Summary
William Howard Taft's *The Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court* examines how U.S. antitrust enforcement and judicial review shaped corporate power, using the 1920 consent decree against the "Big Five" meatpackers (Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson, and Cudahy) as a key example. The decree forced these firms to divest stockyards, railroads, cold-storage warehouses, and market newspapers, and permanently barred them from retail meat and unrelated food lines. Taft also contrasts U.S. antitrust law with Australian federalism, where the High Court struck down the "New Protection" Excise Act (1906) for attempting to regulate wages under the guise of taxation, and invalidated parts of the Trade Marks Act that allowed "Union label" registration as a subterfuge for labor control. A reader learns how courts define the constitutional limits of federal power over commerce, labor, and monopolies.
Key concepts
- Big Five packers — The five largest U.S. meatpacking firms (Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson, Cudahy) forced by a 1920 consent decree to divest ancillary businesses and exit retail meat.
- New Protection — An Australian policy using high protective tariffs and excise duties on agricultural machinery, with excise remission conditional on paying "fair wages," invalidated by the High Court in 1908 as an unconstitutional wage…
- Union label — A mark indicating goods made by trade-union labor; the Australian High Court ruled its registration as a trade mark was a subterfuge to control labor conditions beyond Commonwealth jurisdiction.
- Excise Act (1906) — Australian federal law imposing excise on locally manufactured machinery, with remission for employers paying "fair wages," struck down as a non-taxing wage regulation.
- Consent decree — A court-approved agreement (filed Feb. 27, 1920) requiring the Big Five to divest stockyards, railroads, terminals, market newspapers, and cold-storage warehouses within two years.
From the book
He was the discoverer of gallium in 1875 and a student of spectroscopics generally, on which he wrote several treatises. Some details as to his work appear in 5.761 ; 6.46 ; 8.208 ; 11.421 , 777 . He died in Paris May 31 1912.
He had an adventurous early life in Australia, being successively a sheep farmer, a pioneer squatter in Victoria and police magistrate and warden of goldfields till 1895. These varied colonial experiences furnished him with material for his long series of bushranging novels, of which Robbery under Arms is the most widely known. This book was published in 1888 in London after it had run as a serial in the Sydney Mail. Amongst his other books are The Miner’s Right (1890); A Modern Buccaneer (1894); The Babes in the Bush (1900) and A Tale of the Golden West (1906). He died at South Yarra, Melbourne, March 11 1915.← Boldrewood, Rolf 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica Bolivia by William Spence Robertson Bolo, Paul → See also Bolivia on Wikipedia , and the disclaimer . 4259196 1922 Encyclopædia…
Popular questions readers ask
- Cleveland Abbe transitioned from studying astronomy to becoming the "Father of the Weather Bureau." Explain, in simple terms, the logical steps or key insights that would allow his initial work with observatories to lead to systematic weather forecasting and even the introduction of standardized time.
- The text states that "Government aid" enabled Abbe to extend his forecasts, leading to the formal establishment of the Weather Bureau. How would the newfound ability to predict weather and standardize time, as developed by Abbe, have tangibly transformed the daily lives, commerce, or infrastructure of the early 20th-century United States?
- Edwin Austin Abbey created large-scale mural paintings, like "The Apotheosis of Pennsylvania," for the Capitol. What specific values, historical narratives, or civic ideals do you think such monumental art aimed to communicate to the public and lawmakers in a government building, and why would this form of artistic expression be chosen for that purpose?
- Although working in vastly different fields, how do the respective contributions of Cleveland Abbe (science, organization) and Edwin Austin Abbey (art, narrative) both reflect a broader societal drive to define, understand, and perhaps shape American identity and progress during their time?
- This excerpt comes from the 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica. What are the inherent strengths and potential limitations of relying on such a historical source for understanding the lives and impacts of figures like Abbe and Abbey, and how might a modern historian approach this information differently?