The patent system has lately been subjected to investigations by committees of Congress, and reforms have been proposed to meet some of the most serious criticisms. In recent publications commenting on these discussions it has been suggested that opposition to the patent system is a new development. A writer of a “history of the patent monopoly” asserted that “there never has been, until the present time, any criticism of this type of exclusive privilege,” and he attributed the allegedly new attitude to “modern witch-hunters,” “hungry aspirants to public office,” and, by innuendo, to enemies of all private property.

It appears to legal historians that the Supreme Court of the United States must have gone off the main track in 1933 when it handed down the celebrated Appalachian Coals decision upholding a joint selling agency. Only six years before, the Court had condemned a similar collective arrangement maintained by the Trenton Potteries; and seven years later, in 1940, the Court rendered a decision in the Socony-Vacuum Oil Case that revealed an abrupt return to its generally firm attitude toward collective action on the part of business concerns. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to reconcile the 1933 Appalachian Coals decision with the 1940 Socony-Vacuum Oil decision, and, as prices rose and shortages developed during the 1940's, the judicial attitude toward restraint of trade in various forms became progressively stiffer and stiffer. A parallel shift in the climate of court opinion against trade associations can be noted in the 1920's by comparing the decisions near the beginning of the decade, when trade was lax and prices were soft, with those a few years later when prosperity was again in evidence. One might even pose the question: Do the courts follow business conditions, as they are alleged to follow the election returns?

The British Workmen's Compensation Acts of 1897 and 1899 were “astonishing” to contemporaries and have not been adequately explained by historians. Although passed under a Conservative-Liberal Unionist Cabinet, these acts put heavy burdens upon industry and agriculture, interests that were very influential in both of these parties. “It was no wonder that Tories asked themselves what they were coming to, nor that the usual answer to the question was that they were being swallowed by Mr. Chamberlain.”