Background
In 1890, the United States Congress enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act, an attempt to curb concentrations of economic power that significantly reduced competition between businesses. One of its two main provisions outlawed all trade combinations or agreements that severely restricted trade between states or with foreign powers. The second outlawed any attempts to monopolize trade within the United States. When the American Sugar Refining Company acquired almost all of the sugar-producing capacity in the U.S., the government sought to divest it of its monopoly.
Read more about this topic: United States V. E. C. Knight Co.
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)