The Right to Sell

In St. Petersburg, Fla., slight, dapper James Earl Webb, 49, operates what he calls "the world's most unusual drugstore." Unlike most independent druggists, he never felt that he needed the protection of "fair-trade" (i.e., minimum-price) laws to protect him from the competition of big chain stores. Instead, he went out after customers with such unorthodox loss-leader promotions as selling two thousand $1 bills for 95-c- apiece. By selling everything from meat and liquor to haircuts and ladies' ready-to-wear, he boosted the annual gross of his hustle-bustling "Webb's City" from a first-year $39,000 (in 1925) to some $12 million currently.

While doing so, "Doc" Webb ran smack up against the 1939 fair-trade laws which Florida, and 44 other states, had passed at the insistence of organized druggists as protection against price-cutting. When Webb put on a sale of Hiram Walker whisky below the fair-trade minimum,

Hiram Walker distillers got an injunction to stop him from selling it.* Webb filed a countersuit charging that the state's fair-trade law was unconstitutional. (During litigation Webb stopped retailing liquor, is uncertain now about starting up again.)

Last week, Doc Webb won the right to sell anything at any price he pleases. In a 6-to-1 decision, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the state fair-trade law was unconstitutional. Wrote Chief Justice Alto Adams: "The act is arbitrary and unreasonable . . ." and an unlawful use of the state police power because it stifles competition and tends to foster monopolies.

Alarmed, the Florida State Pharmaceutical Association called emergency meetings to push an appeal for a rehearing on the decision. Cried Secretary-Manager R. Q. Richards: "If this decision stands, I predict that within three years at least 300 businesses, most of them small units, will go broke." Said jubilant Doc Webb: "For the man in the street, it is the people's victory against price-fixing."

In Congress, federal fair-trade laws also were under attack. Brooklyn's Democratic Congressman Donald L. O'Toole introduced a bill to repeal the Miller-Tydings Act of 1937, which permits states to pass price-fixing laws that might otherwise violate the federal antitrust act.

* Last month; Hiram Walker got a similar injunction against Sloppy Joe's liquor store in Denver for selling Imperial whisky at $3.99-$4.50 a quart (fair-trade price: $4.59).

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