By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 05/09/2026Senator John Sherman promoted his law as a way of *preventing* monopolies from emerging, warning the Senate that they would struggle to overthrow the "autocrats of trade" that monopolies created: pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/w...pluralistic.net 1152
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 05/09/2026The Senate passed it and Harrison signed it, but successive administrations left the Sherman Act to gather dust as Rockefeller went on a spree, accumulating the kind of power that made him a true "autocrat of trade," so powerful that he and the US government were practically evenly matched. 1152
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 05/09/2026Allowing Rockefeller to create, expand and consolidate his monopoly power was a terrible tactical blunder, giving him decades in which he was able to loot America and its trading partners, pauperizing ordinary people and smashing anyone who got in his way. 1182
