Sherman Antitrust Act

Context

Beginning in 1865 events began to coalesce into a set of circumstances that provided a foundation for unprecedented growth in business and industrialization, allowing for the rise of big business and an increasing gap between the extremely wealthy and the very poor.

First, the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865) ushered in unparalleled changes in virtually every aspect of American life. In the South, Reconstruction—the period immediately following the end of the Civil War from 1865 to 1877—saw an influx of northern businessmen and industrialization into the defeated Confederacy. This influx brought new technologies, improved transportation methods, and northern businessmen who were hoping to make their fortune in a traditionallyagrarian and now impoverished region. With the war over and the country united again, the nation concentrated on rebuilding itself based on an industrial global economy rather than an agrarian one.

The period between 1865 and 1900 is also termed the Second Industrial Revolution. This period marks the emergence of the great global industrial powers, including Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Advances were seen in steam power, steel industries, petroleum, chemical industries, and communication as well as electricity and the internal combustion engine. In addition, improvements in the manufacturing of goods led to mass production and the assembly line. The steel industry alone grew from producing about seventy tons in 1870 to over 4 million tons in just twenty years. These businesses were truly global. For instance, improvements in transportation meant that businesses could get their goods to more places more quickly. The steam engine and better railways meant that businesses were no longer dependent on access to ports and waterways to ship goods. Just the use of refrigerated railcars meant a boon for the meatpacking industry.

All of these advances in mechanization and production led to the rise of big business. As 1900 approached, banking, meatpacking, oil, railroads, steel, and manufacturing were all dominated by a few huge corporations run by corporate giants like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie. These “robber barons,” men who dominated their industries, lived lives of extreme privilege and wealth. In 1861, when the Civil War began, the United States was home to approximately four hundred millionaires, but by 1892 that number had risen to over four thousand. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company alone was worth over $600 million. As the wealthy became even more rich and their displays of opulence and waste even more extravagant, they came under more and more scrutiny and criticism. The overt displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption led the writer Mark Twain to refer to the period as the “Gilded Age.”

One of the most outspoken groups of critics was the muckrakers. These journalists and writers sought to uncover waste, crime, corruption, and abuse in the private and public sectors. One ofthe most famous novels of the time was Upton Sinclair's Jungle (1906). In the book, Sinclair uses an immigrant family to show the level of poverty and terrible working and living conditions of the working class, most of whom lived in crowded, dirty tenements and worked from dawn until dusk in dangerous and dirty conditions for very little pay.

With this extreme wealth and luxury juxtaposed against extreme poverty and hopelessness, the time was ripe for reform. The era saw a whole host of reformers, such as Jane Addams, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who opened the Hull House to help immigrants improve their lives in city slums; even the robber baron and ruthless businessman Andrew Carnegie donated millions of dollars to charities, hospitals, libraries, and schools. The federal government also sought to initiate reform with such legislation as the Interstate Commerce Act, the McKinley Tariff, the Pendleton Act, and the Sherman Antitrust Act.