified article, product or commodity, and shall not during the continuance or existence of any such arrangement, deal in, sell or offer for sale," in the State, "any competing article, product or commodity," are declared to be against public policy, unlawful and void; and any person offending "shall be deemed and adjudged guilty of a conspiracy to defraud, and be subject to the penalties" provided.

By 10304 of the Revised Statutes of 1909 it is provided that domestic offending corporations shall forfeit their charters and all or any part of their property as shall be adjudged by a court of competent jurisdiction, or be fined in lieu of the forfeiture of charters or of property.

Foreign offending corporations shall forfeit their right to do business in the State, with forfeiture also of property or, in lieu thereof, the payment of a fine.

In State v. Standard Oil Co., 218 Missouri, 1, 370, 372, the Supreme Court held that the anti-trust statutes of the State "are limited in their scope and operations to persons and corporations dealing in commodities, and do not include combinations of persons engaged in labor pursuits." And, justifying the statutes against a charge of illegal discrimination, the court further said that "it must be borne in mind that the differentiation between labor and property is so great that they do not belong to the same

general classification of rights, or things, and have never been so recognized by the common law, or by legislative enactments."

Accepting the construction put upon the statute, but contesting its legality as thus construed, plaintiff in error makes three contentions, (1) The statutes as so construed unreasonably and arbitrarily limit the right of contract; (2) discriminate between the vendors of commodities and the vendors of labor and services, and (3) between vendors and purchasers of commodities.

(1). The specification under this head is that the Supreme Court found, it is contended, benefit-not injury-to the public had resulted from the alleged combination. Granting that this is, not an overstatement of the opinion the answer is immediate. It is too late in the day to assert against statutes which forbid combinations of competing companies that a particular combination was induced by good intentions and has had some good effect. Armour Packing Co. v. United States, 209 U. S. 56, 62; Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co. v. United States, 226 U. S. 20, 49. The purpose of such statutes is to secure competition and preclude combinations which tend to defeat it. And such is explicitly the purpose and policy of the Missouri statutes; and they have been sustained by the Supreme Court. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which precludes a State from adopting and enforcing such policy. To so decide would be stepping backwards. Carroll v. Greenwich Ins. Co., 199 U. S. 401; Central Lumber Co. v. South Dakota, 226 U. S. 157.

It is true that the Supreme Court did not find a definite abuse of its powers by plaintiff in error, but it did find that there was an offending against the statute, a union of able competitors and a cessation of their competition, and the court said, p. 395: "Some of the smaller concerns that were competitors in the market have ceased their struggle for existence and retired from the field." This is one VOL. CCXXXIV-14

of the results which the statute was intended to prevent, the unequal struggle of individual effort against the power of combination. The preventing of the engrossment of trade is as definitely the object of the law as is price regulation of commodities, its prohibition being against combinations "made with a view to lessen, or which tend to lessen, lawful trade or full and free competition in the importation, transportation, manufacture or sale of any commodity, or article or thing bought or sold." See Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1; United States v. American Tobacco Co., Id. 106; United States v. Patten, 226 U. S. 525.

(2) and (3). These contentions may be considered together, both involving a charge of discrimination-the one because the law does not embrace vendors of labor, the other because it does not cover purchasers of commodities as well as vendors of them. Both, therefore, invoke a consideration of the power of classification which may be exerted in the legislation of the State. And we shall presently see that power has very broad range. A classification is not invalid because of simple inequality. We said in Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R. Co. v. Matthews, 174 U. S. 96, 106, by Mr. Justice Brewer, "The very idea of classification is that of inequality, so that it goes without saying that the fact of inequality in no manner determines the matter of constitutionality." Therefore, it may be there is restraint of competition in a combination of laborers and in a combination of purchasers, but that does not demonstrate that legislation which does not include either combination is illegal. Whether it would have been better policy to have made such comprehensive classification it is not our province to decide. In other words, whether a combination of wage earners or purchasers of commodities called for repression by law under the conditions in the State was for the legislature of the State to determine.