Edwin Prescott Grosvenor, son of Prof. Edwin Augustus and Lillian (Waters) Grosvenor, both of whom survived him, was born at Constantinople, Turkey (nowadays Istanbul, Turkey) on October 25, 1875, where his father was then professor of history in Robert College.
With his twin brother, Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, Edwin Prescott Grosvenor entered Amherst College in the fall of 1893 and was graduated with the degree of A. B. , magna cum laude, in 1897.
Meanwhile, in 1900, he had received the degree of M. A. from Amherst College.
In 1901 he entered the Columbia University School of Law and three years later was graduated at the head of a class of 400.
In 1897-1901, Grosvenor taught for the most part at the Chestnut Hill Academy, in Philadelphia, where he was master of Latin and Greek.
Shortly after Grosvenor’s graduation, Henry W. Taft, who had been appointed by Attorney General Moody special assistant to prosecute the so-called licorice trust for violation of the federal antitrust laws, selected him as his assistant.
Later, in 1908, Grosvenor was appointed by Attorney General Bonaparte as special assistant to the attorney-general. He continued to serve in that capacity under Attomeys-General Wickersham and McReynolds until the latter part of 1913.
During this period he had a wide experience with the enforcement of the antitrust laws and the laws affecting interstate commerce. He wrote the briefs for the government in fourteen cases of large importance, eight of which were in the United States Supreme Court. His principal achievements were in the criminal proceedings against the night-riders in Kentucky, and in the civil and criminal proceedings against the bathtub trust.
The former cases were brought against the members of a tobacco growers’ association organized as a protest against the prices for leaf tobacco established by the tobacco trust. The growers agreed not to raise tobacco for a year.
To prevent others from producing they rode in bands at night to the plantations of recalcitrants, destroyed crops, flogged planters, burned warehouses, and even took from station platforms and sheds, and destroyed, tobacco which had been delivered to carriers for shipment in interstate commerce. Grosvenor marshaled the evidence, secured indictments, tried the cases and secured the conviction of several well-known citizens who had participated in these lawless acts.
During the pendency of these cases he was twice shot at from ambush and once in the court-room.
He prepared the brief and argued the case for the government on appeal and secured affirmance of the convictions in the United States circuit court of appeals at Cincinnati. The so-called “bathtub” trust was a combination of manufacturers and dealers in plumbing supplies, camouflaged under pretended licenses to use certain patent rights.
Grosvenor penetrated this disguise, secured convictions of the individual defendants, and won from the Supreme Court a decision which effectively prevents the extension of a patent monopoly beyond the particular invention or process described in it. This decision constitutes a landmark in the development of the antitrust law. It has been cited many times by the lower federal courts and has been frequently referred to and quoted from in the Supreme Court.
On January 1, 1914, at the invitation of former Attorney-General Wickersham, Grosvenor joined the old established law firm of Strong & Cadwalader, in New York City, which was then reorganized under the name of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, and continued in that association until his death.
As a result of his work in the Department of Justice he was recognized as a leader in the field of law referred to. His advice was widely sought and he was retained as counsel in a number of important causes. His candor at times led him with almost brutal sincerity to point out to clients that they were trying to fool not him only but themselves also, in clothing with statements of legal purpose, agreements whose actual objects were to accomplish forbidden ends. The line of safety is not always easy to trace.
But when the Fur Dealers Association, organized and conducted under his advice, was attacked by the government, he successfully defended it and secured from Judge Bondy in the United States District Court a decision which was acquiesced in by the government and which is one of the landmarks of the law affecting trade associations. During the war Grosvenor served in the Military Intelligence Division, office of the chief of staff, with the rank of captain.
He died of pneumonia after a very short illness at his home in New York.
Edwin Prescott Grosvenor fully understood and was in sympathy with the principles underlying the antitrust laws, but he also was alive to the injustice of over-zealous prosecution by government attorneys, as well as the danger of business men yielding to the temptation to cloak their actual purpose to destroy competition, under the guise of exchanging information for trade purposes.
His fearless, able, and successful conduct of these prosecutions established his reputation for vigor and courage.
On October 26, 1918, Edwin Prescott Grosvenor was married to Thelma Cudlipp of Richmond, Virginia, a painter of recognized ability, who with their two daughters survived him.
