Baggy Paragraphs

William H. Taft

New Haven, Conn.

December 5, 1914.

My dear Mr. Joy:

 I am in receipt of your letter of December 2nd, in which you quote a passage from an article of Ida Tarbell, in the American Magazine, for December, on page 62, reading as follows:

“They appeared in private conversation on every hand, in public discussion, in the press and even in the very questions which pestered President Taft on his speech-making tour in the fall of 1909 until he finally threw up his hands and said in effect: ‘Well if you will let me alone I will tell you why I signed the bill. I knew the wool schedule was all wrong but the combine back of it was so strong I did not dare, for political reasons, to turn it down.’”

The statement is wholly untrue.

Sincerely yours,

Wm. H. Taft

Mr. H. B. Joy, President,

Packard Motor Car Company,

Detroit, Michigan.

The White House

Washington

June 19, 1914

My dear Sir:—

I am sure that the whole country is interested to see to it that there should no longer exist a North or South in this absolutely united country which we all love and that the imaginary Mason and Dixon line should be made once and for all a thing of the past, and as a small contribution to that end I earnestly suggest that the Lincoln Highway Association should grant permission to place the official Lincoln Highway markers on the macadam roadway running from Philadelphia to Washington, through the properly selected streets of the latter city to the Lincoln Memorial now under construction, and from thence along the roadway through Frederick, Maryland, and from Frederick to Gettysburg.

I am reliably informed tht this route is now or will in the very near future be a modern macadam roadway from Philadelphia to Gettysburg by way of Washington. The entire expense of the road, I am informed, including officially marking the highway, wil be degrayed by local interests.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

Woodrow Wilson

Mr. Henry B. Joy, President,

Lincoln Highway Association,

Detroit, Michigan.

Mr. Edward Rector,

1958 McCormick Building,

Chicago, Illinois,

My dear Mr. Rector:—

I have read with great interest your letter to Mr. Milton Tibbetts, dated June second. I am sending you a copy of a pamphlet which I am sending out in an effort to create an interest in this extraordinary situation.

No manufacturer of a specialty article consideres his goods sold until they are sold to the consumer. The curious thing about the whole matter is that the Court has taken the view that an article is sold when it is sold to the wholesaler or to the retailer by the manufacturer. It is not sold at all until it is sold to the consumer actually, and it is a very wrong conception by the Courts of what constitutes a sale.

If I appoint an agent to sell my goods, I sell direct to the consumer, and hence am within the law; but if a manufacturer desires to use the long-established natural channels of commerce, the wholesalers and retailers, and fix their fee for handling as he fixes the fee for his agent (which the wholesalers and retailer really are) then he comes in conflict with the decisions of the Courts because the Courts have said that an article is sold when it is sold to the wholesaler or retailer.

In the recent decision in the Sanatogen Case, the Supreme Court stood five to four. I am satisfied, from hearing the elaborate discussions at a meeting yesterday, that if the Supreme Court could understand and have thoroughly explained to them, our views, that they would not regard what we are seeking as in restraint of trade.

I entirely endorse your views as to price maintenance in every way, shape and manner. The value of price maintenance to the consumer and to the small retailer is of inestimable value and the Courts I feel will ultimately have to take our point of view, as expressed by you, into consideration.

Yours very truly,

 Henry B. Joy

President.

HBJ-B

June 5, 1913.

Mr. W.D. Simmons, Vice-President,

Simmons Hardware Company,

St. Louis, Missouri.

Dear Mr. Simmons:—

I thank you particularly for the address of Mr. Ralph M. Shaw. I have read it with great care and interest [sic] I endorse every word he says.

I am doing my best to call to the attention of the business men of the United States the conditions which confront them under the existing trend of Court decisions. You will have noticed in the recent decision in the Sanatogen case that the Supreme Court stood five to four. I was in New York yesterday and we had a long session with twenty-five or thirty leading manufacturers, and are endeavoring to get up an organization to properly campaign and educate the country on the value to the consumer of the one-price-to-all policy.

In the remarks of Mr. Louis D. Brandeis he clearly shows that he has absolutely gotten hold of the essence of price maintenance, and differentiates it from unwarrantable monopoly in the clearest cut possible kind of way.

I wish very much you would lend your support to this movement we are undertaking to get up in New York, and would most urgently ask you to communicate with Mr. William H. Ingersoll, (of Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., 315 Fourth Ave., New York City).

I have sent out one hundred thousand copies, and will send out more, of the enclosed Price-Maintenance Discussion pamphlet. In it are the remarks by Mr. Brandeis to which I refer. It is going to be a hard, long fight, but we are bound to win. I see very encouraging signs in the current publications of the day, and Mr. Brandeis states that in his opinion what we are standing for is exactly in accordance with the views of President Wilson, and he purposes to call upon the President when he can get himself sufficiently prepared, in an effort to explain to the President that the attitude of the Department of Justice is directly contrary to the doctrines which the President stands for. This is very important, but encouraging.

Yours very truly,

H.B. Joy

President.

HB-B

June 5, 1913

Mr. George M. Graham;

Sporting Editor, The North American,

Philadelphia, Pensylvania.

My dear Mr. Graham:—

I am certainly most gratified at receiving your esteemed favor of the 26th ultimo.

I attended a meeting yesterday in New York of some thirty or forty leading manufacturers on this proposition and became more confirmed than ever as to the righteousness and propriety of our views. Mr. Brandeis was present, and after mature consideration again gave us carefully his views more extendedly on the proposition, which cordially re-indorsed everything which he stated in his remarks at the Banquet at the Hotel Astor on May fourteenth. For fear you may not have at hand Mr. Brandeis’ corrected remarks, I am sending you a copy of my pamphlet including them.

I have read Mr. Van Valkenburg’s letter to Mr. Wilson as Governor of New Jersey, and I cordially endorse every single word he says therein. It certainly was an education effort and I feel that it made an impression on Mr. Wilson at the time which I hope he has not forgotten.

I am sending you herewith:

1. My pamphlet on Price Maintenance Discussion.
2. Copy of letter from Mr. Edward Rector, an eminent counsel of Chicago.
3. Copy of my letter in reply to Mr. Rector.
4. 4. Copy of a letter to Mr. W.D. Simmons, of the Simmons Hardware Co., St. Louis.

I wish to lay particular stress upon the fact that the Philadelphia North American’s publications are not sold until they are sold to the consumer. If you will draw in your mind a parallel between your sales and the sales of the manufacturer of a specialty, you will have the meat in the cocoanut absolutely before you.

The Kellogg people are wrong in endeavoring to reply upon the right to fix the price by reason of the patented package. The patented package gives them no rights which they do not otherwise inherently have to fix the price of their specialty, the Kellogg Corn Flakes. Mr. Rector clearly states that; Mr. Brandeis clearly states the same.

If you chose to run a special milk farm and put up your carefully prepared milk in patented bottles, the patented bottle has nothing to do with the case, but you ought to have the absolute right to stamp on those bottles “Graham Farm Milk” and fix the price at which it is to be bought by the consumer because it is the special product of your genius and painstaking care, and you make of it by the character you give to it a specialty article and it is of absolute value to the consumer to have the privilege of buying that at the price you fix with your reputation behind it.

I certainly feel that this question is all one-sided in our favor.

In the recent Sanatogen decision the Supreme Court was divided five to four. The powerful influence of Chief Justice White in what I consider the wrong direction is clearly apparent. There are rocks on the track ahead of the Supreme Court in pursuing its lines of thought in this direction. The whole error of the Court comes about through the fact that it regards an article as sold when it is sold by the producer to the wholesaler or retailer. Mr. Thomas A. Edison clearly set forth that in a recent article by him, of which I enclose you a copy, in which he painstakingly shows the evolution by a little manufacturer from first dealing with his own individual agents, then expanding into the use of the natural channels of commerce and trade—the wholesaler and retailer. The manufacturer of a specialty has a perfect right to sell through his agent and fix the consumer’s price, but when he desires to use the natural channels of trade and to also fix the price to the consumer upon which price being maintained actually depends the success of his business and his satisfaction of the consumer, and sell his goods through wholesalers and retailers, he becomes a conspirator in restraint of trade and indictable under the Sherman Act. Could anything possibly be more inconsistent with sound business or more opposed to public welfare?

Yours very truly,

President

HBJ-B

Gillson and Gillson Attorneys, Chicago

June 2, 1913

Milton Tibbetts, Esq.,

Patent Counsel,

Packard Motor Car Co.,

Detroit, Michigan

Dear Sir:

I thought that you might be interested to have some information which I have recently obtained regarding the Oldfield Bill. The general impression at Washington, particularly among the Patent Office Examiners, appears to be that this bill will become a law, in substantially its present form, during the regular session of congress, which begins in December. Five of the seven members of the senate committee on patents are understood to be in favor of the bill.

However, the fate of the bill seems to actually depend upon what occurs in the house. That is to say, if it passes the house it will also be passed in the senate, whereas, if the house rejects it or does not act upon it the senate will take no action whatever. Mr. Oldfield has already presented the bill to the new house.

The house committee on patents has not yet been organized Mr. Oldfield expects to be reappointed chairman of the committee when it is organized. If he receives the appointment it is expected that he will vigorously push the measure with a strong chance of its being adopted. The only other candidate for the position is Congressman Morrison of Indiana. Mr. Morrison is opposed to the Oldfield Bill. Should he be selected as chairman of the house committee or patents, he will push legislation looking to an appropriation for a new Patent Office building and modern equipment and the Oldfield Bill will be shelved.

As you doubtless know, the committee appointments in the house are now made by the ways and means committee. I do not know what the practice of this committee is in making selections for the other committees. It would seem very desirable that Mr. Morrison should be selected as chairman of the committee on patents instead of Mr. Oldfield. If you have any idea that members of the committee on ways and means will consult the wishes of their constituents in making slections for the other committees, I will be glad to know it. I can supply you with a list of the names of the congressmen who constitute the committee on ways and means, also the members of the senate committee on patents.

Yours truly,

Charles B. Gillson.

CBG/R

My dear Mr. Joy:—

This letter is to report to you developements [sic] in our attitude to the price list question, the facts in which you outlined to me in your office last Monday.

I am perfectly frank to say that in that interview you made a thorough convert of me and a careful weighting of the data contained in your various exhibits of printed matter, merely confirms my belief that the only possible ground is that which you have taken. Naturally, this is my personal opinion.

Between this point and making the matter one of [The Philadelphia] North American editorial policy, there naturally exists a big gulf. In a matter of such importance, despite our friendship for the Packard Company, we could not adopt the issue merely because it is YOURS. It is only after solid thought and investigation, we had made it OURS, that it could be presented to the public as North American creed. 

Therefore, I submitted the matter to Mr. VanValkenburg [sic], who was very much interested, naturally, since the problem follows lines along which he has made extended researches. We spent all of one evening and all of one morning discussing the matter, my effort being simply to convey to him, the exact basis of your reasoning. As a result of our conversation, Mr. VanValkenburg has instructed our Washington correspondent, who is always consulted in matters of national policy, to make a thorough investigation. 

Mr. VanValkenburg has already formed his opinion, but will take no definite position until he is in possession of further data from Washington.

Should the final weight of all the facts, make his view coincide with yours, The North American will deal with the subject with characteristic energy and in a manner which I am sure will be encouraging not only to yourself personally, but to sound business men generally.

In this connection, I will keep you advised of developements.

I may also add that Mr. VanValkenburg was particularly interested in that portion of your testimony before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce in Washington, when you voiced the layman’s difficulty in understanding just what is meant in the Sherman Anti Trust Law by the phrase “In Restraint of Trade.”

Mr. Van Valkenburg [sic] believes that the great mass of honest business men share the difficulty, but thinks that the ambiguity rests not in any defect of the statute itself, which is based on the solid sense of the Common Law of England, but in the interpretations which courts have given to the law.

It is the North American’s opinion that there are such things as beneficent combinations, that all are not at all in restraint of trade, and that the only ones that should call for the repressive operation of the law are those which constitute a monopoly in restraint of trade.

I am enclosing you, therefore, correspondence between Mr. VanValkenburg and Woodrow Wilson at a time when Mr. Wilson was Governor of New Jersey. I think you will find in Mr. VanValkenburg’s letter, an interesting discussion of the Anti Trust law and errors of interpretation.

The subject is a big one, and entirely apart from any personal relations which have existed between your company and The North American, it is a matter of pleasure for us to cooperate with you in the discussion of an issue that is so important to business.

With best personal respects, I am,

Yours very truly,

THE NORTH AMERICAN

Geo. W. Graham,

Sporting Editor

[Attached: E.A. VanValkenburg’s six-page letter of June 21, 1911, to Governor Wilson, and his one-page response of June 28. Next item in the file of Joy's papers at University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library is a June 2, 1913 letter to Milton Tibbets, Packard Motor Car Company, concerning Oldfield bill, from Edward Rector, of Rector, Hibben, Davis & MacAuley, Attorneys, Chicago: “I think the privilege of maintaining prices and trade restrictions under cover of patents has been carried to ridiculous extremes in some cases… I have no patience with the contention that a manufacturer should not be allowed to maintain a uniform price upon his own goods in all other reasonable ways so far as he may be able to do so…”]

William Howard Taft

Cincinnati, Ohio

Culebra, Canal Zone,

February 6, 1909

My dear Sir:

I received your telegram from Detroit, Mich., sent to me at Charleston, and forwarded to me by wireless on board the U.S.S. North Carolina.

My views with respect to a tariff commission have been published, as also my views with regard to the prompt passing of a tariff bill in accordance with the promise of the Republican platform. I quite realize the necessary halt that the consideration and discussion of any new tariff bill brings about in business. All I can say is that I hope the prompt passage of a satisfactory bill will make the halt in the present instance as short and as little injurious as possible.

Very sincerely yours,

Speaker’s Room,

House of Representatives,

Washington, D.C.

March 26, 1910

My dear Sir:-

Please accept my thanks for your favor of 24th inst. I appreciate your kind words of approcal [sic] and esteem.

In my opinion, it is better to fight and fail, keeping the faith of the party, than it is to win at the sacrifice of Republican principles.

Again thanking you, I am, with respect, etc.,

Yours truly,

[Illegible signature of Joseph Gurney Cannon]

Cameron House

Fox & Smith, Proprietors

La Crosse, Wis.

Oct. 27, 1887

Dear James

Your letter from Tomah rec’d. You were kind in offering me your house to make myself at home in & in making such arrangements with Billy. The evening after you left I saw Henry Bennington, who talked in such glowing terms of the hunting north on the Valley Road about 25 miles from the line that I had made up my mind to go up there unless I heard from Harry King. Billy said he would go also and be gone on a hunt during next week. Accordingly having decided to stay I went in on the ridges in west with Billy & Jack Plunkett on the following day, that is yesterday, and watched the ridges while they stopped the dams. I did not see any fresh tracks all the way to Billy’s lowest dam—Even across Billy’s marsh to where the heavy timber used to stand there was nothing worth following. However there were 3 tracks made on Billy’s ridge probably the night after the day of our hunt, all going north. After eating lunch Billy showed me the direction of Shra’s Store from his lower dam and said I might run across a shot if I went thro’ that way & as I wanted the mail I started— I suppose I went across sixteen— Well on the way I came across two tracks which we had probably scared up by our racket at Billy’s shanty— I followed them awhile but they were running like smoke before a gale so I left them and got across to Shra’s about 4 P.M. with out having seen anything else new. The mail contained the letter from you and also the one from Harry King.—Well, I crawled home pretty well tired after my walk across the marshes & took off my boots, brought some wood, built a fire & got comfortably settled to read my letter & yours, about 5 P.M. Reading yours first, that is the one from Tomah, I thought I could not do better than accept your kind offer to stay in R.—a while longer.

I tho’t of you & Emilie in the caboose the evening after you left & I was right lonesome for a short time, but I turned to Roe, who always helps me out—How did you come to know Braddock after not seeing him for nearly 20 years?—Yes, the calf arrived safely—I drove the team & Billy, with Jack McGlynn & some one else handled the calf and a very lively time they had.— That afternoon while standing near the deer pen, the buck made a run at the fence and I had a lively time to keep him in. He broke the fence pickets like matches & got his head thro’. I think he would have given me a lively time if I had been alone, but I held his horns so that he could not back or go ahead till Billy came with a club and so discouraged him from making any further attempts at escape by thumping him on the head that he finally quietly retired. Billy hit him hard enough to kill a cow, but he apparently enjoyed it until he got a settler between the eyes that made him silly. (Positively ill.)— After reading your letter I turned to the one from Harry King, scarcely hoping to find that it contained such good news for me.—I enclose the letter.—I decided to try and go that night so I set to work and before Billy got home was ready to go to the train—Billy was somewhat surprised but we got to the old depot and rode up to the Junction with a hand car & I got off all right— Billy is going to send you my guns & bird. I boxed them all before I left & told him to send them to you, as you said something about Fred’s being away & as I had not heard from him I tho’t that it might be very likely as this is about his time for going east, I believe.

I forgot to tell Billy about the express charges on my guns & so if you will fix that I would be much obliged.

I got into LaX at 8.35 this morning after spending the nite at the Sherman House,– many thanks for pointer—and as my train west, or rather down river, does not leave until 11.30 I have gathered in the city & tho’t I would drop you a line about my plans, or rather actions, as I have no what Mrs. Shelden calls plans.—I left R. in such haste that I am travelling in disguise, for I am in western costume. My dress suit, you know.

I don’t know what my address will be in Denver any more than I told you, but will let you know promptly—Please let them know at home, as about one letter at a time is my capacity. Tell them I am having a good time and so far I have been very well accommodated with fresh air & exercise—

Hope Emilie has recovered from her cold. I know she would like to sit by the big fire & get warm. No one will miss the open fire more than I, especially as, after I decided to stay I took the ax and finished splitting my pine wood.

Love to all. I will write father at first opportunity. Tell him I rec’d his letter, & hope to meet the bride in ’Frisco. Hope mother will not do too much in preparing for the Eldridges.

Your affte Bro,

Harry

If you have read all this you have my sympathy. I presume that if the train did not go for another hour I could work in 3 or 4 sheets more—This is the longest letter I ever wrote—Make note of it.—