Nineteenth-century editorial cartoons often pictured government and
industry hand-in-hand. Yet as early as 1889 Texas had enacted an
antitrust law to curb the power of monopolies.

    For most of the first twenty-five years following the enactment of the
Sherman Antitrust Act, federal enforcement efforts were extremely limited.
Texas was one of several states whose attorneys general prosecuted
antitrust violations with vigor. Political ambition was a factor in these
decisions, but there was also a genuine belief in the goals of antitrust
policy.

    In Broken Trusts, Jonathan W. Singer offers the definitive study of the
formative period of antitrust enforcement in Texas. His analysis of the use
of antitrust law in this time of transition from an agricultural to an industrial
society provides insights into the litigation process and the changing roles
of state government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

    This volume will be valuable to those interested in the effects of state
antitrust law enforcement, as well as to those concerned with the evolution
and influence of the Texas attorney general's office.

_________________________________________________________

JONATHAN W. SINGER is an attorney for the Missouri Court of Appeals
and lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.


Number Twelve: Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History