Sherman Antitrust Act

The Sherman Antitrust Act is an important piece of legislation in American history. It marks the first attempt at regulating monopolies, and the first law to use the constitutional power of regulating interstate commerce. Trusts were seen as detrimental to competition especially due to their unregulated nature. Democrats and Republicans were united in passing this measure, and they named trusts as "every contract, combination in the form of a trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce." This ambiguous wording led to the Sherman Antitrust Act to not be utilized for its original intent, however, and its first judicial interpretation of the act proved this. In United States v. E. C. Knight Co., the Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act didn't apply to manufacturing and thus didn't apply to E. C. Knight Co., even though the E. C. Knight Co. oversaw almost all sugar refineries in the United States; they considered this monopoly of manufacturing only indirectly related to interstate commerce and therefore not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The Sherman Antitrust Act was also misused because of the poorly worded phrase "restraint of trade." This allowed for big business, the original targets of this law, to sue labor organizations, whose strikes were often literally "in restraint of trade or commerce." In fact, this law was not used properly until the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, who, in 1902, found that the Northern Securities Company, which was headed by many millionaire monopoly moguls, was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Roosevelt busted more trusts in 1906 and 1907, notably Standard Oil, and President Taft, who had a total of forty-three antitrust cases in his term in office, followed suit.

Divine, Robert A., T. H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams. America Past and Present. Revised Sixth Edition, AP* Edition . Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2003. 588, 680-81. Print.

Act of July 2, 1890(Sherman Anti-Trust Act), July 2, 1890; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

KERMIT L. HALL. "E. C. Knight Co., United States v." The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Feb. 2011 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Web. 1 Feb 2011. <http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/uploads/monopolists_boss_senate.jpg>.