ess. This act declared
illegal "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise,
or conspiracy in restraint of trade and commerce among the several
states or with foreign nations."

=The Futility of the Anti-Trust Law.=--Whether the Sherman law was
directed against all combinations or merely those which placed an
"unreasonable restraint" on trade and competition was not apparent.
Senator Platt of Connecticut, a careful statesman of the old school,
averred: "The questions of whether the bill would be operative, of how
it would operate, or whether it was within the power of Congress to
enact it, have been whistled down the wind in this Senate as idle talk
and the whole effort has been to get some bill headed: 'A bill to punish
trusts,' with which to go to the country." Whatever its purpose, its
effect upon existing trusts and upon the formation of new combinations
was negligible. It was practically unenforced by President Harrison and
President Cleveland, in spite of the constant demand for harsh action
against "monopolies." It was patent that neither the Republicans nor the
Democrats were prepared for a war on the trusts to the bitter end.

THE MINOR PARTIES AND UNREST

=The Demands of Dissenting Parties.=--From the election of 1872, when
Horace Greeley made his ill-fated excursion into politics, onward, there
appeared in each presidential campaign one, and sometimes two or more
parties, stressing issues that appealed mainly to wage-earners and
farmers. Whether they chose to call themselves Labor Reformers,
Greenbackers, or Anti-monopolists, their slogans and their platforms all
pointed in one direction. Even the Prohibitionists, who in 1872 started
on their career with a single issue, the abolition of the liquor
traffic, found themselves making declarations of faith on other matters
and hopelessly split over the money question in 1896.

A composite view of the platforms put forth by the dissenting parties
from the administration of Grant to the close of Cleveland's second term
reveals certain notions common to them all. These included among many
others: the earliest possible payment of the national debt; regulation
of the rates of railways and telegraph companies; repeal of the specie
resumption act of 1875; the issue of legal tender notes by the
government convertible into interest-bearing obligations on demand;
unlimited coinage of silver as well as gold; a graduated inheritance
tax; legislation to