The New Trustbuster

Not long after California's Judge Stanley N. (for Nelson) Barnes, 53, became chief trustbuster of the Eisenhower Administration, he was asked: "When is the Department [of Justice] going to stop this ambushing of the innocent businessman?" Last week, before an SRO crowd of lawyers gathered in Boston to hear his first major policy address, Assistant Attorney General Barnes gave a sharp answer: only when the businessman is really innocent. So far, he observed dryly, he had found "some, but not many, of these 'innocents.' " Anyone who thought that the Republicans intended to scrap or vitiate the antitrust laws had guessed wrong. Said Barnes: the antitrust laws are a "nonpartisan article of faith."

Since he took office four months ago, Barnes has been personally reviewing the 138 antitrust suits now in the works, most of them Fair Deal legacies. Said Barnes: "My study of pending cases to date has convinced me that there are very few that will ultimately be terminated by dismissal." But in July he ordered the Department of Justice to drop the suit against the Columbia Gas & Electric Corp. (now the Columbia Gas System, Inc.), and last week Barnes announced the expected dismissal (TIME, Aug. 31) of the eight-year-old case of United States v. Cement Institute. This suit could be dropped, he explained, because its objectives have been accomplished: dissolution of the Cement Institute, and abandonment by most of the 89 co-defendant cement companies of the uniform (basing-point) price system to which the Government had objected as a conspiracy.

A Fresh Approach. If new violations appear in other industries, said Barnes, his Antitrust Division will start new suits. He has already started some. In July he began a new prosecution against Aluminum Co. of America, whose onetime monopoly had been declared ended after one of the most protracted suits on record (TIME, June 12, 1950). The complaint charged that Alcoa's contract to import 600,000 tons of Canadian aluminum from its divorced ex-subsidiary, Aluminium Ltd. of Canada, was an attempt to bring the two together in a new monopoly. When gasoline and fuel oil prices rose two months ago, Barnes sent FBI agents around to check into possible price-fixing. Last week the word in Washington was that the division would soon file a complaint against the oil industry, charging a "price-leadership" conspiracy. One reported goal: to separate production and retailing, much as production and exhibiting were broken up in the movie industry.

In running his division, Trustbuster Barnes plans to use a fresh legal approach. Object: less litigation, more results. In two new unspecified cases, Barnes says he will put drafts of Government complaints on the desks of prospective defendants, hopes thereby to "persuade" them to abandon their objectionable monopolistic practices before even getting into court. And in another case, also unnamed, Barnes expects to make antitrust history: within 60 days, the Government and the defendant hope to submit the case to a federal court on a mutually agreed statement of facts, thereby sparing both parties the tedious months and years of testimony and fact-finding that have typified antitrust litigation, such as the investment banking case.

Twelve-Hour Day. Stanley Barnes is an affable, husky (6 ft. 2 in., 250 lbs.) ex-tackle from the University of California, who graduated from Harvard Law School, then practiced in San Francisco and Los Angeles. A former presiding judge of California's superior court, he was recommended for the antitrust job by Vice President Nixon. On his new job Barnes works a twelve-hour day, has already visited nine of the division's ten regional offices. Though he intends to enforce existing laws, he believes that the 30-odd antitrust statutes (dating from 1890) may need adjusting to 1953 economic facts. To examine that question, Barnes last week appointed a 57-man committee of eminent lawyers, professors, economists and Government officials. Cochairmen: Trustbuster Barnes and Michigan Law Professor S. (for Saul) Chesterfield Oppenheim, who does not believe that bigness is necessarily bad.

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