after the election of presidents committed to reform and to limiting the power of the Robber Barons: Theodore Roosevelt, 1901 – 1909; William Taft, 1909 – 1913; and Woodrow Wilson, 1913 – 1921.
A key political force behind antitrust and the move to impose federal regulation of industry was again the farm vote. Early attempts by individual states in the 1870s to regulate railroads came from farmers’ organizations. Indeed, nearly all the fifty-nine petitions that concerned trusts sent to Congress prior to the enactment of the Sherman Act came from farming states and emanated from organizations such as the Farmers’ Union, Farmers’ Alliance, Farmers’ Mutual Benefit Association, and Patrons of Animal Husbandry. Farmers found a collective interest in opposing the monopolistic practices of industry.
From the ashes of the Populists, who seriously declined after throwing their weight behind the Democrats, came the Progressives, a heterogeneous reform movement concerned with many of the same issues. The Progressive movement initially gelled around the figure of Teddy Roosevelt, who was William McKinley’ s vice president and who assumed the presidency following McKinley’ s assassination in 1901. Prior to his rise to national office, Roosevelt had been an uncompromising governor of New York and had worked hard to eliminate political corruption and“ machine politics.” In his first address to Congress, Roosevelt turned his attention to the trusts. He argued that the prosperity of the United States was based on market economy and the ingenuity of businessmen, but at the same time, there are real and grave evils … and a … widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs from no spirit of envy or un-charitableness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial achievements that have placed this country at the head of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation