by The First Major Attempt to Curb Monopoly Power in the Industrial Age
This nomination for Senator John Sherman and the U.S. Congress, which passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. This was America’s first federal attempt to curb the power of the giant trusts and monopolies that dominated the Gilded Age economy. Its core provisions outlawed contracts, combinations, or conspiracies in restraint of trade and monopolization. While vague and initially weakly enforced, it established the principle that the federal government had a role in maintaining competitive markets. Its later use by Theodore Roosevelt (“trust-busting”) and in the breakup of Standard Oil (1911) proved its potential. The Sherman Act demonstrated that in a democratic capitalist society, there is a legitimate public interest in preventing excessive private economic power, establishing competition policy as a permanent feature of the modern business environment.
