The Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Rockefeller's infamous horizontal integration, and Andrew Carnegie's vertical integration. Both methods were an effective way of eliminating competition for trusts, and in the years 1900-1930, there were many progressive laws put into place to prevent the extortion and manipulation of the common people by trusts. (doc lines 1-2) Monopolies were able to charge extortionate or large prices, because there was no competition due to. This meant that trusts like the railroad trust, were able to force higher payment, such as the "short-haul" in which people pay more for a shorter trip than a long one. This hurt the common people, especially farmers in the west who were already being hurt by the bank. This gave rise to the Mann-Elkins Act (1910) by William Howard Taft, which was passed in order to "regulate destructive competition and unfair trade practices". It put a price ceiling on railroad prices. And let railroads to make traffic agreements, which preserved competition. Trusts could also "buy their way into the senate", in order to stop this the 17th amendment (1913) which put the election of senators into the hands of the people. This strengthened the bond between the public and the federal

The paper will serve as a historical background overview of how the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC) came into existence. The paper will also break down the key components for which the FTC covers, such as deceptive advertising, baiting and switching and consumer fraud. There will be examples

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act and the Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, was signed into law on July 30, 2002, by President George W. Bush as a direct response to the corporate financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International (Arens & Elders, 2006; King & Case, 2014;Rezaee & Crumbley, 2007). Fraudulent financial activities and substantial audit failures like those of Arthur Andersen and Ernst and Young had destroyed public trust and investor confidence in the accounting profession. The debilitating consequences of these perpetrators and their crimes summoned a massive effort by the government and the accounting profession to fight all forms of corruption through regulatory, legal, auditing, and accounting changes.

Beginning with the tariff, Wilson personally addressed Congress concerning the tariff and the Underwood Tariff Act was established and passed by 1913, which lowered the tariff and graduated an income tax. Following with the bank, Woodrow implemented the Federal Reserve Act, which established a new Federal Reserve and created twelve central banks in twelve banking districts and also, gave them the power to produce currency or “federal reserve notes.” The Federal Trade Commission Act went after the trusts and created a board to investigate trusts and stop unfair trade practices such as, unlawful competition, bribery, false advertising, mislabeling, and adulteration. Finally, in 1914, there was the Clayton Antitrust Act, which made monopolies unlawful and exempted labor unions from being labelled as trusts and legalized striking and peaceful picketing (Document

As time passes, things that we thought were stable and unchangeable, change. New technologies are created, new problems to be solved by congress emerge, more resources are needed to supply the population and ideas accepted before substituted and annulated. And with the Antitrust Act created by a huge name in the United States history of presidents, Theodore Roosevelt. But did this reform really changed from that time to nowadays? It changed in many ways, such as the congress passed Clayton Act , the creation of FTC.

Due to many events of corruption within the economic system of America, the government was starting to fear that these ultra-powerful corporations was starting to interfere with the system of free competition among businesses, and free trade between the states. To help bring these institutions under control, Congress first passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in the year of 1890. It basically stated that no company or corporation was allowed to compromise between trusts or agreements that would mess up the system of free trade between states and other countries. Along with this, the federal government attempted to prosecute many industries in the Supreme Court, motivating Rockefeller to back down and get rid of his trusts. Unfortunately, this new

DBQ The progressive era was a time of great social, economic, and political change in the United States that marked major changes in the daily lives of Americans. Between 1870 and 1920, reform movements for almost all aspects of American life took place. Although these reform movements did not affect the upper class, they would shape the majority of society leading all the way up to World War I. Changes in Political initiative, economic policy, and the social environment shaped the time period. American Expansionism and Civil Service examinations changed the political scene while new economic policies like the antitrust acts and the creation of the federal reserve reformed the period’s economic system.

In 1907, an economic/political reform cartoon was printed in the Washington Post. It illustrates Teddy Roosevelt holding a rifle while attacking bad trusts. TR was also known as the “trust-buster”. This cartoon demonstrates the bad trusts are a threat to society, and the government must be more powerful than big businesses. In 1914, the Clayton Antitrust Act was developed, “ That it should be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce , either directly or indirectly to discriminate in price..( Document E)” This document price discrimination is unlawful, and monopolies were illegal. It also infers that conflict of interest was an issue as well, and shouldn’t be allowed because it caused greater

At the time there was no law preventing the creation of trusts and Roosevelt knew through past experiences of facing new industrial conditions, that if he were to rashly create legislation out of fear of businesses growing too powerful it would be unwise and ineffective3. Therefore, Roosevelt decided that the best course of action was to have the federal government closely monitor the corporations that engaged in interstate commerce. Roosevelt stated that, “The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge which may be made public to the world4.” Considering the amount of unknown information regarding the new industrial conditions, Roosevelt’s plan was to strictly monitor the actions of the businesses and to be on the lookout for things that could harm the American population such as large monopolies, but for the time being, no laws or regulations were to be passed restricting business operations for these large corporations. Roosevelt was very wary of the potential wealth to be gained through monopolies. Whether a monopoly was established through running their competitors out of business by utilizing vertical integration as a way to decrease prices to an amount at which the competitors would have to consistently take a loss in order to stay in business, or through horizontal integration by buying out all of the competing business, monopolies gave

became one of the wealthiest economy of all times. Some of the richest Americans brought major economic changes to the American industries such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt. These Americans not only prospered, but they also exploited their workers in the work force. Rockefeller reaped huge profits by paying his employees extremely low wages and driving his competitors out of business by selling his oil at a lower price than it cost to produce it. In addition, as businesses grew, trusts became a way of holding stocks and profiting off a large corporation. In other words, people were using trusts as a way to monopolize an industry. Business practices like these triggered the government to interfere with the business industry. In 1880, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act which made it illegal to form a trust that interfered with free trade between states or with other countries. Yet, despite the government’s seemingless efforts, America still prospered and advance for better protection in the workforce as well as less corruption among business

Have you been unjustly accused, then punished? So have many companies. When dealing with trusts and monopolies, controversy is sure to arise. This discussion is a result of the benefits, and also the disadvantages of monopolies in our market. With these arguments going on, discussions of the Sherman Antitrust Act in many legal cases, have been whether or not this law is beneficial to our economy and population, or harmful. People have gathered on both sides of this debate looking for the truth behind the effect of the Sherman Antitrust act. To learn how the Sherman Antitrust Act works we must look back to when and why it was created.

Born in 1823, John Sherman was going to change how the United States economy worked. His name is part of a very important act; the Sherman Antitrust Act. this disbanded all monopolized corporations and said price discrimination and interlocking doctorates are prohibited. Though this act was very crucial, many people took advantage. As a result of this another act had to be passed. A legislation that could strengthen the Sherman Act and take down all the trust. An act that could would not take the government time and money to trust bust the fraud businesses, but to take the responsibility of each individual in a business. Although pricing fixing and exclusive dealings were addressed in the Sherman Act, there needed to be another antitrust act to establish and extend the unfair business practices during the 19 century era.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was passed to prohibit trusts, this was the first law passed by U.S. Congress to enforce this. This act was named after Senator John Sherman. Before this act was put into place, many other states had enforced laws very similar to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. These laws were not perfect though, the large corporations had the majority of the economic power. Congress was not pleased with this, thus making the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This act allowed Congress to regulate interstate commerce, outlawing monopolistic practices. If a person were to violate this act, he or she could be imprisoned for a year and fined five-thousand dollars. This law was successfully used to help Theodore Roosevelt during his campaign, “trust-busting”. Also, President Taft used the law to back himself up against the Standard Oil Trust and American Tobacco Company. The Standard Oil trust was when a board of nine trustees was set up to make all of the company decisions , allowing the company to run as a monopoly. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act allowed both presidents to dissolve the trusts that were creating problems. On the other hand, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act had many holes, it did not have exact wording, therefore allowing companies to still control the majority of the producing and still get away with it. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act had substantial success, but was put to rest and replaced with the Clayton Anti-Trust

As a result, his motivation was his desire to win the power to investigate the activities of corporations and publicize the results. To do this, Roosevelt the new Department of Commerce and Labor was established to assist this task through its investigatory arm. As a result of this vision that Roosevelt had, he ordered the Justice Department to invoke the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against a railroad monopoly called Northern Securities Company. This was one of the things that the Muckrakers discussed in its awareness of social issues. An investigation was done, and thanks to Roosevelt, the Supreme Court ruled that the Northern Securities Company be dissolved in 1904. Following the court decision, Roosevelt made it a point to bring about justice to all of the corruption and injustice that different industries had. The establishment of the Hepburn Act was yet another way in which Roosevelt sought to bring justice. This act gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to restore some regulatory authority to the government. Roosevelt also pressured Congress to enact the Pure Food and Drug Act, which "restricted the sale of dangerous or ineffective medicines." This had also become a major issue as the Muckrakers publicized this problem and it was brought to light. In 1906, Roosevelt pushed for passage of the Meat Inspection Act which helped eliminate many diseases once transmitted in impure

In 1999 the United States Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act which finished off the repealing process of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (Moffett, Stonehill, & Eiteman, 2012, p. 114). The Glass-Steagall Act had imposed barriers within the United States financial sector, where commercial banking entities were separate from investment banks. This meant that commercial banks were able to operate in higher risk activities that were traditionally reserved for the investment institutes. Commercial banks were now able to directly offer their customers a wider array of loans, including creative mortgage arrangements.