United States 1914

Synopsis

In 1914 the U.S. Congress responded to populist antitrust sentiments and deficiencies in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 with a new act. The Clayton Act, authored by Alabama congressman Henry Clayton, outlawed, among other things, anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions, interlocking directorates, and price discrimination. Like the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act made restraint of trade a felony offense punishable by fine and imprisonment. Unlike the Sherman Act, Clayton exempted labor unions and agricultural cooperatives from antimonopoly rules, thus allowing for peaceful strikes and picketing. Nonetheless, although the new legislation formed part of President Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom economic reform program, the bill became so watered down in the Senate that many progressives felt abandoned and Wilson himself lost interest in it.

Timeline

• 1895: Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière show the world's first motion picture—Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory—at...