Kodak, and International Harvester. Historically the United
States, at least the northern and midwestern United States,
had relatively competitive markets and had been more
egalitarian than other parts of the country, particularly the
South. But during this period, competition gave way to
monopoly, and wealth inequality rapidly increased.
The pluralistic U.S. political system already empowered
a broad segment of society that could stand up against
such encroachments. Those who were the victims of the
monopolistic practices of the Robber Barons, or who
objected to their unscrupulous domination of their
industries, began to organize against them. They formed
the Populist and then subsequently the Progressive
movements.
The Populist movement emerged out of a long-running
agrarian crisis, which afflicted the Midwest from the late
1860s onward. The National Grange of the Order of
Patrons of Husbandry, known as the Grangers, was
founded in 1867 and began to mobilize farmers against
unfair and discriminatory business practices. In 1873 and
1874, the Grangers won control of eleven midwestern state
legislatures, and rural discontent culminated in the
formation of the People’s Party in 1892, which got 8.5
percent of the popular vote in the 1892 presidential
election. In the next two elections, the Populists fell in
behind the two unsuccessful Democratic campaigns by
William Jennings Bryan, who made many of their issues his
own. Grass-roots opposition to the spread of the trusts had
now organized to try to counteract the influence that
Rockefeller and other Robber Barons were exerting over
national politics.
These political movements slowly began to have an
impact on political attitudes and then on legislation,
particularly concerning the role of the state in the regulation
of monopoly. The first important piece of legislation was the
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which created the
Interstate Commerce Commission and initiated the
development of the federal regulation of industry. This was
quickly followed by the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The
Sherman Act, which is still a major part of U.S. antitrust
regulation, would become the basis for attacks on the
Robber Barons’ trusts. Major action against the trusts came