Sherman anti trust act
...es. His business practices were similar to that of one of the richest people in the world John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller never completed high school and dropped out to be a clerk and earn about $3 a week. Eventually he invested money in oil refineries. He soon started merge with other companies or force them out of business. People like Rockefeller were at a constant tug of war trying to gain more wealth. This constant tug of war led to some “unfair” business actions. People with smaller businesses that were being forced out of business or to merge with Businesses like Rockefeller’s asked the government to interfere. But the government whose laws were based on the common law practices of England said that they weren’t doing any thing that was illegal. So people like Rockefeller took advantage and formed trust. Rockefeller formed one of the largest trusts ever. A trust is when large companies merge together after getting the approval of their stock holders which usually wasn’t hard all they had to do was promise that they would bring the stock holders more money. But with the trust they could make monopolies on almost any industry by lowering their prices so low that their competitors couldn’t compete. So when their competitors went bankrupt or merged with them. By doing this they would be operating at a lost but after they got rid of the competition they would be able to charge much higher rates and the people who couldn’t do without that product would have to pay what ever price they charged. Rockefellers trust was called the standard oil trust was the best at using these actions in its best interest of expanding and becoming more wealthy. So with all of the customers and small business owners complaining the government tried to help. They came up with a Document called the Sherman antitrust Act. The purpose of making the act was to break up all the big trust and monopolies. But this law did next to nothing in it first years. It lost first 7 out of 8 battles. The law stated that any contact agreement or trust or conspiracy between any businesses to restrain trade would now be illegal and were punishable by no more 10 million dollar fine or 3 years in prison unless the courts say other wise. The way the document was worded was so vague that the courts did not know what constituted a violation of the act. “The prohibitions of the Sherman Act were not stated in terms of precision or of crystal clarity and the Act itself does not define them. In consequence of the vagueness of its language, perhaps not uncalculated, the courts have been left to give content to the statute, and in the perf...