Banking, Economy & Business
After the merger wave of 1898 and 1899, big business wanted relief from antitrust suits and protection from price-cutting.
Patrick Newman covers Jekyll Island, the National Citizens’ League organized as a front to manufacture grass-roots support, and the pivot once Congress refused the Aldrich plan.
Patrick Newman traces the National Banking System from Salmon P. Chase’s wartime bond sales and initially hostile relations with New York financiers through the pyramid of bankers’ balances that conce...
Beginning with the Morrill Tariff of 1861, Patrick Newman documents protection sought and monopoly repeatedly denied. Market competition kept defeating attempts to corner markets.
Patrick Newman shows how the Interstate Commerce Commission supplied the enforcement common law would not, with commissioners reading their mandate in the railroads’ favor and cartelization temporaril...
A transcontinental railroad was unprofitable on market terms, but attractive once Congress supplied land and subsidies.
