In 1893 came the climax of futility. The American Sugar Refining Company had purchased refineries in Philadelphia which enabled it to control, with its other plants, ninety-eight per cent. of the refining business in the country. The government asked the courts to cancel the purchase on the ground that it was contrary to the Sherman law, and to order the return of the properties to their former owners. The Supreme Court declared that the mere purchase of sugar refineries was not an act of interstate commerce and that it could not be said to restrain such trade, and it refused to grant the request of the government. Unhappily the prosecuting officers of the Attorney-General's office had drawn up their case badly, making their complaint the purchase, not the resulting restraint. No direct evidence was presented to show that interstate commerce in sugar and the control of the sugar business and of prices were the chief objects of the combination. To the public it seemed that the corporations were impregnable, for even the United States government could not control them.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The early history of anti-trust agitation centers about Henry D. Lloyd. His earliest article, "The Story of a Great Monopoly," is in The Atlantic Monthly (Mar., 1881); his classic account of trust abuses is Wealth against Commonwealth (1894); consult also C.A. Lloyd, Henry D. Lloyd (2 vols., 1912). Early and valuable articles in periodicals are in Political Science Quarterly, 1888, pp. 78-98; 1889, pp. 296-319; W.Z. Ripley, Trusts, Pools, and Corporations (rev. ed., 1916), is useful; B.J. Hendrick, Age of Big Business (1919), is interesting and contains a bibliography. Ida M. Tarbell, History of the Standard Oil Company (2 vols., 1904), is carefully done and a pioneer work. Other valuable accounts are: S.C.T. Dodd, Trusts (1900), by a former Standard Oil attorney; Eliot Jones, The Anthracite Coal Combination in the United States (1914); J.W. Jenks, Trust Problem (1900), contains a summary of the economies of large scale production; J.W. Jenks and W.E. Clark, The Trust Problem (4th ed., 1917), is scholarly and complete; J.D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1916), is a brief defence of the Standard Oil Company; W.H. Taft, Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court (1914), summarizes a few important decisions on the Sherman law. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888), describes an economic Utopia. Early proposed anti-trust laws, together with the Congressional debates on the subject are in Senate Documents, 57th Congress, 2nd session, vol. 14, No. 147 (Serial Number 4428). No complete historical study has yet been made of the effects of industrial development, immediately after the Civil War, on politics and the structure of American society.
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[1] Charles M. Schwab mentions an unusual example. Under the direction of Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy steel magnate, he had a new mill erected, which seemed likely to meet all the demands which would be placed upon it. But in the process of building it Schwab had seen a single way in which it could be improved. Carnegie at once gave orders to have the mill taken down before being used at all, and rebuilt on the improved plan.
[2] It was not until 1894 that Lloyd published Wealth Against Commonwealth, but his pen had been busy constantly between 1881 and 1894.
[3] Cf. above, pp. 89-93, on Fourteenth Amendment.
[4] The authorship of the Sherman law has often been a source of controversy. Senator John Sherman, as well as other members, introduced anti-trust bills in the Senate in 1888. Senator Sherman's proposal was later referred to the Judiciary Committee, of which he was not a member. The Committee thoroughly revised it. Senator Hoar, who was on the Committee, thought he remembered having written it word for word as it was adopted. Recent investigation seems to prove that the senator's recollection was faulty and that Edmunds wrote most of it, while Hoar, Ingalls and George wrote a section each and Evarts part of a sentence. If this is the fact, it seems most nearly accurate to say that Sherman started the enterprise and that almost every member of the Judiciary committee, especially Edmunds, shared in its completion.