Board of Trade of City of Chicago v. United States
| Decision Date | 04 March 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 98,98 |
| Citation | 38 S.Ct. 242,246 U.S. 231,62 L.Ed. 683 |
| Parties | BOARD OF TRADE OF CITY OF CHICAGO et al. v. UNITED STATES |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
[Syllabus from pages 231-232 intentionally omitted] Mr. Henry S. Robbins, of Chicago, Ill., for appellants.
Mr. G. Carroll Todd, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the United States.
[Arguments of Council on pages 232-235 intentionally omitted.]
Chicago is the leading grain market in the world. Its Board of Trade is the commercial center through which most of the trading in grain is done. The character of the organization is described in Board of Trade v. Christie Grain & Stock Co., 198 U. S. 236, 25 Sup. Ct. 637, 49 L. Ed. 1031. Its 1600 members include brokers, commission merchants, dealers, millers maltsters, manufacturers of corn products and proprietors of elevators. Grains there dealt in are graded according to kind and quality and are sold usually 'Chicago weight, inspection and delivery.' The standard forms of trading are: (a) Spot sales; that is, sales of grain already in Chicago in railroad cars or elevators for immediate delivery by order on carrier or transfer of warehouse receipt. (b) Future sales; that is, agreements for delivery later in the current or in some future month. (c) Sales 'to arrive'; that is, agreements to deliver on arrival grain which is already in transit to Chicago or is to be shipped there within a time specified. On every business day sessions of the Board are held at which all bids and sales are publicly made. Spot sales and future sales are made at the regular sessions of the Board from 9:30 a. m. to 1:15 p. m., except on Saturdays, when the session closes at 12 m. Special sessions, termed the 'call,' are held immediately after the close of the regular session, at which sales 'to arrive' are made. These sessions are not limited as to duration, but last usually about half an hour. At all these sessions transactions are between members only; but they may trade either for themselves or on behalf of others. Members may also trade privately with one another at any place, either during the sessions or after, and they may trade with nonmembers at any time except on the premises occupied by the Board.1
Purchases of grain 'to arrive' are made argely from country dealers and farmers throughout the whole territory tributary to Chicago, which includes besides Illinois and Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and even South and North Dakota. The purchases are sometimes the result of bids to individual country dealers made by telegraph or telephone either during the sessions or after; but most pur- chases are made by the sending out from Chicago by the afternoon mails to hundreds of country dealers, offers to buy at the prices named, any number of carloads, subject to acceptance before 9:30 a. m. on the next business day.
In 1906 the Board adopted what is known as the 'call' rule. By it members were prohibited from purchasing or offering to purchase, during the period between the close of the call and the opening of the session on the next business day, any wheat, corn, oats or rye 'to arrive' at a price other than the closing bid at the call. The call was over, with rare exceptions, by 2 o'clock. The change effected was this: Before the adoption of the rule, members fixed their bids throughout the day at such prices as they respectively saw fit; after the adoption of the rule, the bids had to be fixed at the day's closing bid on the call until the opening of the next session.
In 1913 the United States filed in the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, this suit against the Board and its executive officers and directors, to enjoin the enforcement of the call rule, alleging it to be in violation of the Anti-Trust Law of July 2, 1890, c. 647, 26 Stat. 209. The defendants admitted the adoption and enforcement of the call rule, and averred that its purpose was not to prevent competition or to control prices, but to promote the convenience of members by restricting their hours of business and to break up a monopoly in that branch of the grain trade acquired by four or five warehousemen in Chicago. On motion of the government the allegations concerning the purpose of establishing the regulation were stricken from the record. The case was then heard upon evidence; and a decree was entered which declared that defendants became parties to a combination or conspiracy to restrain interstate and foreign trade and commerce 'by adopting, acting upon and enforcing' the 'call' rule; and enjoined them from* act- ing upon the same or from adopting or acting upon any similar rule.
No opinion was delivered by the District Judge. The government proved the existence of the rule and described its application and the change in business practice involved. It made no attempt to show that the rule was designed to or that it had the effect of limiting the amount of grain shipped to Chicago; or of retarding or accelerating shipment; or if raising or depressing prices; or of discriminating against any part of the public; or that it resulted in hardship to any one. The case was rested upon the bald proposition, that a rule or agreement by which men occupying positions of...
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