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Writings by the Hon. Peter S. Grosscup

JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS

Judge Peter S. Grosscup, a trust-buster and judicial statesman whose rulings helped shape trade and anti-monopoly laws in the early 20th century, wrote a series of articles whose insights are relevant to solving the economic crises of our own day. Largely forgotten by today's historians and economic thinkers, Grosscup's significance was described by the editor of one of the leading journals of his time:
Writings by the Hon. Peter S. Grosscup:
The Beef Trust Enjoined (1903)
How to Save the Corporation (1904)
Who Shall Own America? (1905)
The Rebirth of the Corporation
The Corporation and the People: Are We on the Right Track? (1907)
This article [How to Save the Corporation], written at a time when there is so much public discussion regarding the exact status of the great railroad corporations and trusts in this country, possesses a peculiar significance, force, and finality as coming from a federal judge so distinguished as Judge Grosscup. All of Judge Grosscup's decisions and public addresses have been marked, not only by a breadth of knowledge of the law, but by a keen sensitiveness to all the immediate problems and conditions of American life. He is more than a judge, he is a statesman. When the Rapid Transit problem in Chicago came before him, he considered not only its strict legal bearings, but made a thorough study of the whole subject of municipal transit, of its physical, financial and civic aspects. One of his earliest decisions as a federal judge was his dissenting opinion, afterward sustained by the Circuit Court of Appeals, upon the application to close the World's Columbian Exposition on Sunday; one of his latest was a decision enjoining the Beef Trust from combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade. At the time of the Northern Securities litigation Judge Grosscup was offered a large retainer — several times his judicial salary — to become attorney for the railroad combine. He refused, with the assertion that he must continue to protect the interests committed to his care. Judge Grosscup comes of old Dutch stock. He was born, 1852, in Ashland, Ohio; educated at Wittenberg College and the Boston Law School; practised his profession at Ashland, Ohio, and in Chicago; was appointed United States Judge of the northern district of Illinois, 1892, and Judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 1899. [Editor, McClure's Magazine, Feb. 1905]

From a 21st century perspective, Grosscup can also be viewed as a visionary of the Just Third Way, a populist who understood the economic basis for the sovereignty of the individual. Readers can see in Grosscup's words a philophical stream of thought that led to the binary economics of expanded ownership lawyer-economist Louis Kelso. Like Kelso, Judge Grosscup understood the role of the modern corporation in the economic process, and how ownership and governance of the corporation could become monopolized or democratized through its methods of finance. He, like Kelso, also understood the political consequences of direct corporate ownership by the few or by the many.

This series of his articles expresses Grosscup's keen understanding of the connection between power and property, as well as of the corrupting influence of concentrated power. Grosscup also expresses in his essays the importance of universalizing access to productive capital to every citizen as an essential foundation for a just free market system and an effective political democracy.

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