How many trusts did wilson break up

In a personal touch, Wilson donated the wool from the sheep that grazed on the White House lawn to a Red Cross fundraising auction—the sheep had replaced gardeners drafted into the military. Even such notables as the Speaker of the House and the president of Columbia University were skeptical about intervening beforehand, but most Americans supported Wilson's decision. Some German and Irish Americans, however, led antiwar rallies and joined with the American Socialist Party in denouncing the war.

Socialists greatly increased their share of the vote in several cities in , winning 22 percent of the vote in New York City and 34 percent in Chicago. To mobilize public opinion in support of the war, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel, a muckraking journalist. Creel launched a campaign to sell the war to the American people by sponsoring , lecturers, writers, artists, actors, and scholars to champion the cause. In the resulting patriotic fervor, opponents to the war were painted as slackers and even traitors.

Some states prohibited the use of foreign languages in public. New York State required voters to demonstrate literacy in English. Libraries publicly burned German books. Some communities banned playing the music of German musicians such as Bach and Beethoven, and schools dropped German courses from their curriculum. To avoid such violence, others anglicized their names.

President Wilson sponsored the Espionage and Sedition Acts, prohibiting interference with the draft and outlawing criticism of the government, the armed forces, or the war effort. Violators were imprisoned or fined.

Some 1, people were arrested for violating these laws, including Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party. The Post Office was empowered to censor the mail, and more than periodicals were deprived of mailing privileges for greater or lesser periods of time. In one incident, Justice Department agents raided IWW offices nationwide, arresting union leaders who were sentenced to jail terms of up to twenty-five years.

The IWW never recovered from this persecution. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center. The National Forestry Service was to serve as a watchdog to help protect some of America's rich natural resources.

Theodore Roosevelt, then, probably deserves the title of the United States first conservationist president. Roosevelt, however, was not primarily interested in "trust-busting" but in government regulation of businesses in the public interest. One example of Roosevelt's legislative success was congressional passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Roosevelt became alarmed at the lack of control over the food industry after he read a muckraking novel by Upton Sinclair, The Jungle.

Sinclair had written the novel to stir America's conscience about the poor conditions of workers in meat-packing houses, but in describing some of the things which made their way into processed meats human fingers, rats and rat droppings the author turned sensitive stomachs, not hearts.

The law was a first step in eliminating some of the worst practices of the industry. Roosevelt felt that the major role of the federal government through action by the President should be to act as an "impartial broker" between powerful interest groups. The chief executive, as the only official elected by all the people, ought to intervene as a disinterested champion of the public in any dispute, for example, between labor and managment which threatened the public welfare.

One such action was Roosevelt's intervention in the anthracite coal strike which, as it dragged on, imperiled both the nation's economy and the public's supply of coal for home heating. Roosevelt threatened to have the army take over the mines if the mine owners and labor leaders could not reach an agreement. Shortly thereafter the strike ended. While Roosevelt believed that the proper role of the federal government in labor disputes was to pursue an even-handed course to curb both corporate and labor abuses, his action in the coal strike seemed to many business leaders to put him on the side of labor.

After all, previous governmental interventions in labor disputes had always taken the form of using government troops to break strikes under the pretext of "protecting lives and property. After deciding not to seek reelection in , Roosevelt became increasingly unhappy over the way his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, seemed to be ignoring or opposing progressive programs and decided to seek the presidency again in After being rejected by the Republican nominating convention in favor of Taft, Roosevelt became the candidate of the newly-emergent Progressive party.

His campaign for a progressive program of New Nationalism, however, ran into stiff opposition from his Democratic opponent who also ran on a progressive platform of New Freedom.

This angered both big business and Roosevelt. The corporation controlled half of all steel production and nearly 80 percent of iron-ore reserves in the country. Steel was a "menace to the country and should be destroyed. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Roosevelt, out of office but still active in politics, condemned the lawsuit.

He said suing all trusts was "hopeless" and even if successful would "put the business of the country back into the middle of the 18th century. The justices found both companies were guilty of monopolization in violation of the Sherman Act. It ordered them broken into numerous independent firms.

The Supreme Court majority, however, also ruled that only "unreasonable" restraints of trade were illegal. For example, Standard Oil had been charged with such unreasonable practices as temporarily cutting prices to drive competitors out of business. Only when they behaved in unreasonable ways did they cross the line into illegality.

The controversy over what to do about monopolies erupted in the presidential election of He remained a trustbuster, sticking by his policy of strictly enforcing the Sherman Act by filing federal lawsuits to challenge monopolization. Roosevelt wanted the Republican Party nomination.

Roosevelt accepted monopolies as an inevitable part of a modern economy. He proposed, however, a federal commission to regulate them by inspecting their accounting books and setting maximum prices on their products. He also wanted to impose rules for hours, wages, and working conditions. Roosevelt declared that "the enslavement of the people by the great corporations. Rather, Wilson wanted to eliminate monopolies by reviving vigorous competition through such measures as banking reform and tariff reduction.

Toward the end of the campaign, however, Wilson embraced the idea of a federal commission to stop monopolistic practices. The fourth major candidate in was Socialist Eugene V. Debs believed that large enterprises were inevitable.

The time is approaching when it will be no longer possible. Instead, as a socialist, he supported worker and public ownership of large entities. After Wilson won the election, he turned to Congress rather than the courts to deal with the monopoly problem.

In , Congress passed the Clayton Act, a new antitrust law that defined more clearly illegal business practices such as anti-competitive:. In other legislation, Congress created the Federal Trade Commission. In , the Supreme Court finally decided the U. Steel case begun in the Taft administration. The court ruled in favor of U. It found that U. Steel was not a monopoly and did not engage in illegal practices.

The U. Steel decision confirmed that corporate behavior rather than just bigness determined whether a company violated the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court decided that corporate behavior rather than mere bigness should determine if a monopoly is illegal. Do you agree? Chace, James. Sklar, Martin J.

The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, — Cambridge, U. Imagine that leaders who lived during the era of trustbusting are available to discuss a modern antitrust case.

Discuss what its leader would think about what should be done about corporations like Microsoft. Develop reasons and lines of argument. Choose one person to role play your leader in a panel discussion. Make a name tag for the leader. After the debate, the class may want to vote on what they think is the best way to handle monopolies.

Its stock is valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. Bill Gates, one of its founders, owns about 15 percent of Microsoft stock, making him the richest person in the world. In the s, the U. One of the practices was requiring computer manufacturers licensed to install Windows to include, or "bundle," its web browser, Internet Explorer, at no extra charge to the consumer.

Sales of market leader Navigator plummeted. Microsoft maintained that its sole purpose in bundling Explorer with Windows was to make it easier, more convenient, and less costly for consumers to use a computer. It also maintains that Explorer overtook Navigator because it is a far superior browser. Question for the Panel to Discuss: From what you know about monopolies and antitrust, what do you believe should be done about corporations like Microsoft?

John D. Rockefeller: Leave monopolies alone to efficiently produce and distribute products according to freedom of contract and the right of property.