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Counterpoint to Reform: Gilbert H. Montague and the Business of Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Wyatt Wells
Wyatt Wells
Affiliation:
WYATT WELLS is professor of history at Auburn University Montgomery. The author would like to thank his family, Fletcher McDowell, and the staffs of the Special Collections Division at the New York Public Library and the Interlibrary Loan Office atAuburn UniversityMontgomery for their help with this article.
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Abstract

During a career that stretched from the Progressive Era through the 1950s, Gilbert H. Montague served businesses as a lawyer and lobbyist, managing relations between companies and the government. In this capacity he had a significant impact on the evolution of regulation, particularly antitrust law. Just as important, his career provides valuable insight into the activities and attitudes of the class made up of corporate lawyers and lobbyists, which constituted an important part of the system of regulated capitalism that emerged in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2004 , pp. 423 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2004

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References

1 See Hawley, Ellis, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence (Princeton, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCraw, Thomas, Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, and Alfred E. Kahn (Cambridge, Mass., 1984)Google Scholar; and Vietor, Richard, Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Vietor does deal extensively with the policies that companies adopted in response to regulation, while McCraw's analysis of Brandeis centers largely on Brandeis's second career as the “people's lawyer” in the 1900s. But Vietor does not examine the role of corporate lawyers and lobbyists in managing regulation, and Brandeis in his legal efforts consciously arrayed himself against big business.

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13 Montague, Trusts of Today, 39.

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22 U.S. House, Hearing before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Amending Federal Trade Commission Act, 80th Cong., 2nd sess., 1948, p. 133. In the state of New York, the first level of courts were called Supreme Courts.

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32 Montague specialized in the letters of the poet Emily Dickinson, to whom he was related. His collection, which he eventually donated to Harvard, forms the basis of much of our knowledge of her personal life.

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37 U.S. House, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, To Prevent Discrimination in Prices and to Prove for Publicity of Prices to Dealers and the Public, 63rd Cong., 2nd & 3rd sess., 1915.

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47 Gilbert Montague to Amy Montague, 21 June 1929, Montague-Collier Papers, box 19.

48 Montague, “Enforcement of Antitrust Laws by the Courts or a Commission,” 179.

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55 Ibid., 20 Jan. 1931, p. 14.

56 Ibid., 29 May 1931, p. 11.

57 Ibid., 6 July 1932, p. 11.

58 Ibid.

59 Montague to David Mannes, 19 Apr. 1932, Montague-Collier Papers, box 5.

60 Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, 24; Gilbert Montague to Amy Montague, 2 Aug. 1933, Montague-Collier Papers, box 19.

61 New York Times, 23 Sept. 1933, p. 7.

62 Ibid., 13 July 1934, p. 24.

63 Gilbert Montague to Amy Montague, 9 June 1934, Montague-Collier Papers, box 19.

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68 Montague, “New Deal Costs and the High Cost of Living,” 254.

69 Montague, “Is the NRA Fascistic?” 157.

70 Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, remains the best study of the NRA.

71 Montague to Mrs. George Wyeth, 14 Aug. 1934.

72 Montague to Franklin Roosevelt, 12 July 1937, Montague-Collier Papers, box 20.

73 Roosevelt's proposal would allow the president to appoint a new justice for each sitting justice over the age of seventy, ostensibly to help elderly jurists carry their workload. In 1937, six justices were over seventy.

74 Montague to Harriet Fleischl Pilpel, 19 June 1935.

75 Justice Owen Roberts, who had sided with conservatives on previous decisions, changed his vote.

76 Montague, Gilbert, “Coronation of the Democratic Principle,” Vital Speeches of the Day 3 (15 May 1937): 474Google Scholar.

77 Montague, , The Robinson-Patman Act and Its Administration (Chicago, 1937)Google Scholar.

78 Amending Federal Trade Commission Act, 128.

79 Montague to Roosevelt, 12 July 1937.

80 Montague to Amy Collier, 16 Sept. 1937, Montague-Collier Papers, box 20.

81 Amending Federal Trade Commission Act, 127.

82 Montague, , “Reform of Administrative Procedure,” Michigan Law Review 40 (Feb. 1942): 513CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Montague to Louis Brandeis, 15 Apr. 1932, Louis Brandeis Papers, University of Louisville Law School, reel 50.

84 Amending Federal Trade Commission Act, 128–29.

85 Montague, “Reform of Administrative Procedure,” 537. This article reviews several recommendations for administrative reform, including some from Great Britain. Nevertheless, it is not hard to recognize which proposals Montague favored.

86 Ibid., 507.

87 Ibid., 520–31.

88 Ibid., 520.

89 Roscoe Pound to Montague, 24 Mar. 1948, Montague-Collier Papers, box 5. For a brief review of the act's requirements, see “The Federal Administrative Procedure Act: Codification or Reform?” Yale Law Journal 56 (1947): 670–705CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 The Montagues had no children.

91 U.S. Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee of the Judiciary, Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions, 81st Cong., 1st & 2nd sess., 1950, pp. 186–7.

92 Amending Sections 7 and 11 of the Clayton Act, 1947, p. 163.

93 Ibid., 139.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid., 145.

96 New York Times, 6 Feb. 1961, p. 23.

97 The Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antirust Laws (Washington, DC, 1955), 54Google Scholar.

98 Ibid., 122.

99 Ibid., 393.

100 Freyer, Tony, Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880–1990 (New York, 1992), 302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Resale price maintenance is the one area in which Montague dissented significantly from the recommendations of The Attorney General's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws (p. 220), which urged the repeal of legislation that allowed producers of branded, packaged goods to set their retail prices.