The Sherman Act and the New Anti-Trust Legislation: I

Abstract

The recent additions to the federal legislation having to do with monopolies and trusts have followed upon three years of continued and vigorous discussion. In part, very likely, this general revival of interest in the control of the trusts was bound up with the growth of a general radical movement in politics, and more especially with the demand for a generally increased measure of government control of industry. But there is more than mere coincidence in the fact that this period of active public discussion followed immediately upon the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Standard Oil and American Tobacco cases. Before these decisions the Sherman act was a weapon which had never been fairly tested with respect to its efficacy for the purpose for which it was forged. But with its strength and its limitations at least partly uncovered, it became a fair target for criticism. Not only were the undertakings directly affected by these decisions of great magnitude and with far-reaching affiliations, but, what is more important, each was precisely the sort of undertaking against which the statute was primarily directed. Whether or not labor organizations, railroad combinations, and price agreements affecting a limited area were intended to be covered by the condemnation of the law might afford some ground for debate, 20I

How the Digital Economy Challenges the Neoliberal Agenda: Lessons from the Antitrust Policies

“…Most economists were first reluctant to accept the antitrust legislation. Even Allyn Young, although he supported the law, admitted that its scope and application needed clarification (Young 1915). The full acceptation of the law took place during the 1930s.…”

De la Grande Guerre à la National Recovery Administration (1917-1935)

“…Elle était donc pour le moins sceptique quant à ce qui était présenté comme relevant d'une économie de tableau noir. La concentration était en effet conçue comme un gage d'efficacité (Young, 1915) ; la coordination des firmes apparaissait comme un moyen d'éviter une concurrence ruineuse (Kirat et Marty, 2020). Dans le même temps, les juristes faisaient montre d'une certaine réticence vis-à-vis de l'Antitrust.…”

From the First World War to the National Recovery Administration (1917-1935) - The Case for Regulated Competition in the United States during the Interwar Period

“…The more conservative saw it as a risk to the fundamental rights of property rights and contractual freedom. Progressives harbored a distrust of antitrust based both on how it was implemented by general common law courts rather than government agencies and in the market model on which it was based (Young, 1915). Such conceptions can be interpreted in two ways during the period before the United States entered into the war.…”

“…and J.B. Clark (1912) and A. Young (1915), who tended to defend the Sherman Act, foreshadowing the shift of institutionalist economists of the early 1930s. 6 While it was not yet unanimously supported, the competitive model seemed to have been relatively accepted before the outbreak of the First World War.…”