Since the end of the Civil War, powerful men, referred to as captains of industry, formed
trusts to control markets. They did this through their collusion, price-fixing, and anticompetitive
activities, which took a toll on competition and innovation. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was
passed to combat the harmful effect of trusts which the captains of industry controlled by
creating an uneven playing field through their size and scope. The act passed with strong public
support however due to the government’s inability to regulate these companies, even after
passage of the act, stronger measures were introduced and passed to help protect and open
markets to competition. Further, the U.S. government began to explore the idea
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Before explaining the effects of the Sherman Anti Trust law it is important to first
understand what a trust is. According to the dictionary (New Oxford American Dictionary), a
trust is a company which has or attempts to, through forcing competition out of business, gain
sole control of a market. This means that if the main suppliers of an item join together in a trust
then what they can do is either buy out competition or lower their prices to a point where
competitors cannot compete and have to shut down. Once all competition is bought out or
forced out of business, the trust can freely charge any price they want because their company is
the sole provider of that item. Many trusts or monopolies would usually underpay employees
and give them long hours.
An example of a harmful trust would be the infamous Standard Oil Trust. The trust was
formed in January, 1882 and according to linfo (www.linfo.com), “At that time, Standard Oil and
its affiliates controlled more than 90 percent of the oil refining capacity and most of the
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The law did more to break up unions, which fought for the average worker, than
harmful trusts due to their “illegal combinations”. This was a result from the political pressure
which trusts and monopolies were putting on the justice system because of the law’s weak
wording. According to linfo (www.linfo.com), “critics pointed out that it failed to define such
key terms as combination, conspiracy, monopoly and trust.”
As the public clamored for a fix, congress passed more laws to strengthen the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act. The main laws passed were the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the Robinson-Patman
Act of 1936, Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950, and the establishment of Federal Trade Commission.
The purpose of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act was to strengthen the wording of the law. According
to info (www.linfo.com), “The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 strengthened the Clayton Act by
prohibiting large sellers from offering different prices to different buyers if it resulted in harm to
even a single small firm,” while the purpose of the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950 was to further
strengthen the Clayton Act by preventing a firm from merging with a competitor by
The employers would coerce workers into signing the yellow dog contracts in order to secure their job, or to lease their lodging, as many workers stayed on sites that were owned by a company. This Act helped give the workers some freedom to make autonomous decisions. If the company did not use this tactic, then they would try to run the union by the company, which defeated the purpose and it was not a union (Norris-LaGuardia Act, n.d). The La Gaurdia Act was short lived, but did give the workers rights to refuse the contracts and the right to strike peacefully, the Wagner Act soon took over as the law on unfair labor practices, but the LaGuardia Act was never reapealed” The most important impact of Norris-LaGuardia was its antitrust exemption for organized labor. Norris-LaGuardia was also significant as a limitation on injunctions against violations of no-strike provisions in collective bargaining agreements (Bernstein,
The Norris-LaGuardia Act was implemented in 1932 in order to eradicate certain legal and judicial barriers against the actions of organized labor in the United States. The Rift between the trade unions and the employers are not unknown to the world, as this issue has been raising its head every now and then in the history of industrial and labor development. Many acts and legislations have been enacted throughout the past century to bring some kind of a balance between the relation of the unions and the employers of labor. Norris Laguardia Act of 1932 is one such act that was enacted work in favor of the organized labor. The adoption of this act, allowed Congress to liberate the organized labor from the most extreme controlling Federal court injunctions.
In the early 1900s, corporations and monopolies were major concerns, especially the larger corporations and monopolies that dominated the market and were controlled by trusts.
The Progressive Era was a time, between the Civil War and the start of the first world war, for development and growth for the American people. Muckrakers were journalists and news reporters that broke certain news coverage that Americans were not aware of. These journalists lead to the reform of many of the tragedies seen throughout the time period proving that the Progressive Era did address the issues that were brought upon the working class. The modification of the meat packing industry, the destruction of monopolies, and the circulation of the situations that occurred in the slums is examples of exactly what the muckrakers had done to raise awareness.
Primary Source Analysis- During the time of reconstruction, which was after the civil war, the government passed the 13, 14, and 15th amendment to give African Americas freedom and rights. The 15th amendment gave the former African American slaves the right to vote. Between 1890 and 1906, the "new" south wanted to eliminate this right for the African Americans. Any African American who fought for their rights would be faced with violence known as lynching, murdering of three or more people.
The Gilded Age is often recalled as one of the most significant periods in American history and for great reason. This era brought about rapid industrialization, introduced new technology and inventions, and the rise of corporations. As with most things, the Gilded Age also had its fair share of vices such as corruption in business and the blatant exploitation of laborers. As the frustration with these things began to build, politicians often distanced themselves from serious issues or flat our refused to properly address them. When politicians did attempt to address this issues, the measures taken were either insufficient or rescinded before anything could truly be effected.
The Pendleton act influenced the Corporations, the name for it was the Pennsylvania Idea. In the late 1800s’ senators, mainly republicans senators, the republicans that wanted to become president. For example William McKinley raised money by going directly to the corporations and ask them if you give me the money and past a favorable legislation or vise versa stop negative legislation, whatever it is in order for you to wrake in the big dollars. Teddy Roosevelt disagreed on what president William McKinley did after his assassination, Roosevelt made it his mission to regulate as well as making it completely fair in competition system in Capitalism. Teddy Roosevelt believed that money in politics was a negative influence in campaigns.
Trusts, or large monopolies, were corporations that combined and lowered their prices to drive competitors out of the business. This infuriated many americans at that time because it allowed such a small number of people to become wealthy, or even successful at all. When Theodore Roosevelt became president, he sympathized with workers unlike most of the presidents in the past who usually tried to help the corporations. As illustrated in Document A, Roosevelt wanted to hunt down the bad trusts ad put a leash on the good ones in order to regulate them. However, it only had a limited effect because the government was unable to control the activity of banks and railroads which were two of the most powerful industries in the world.
OUTLINE FOR DBQ ESSAY: HOW DEMOCRATIC WAS ANDREW JACKSON? I. INTRODUCTION (PARAGRAPH #1) A. Grabber sentence Democratic spirit began B. Background information about Andrew Jackson (use bullets here) Early life/Military Born on the border of North and South Carolina in 1767. He lost both of his parents by his teenage years and married Rachel Donelson.
Monopolistic trusts still had their feet planted firmly in politics, they passed laws that only benefited themselves, and allowed them to make more money (Doc D). Acts like the Mckinley acts (Passed through the billion dollars Congress) allowed for business to limit outside competition by raising the tax, forcing people to buy inside the country. The Previously mentioned granger laws were passed in 1870 but reversed by the supreme court in 1886 with the Wabash case, it was a Steel Railroad company who brought this to attention and was passed through bribes and other sorts of corruption. This was later Reversed by the Interstate commerce act, which stated the railroads must be reasonable; however, the government did not retain the right to verify what is reasonable or not. Showing the corruption in these industrial monopolies and their ties to the local and federal government.
The Early Industrial Revolution America in the 17th century was a time of exponential progress and innovation. The fledgling nation had now become a behemoth, and with thousands of new workers and immigrants flooding the U.S, they provided a reliable resource for cheap labor for the industrialist allowing them to create new technologies faster and more inexpensive . The stage was set for an early Revolution; not just a political one a industrial and manufacturing one. This boom was caused by a variety of factors such as a booming economy due to new trade routes and economic opportunities, government support in the industrial/manufacturing field, and a cheap workforce in the form of immigrants which caused an early development of manufacturing/industrialization.
This is important because the ICC was originally created by the grange movement, which was the forerunner of the populists and had the same concerns. Taft made no distinction between trusts and set out to destroy all of them. Although he differed greatly from President Roosevelt on how to deal with monopolies and trusts, his intentions and goal on satisfying the populist demands were the same. President Woodrow Wilson created a program called new freedom that put strict government controls on corporations in order to benefit small companies. He also approved the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914 that strengthened the Sherman Antitrust act by spelling out specific activities that businesses could not do.
The Industrial Revolution brought to America new technologies to manufacture and produce goods in quantities unseen before. In the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution new companies were learning how to monopolize and take advantage of the public, these companies would eventually effect America in more ways then one. During the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s many working class individuals lived in poverty because of the formations of monopolies and trusts. A trust is a basically another word for monopoly, which means one large business that corners a market and has no competition allowing it to raise their prices however they choose.
Market Structure - Oligopoly Oligopoly is a market structure whereby a few number of firms owns a lion’s share in the market. This market structure is similar to monopoly, except that instead of one firm, two or more firms have control in the market. In an oligopoly, there are no upper limits to the number of firms, but the number must be nadir enough that the operations of one firm remarkably influence and affects the others (Investopedia, 2003). The Walt Disney Company is categorized under an oligopoly market structure.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 Competitive Situation 4 Variable Costing 5 Existing Costing System 6 Diagram ABC 8 Activity Based Costing & Profitability 9 Conclusion 14 Bibliography 15 INTRODUCTION COMPETITIVE SITUATION Firstly, here is a brief description of what Wilkerson Company specializes in. According to our case study and various online sources, Wilkerson manufactures and markets a complete line of compressed air treatment components and control products.