How is the Sherman Antitrust Act similar in purpose to the Interstate Commerce Act?

On February 4, 1887, both the Senate and House passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which applied the Constitution’s “Commerce Clause”—granting Congress the power “to Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”—to regulating railroad rates. Small businesses and farmers were protesting that the railroads charged them higher rates than larger corporations, and that the railroads were also setting higher rates for short hauls than for long-distance hauls. Although the railroads claimed economic justification for policies that favored big businesses, small shippers insisted that the railroads were gouging them.

It took years for Congress to respond to these protests, due to members’ reluctance to have the government interfere in any way with corporate policies. In 1874 legislation was introduced calling for a federal railroad commission. The bill passed the House, but not the Senate. When Congress failed to act, some states adopted their own railroad regulations. Those laws were struck down in 1886, when the Supreme Court ruled in Wabash v. Illinois that the state of Illinois could not restrict the rates that the Wabash Railroad was charging because its freight traffic moved between the states, and only the federal government could regulate interstate commerce. Continued public anger over unfair railroad rates prompted Illinois senator Shelby M. Cullom to hold the hearings that led to the enactment of the Interstate Commerce Act.

That law limited railroads to rates that were “reasonable and just,” forbade rebates to high-volume users, and made it illegal to charge higher rates for shorter hauls. To hear evidence and render decisions on individual cases, the act created the Interstate Commerce Commission. This was the first federal independent regulatory commission, and it served as a model for others that would follow, from the Federal Trade Commission to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Evolving technology eventually made the purpose of the ICC obsolete, and in 1995 Congress abolished the commission, transferring its remaining functions to the Surface Transportation Board. But while the ICC has come and gone, its creation marked a significant turning point in federal policy. Before 1887, Congress had applied the Commerce Clause only on a limited basis, usually to remove barriers that the states tried to impose on interstate trade. The Interstate Commerce Act showed that Congress could apply the Commerce Clause more expansively to national issues if they involved commerce across state lines. After 1887, the national economy grew much more integrated, making almost all commerce interstate and international. The nation rather than the Constitution had changed. That development turned the Commerce Clause into a powerful legislative tool for addressing national problems.

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The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act, July 2, 1890, ch. 647, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. 1–7) was the first United States Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies. It falls under antitrust law.

The act provides: "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal." The act also provides: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony." The act put responsibility upon government attorneys and district courts to pursue and investigate trusts, companies and organizations suspected of violating the act. The Clayton Act (1914) extended the right to sue under the antitrust laws to "any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws." Under the Clayton Act, private parties may sue in U.S. district court and should they prevail, they may be awarded treble damages and the cost of suit, including reasonable attorney's fees.

John Sherman (1823-1900) was the younger brother of the American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. He became a U.S. senator from Ohio and served as a chairman of the Senate finance committee. He also served as a member of the U.S. Cabinet, including Secretary of State under President William McKinley and Secretary of the Treasury under President Hayes. Sherman was an expert on the regulation of commerce and was the chief author of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

This ground-breaking piece of legislation was the result of intense public opposition to the concentration of economic power in large corporations and in combinations of business concerns (i,e., trusts) that had been taking place in the U.S. in the decades following the Civil War. Opposition to the trusts was particularly strong among farmers, who protested the high charges for transporting their products to the cities by railroad.

The Sherman Antitrust Act was the first measure enacted by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts (or monopolies of any type). Although several states had previously enacted similar laws, they were limited to intrastate commerce. The Sherman Antitrust Act, in contrast, was based on the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It was passed by an overwhelming vote of 51 to 1 in the Senate and a unanimous vote of 242 to 0 in the House, and it was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison.

The first part of Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution (with the interstate commerce clause underlined) states:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

• To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
• To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
• To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
• To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; ...

The Sherman Antitrust Act (the full text of which can be found here) authorized the Federal Government to dissolve the trusts. It began with the statement: "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal." And it established penalties for persons convicted of establishing such combinations: "shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court."

Enforcement

For more than a decade after its passage, the Sherman Antitrust Act was invoked only rarely against industrial monopolies, and then not successfully. Ironically, its only effective use for a number of years was against labor unions, which were held by the courts to be illegal combinations.

This was the result of intense political pressure from the trusts together with the loose wording of the act. Its critics pointed out that it failed to define such key terms as "combination," "conspiracy," "monopoly" and "trust." Also working against it were narrow judicial interpretations as to what constituted trade or commerce among states.

Five years after its passage, the Supreme Court in effect dismantled the Sherman Antitrust Act in United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895). The court ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company, one of the other defendants in the case, had not violated the Act despite the fact that it controlled approximately 98 percent of all sugar refining in the U.S. The court's explanation was that the company's control of manufacturing did not constitute control of trade.

President William McKinley launched the trust-busting era in 1898 when he appointed several senators to the U.S. Industrial Commission. The commission's subsequent report to President Theodore Roosevelt then laid the groundwork for Roosevelt's attacks on trusts and finally resulted in the successful employment of the Act.

In a seminal 1904 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Government's suit under the Sherman Antitrust Act to dissolve the Northern Securities Company (a railroad holding company) in State of Minnesota v. Northern Securities Company. Then, in 1911, after years of litigation, the court found Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act because of its excessive restrictions on trade, particularly its practices of eliminating competitors by buying them out directly and by driving them out of business by temporarily slashing prices in a given region.

In this historic decision, the Supreme Court established an important legal standard termed the rule of reason. It stated that large size and monopoly in themselves are not necessarily bad and do not violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. Rather, it is the use of certain tactics to attain or preserve such position that is illegal.

The court ordered Standard Oil to dismantle 33 of its most important affiliates and to distribute the stock to its own shareholders and not to a new trust. The result was the creation of a number of completely independent and vertically integrated oil companies, each of which ranked among the most powerful in the world. The consequent vigorous competition gave a big impetus to innovation and expansion of the oil industry as a whole.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

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