It was 1903, and Theodore Roosevelt had a problem. The Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, was effectively dead. It had been used rarely, and when it had been, cases moved sluggishly through the courts. Roosevelt wished to move forward on a multitude of what he believed to be monopolies, including in railroads and energy.
Roosevelt was not wrong to be concerned with monopoly. Coming out of the Civil War, America’s Gilded Age had moved the country lurchingly from a regional power to a global power, one that would soon dominate the world.
America’s antitrust laws simply are not built for these technologies and economic sectors.
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But with that explosion of commerce came its domination by a few select companies. And while Roosevelt’s predecessor, William McKinley, had repeatedly
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