Antitrust_Legislation

Antitrust Legislation The reasons that antitrust legislation was introduced was to eradicate the amount of large companies who were becoming monopolistic. Economies of scale define a monopoly as a firm who can either increase or decrease its price by 5%. During this time industry was progressing at a rapid rate and the size of companies was also increasing at a rapid rate. The work of English philosopher Herbert Spencer inspired many businessmen with his book being known as the businessman’s bible. He advocated free competition, justified ceaseless exploitation and justified ruthlessness as a means of achieving progress. Spencer’s work became the rationale for commercial thought and practices from the Civil War to the New Deal. Spencer who applied Darwin’s concept of natural selection believed that as in nature, where only the fittest survive by adapting themselves to the environment, the same was happening in industrial society in the middle 19th century where a similar situation in the form of industrial competition which allowed the elite to evolve. Following the Civil War there was a major expansion in industry and in the late 19th century the booming US economy entered a period of rapid consolidation. act, antitrust, oil, trade, states, industry, business, standard, sherman, new, companies, american, united, trusts, steel, over, out, monopolistic, large, history, federal, competition, company, trust, sugar, restraint, refining, railroads, passed, government, economy, corporations, clayton, carnegie, wilson