laws by the score, as they had passed the
railway laws. As in the earlier case they found their model in the
common law, which had long prohibited conspiracies in restraint of
trade. One of the States, Ohio, with only the common law to go upon,
brought suit against the Standard Oil Trust and secured a prohibition
against it in 1892. It was relatively easy to attack the formal
organization of the trust, but in spite of such attacks concentration
continued to produce ever greater combinations, as though it were
fulfilling some fundamental economic law.

Those of the anti-monopolists who were also tariff reformers had a
weapon to urge besides that of regulation. They maintained that part of
the power of the corporations was due to the needless favors of
protection, which deprived the United States of the aid that competition
from European manufacturers might have given. They insisted that a
revision of the tariff would do much to remove the burden of the trusts.
The House ordered an investigation of the trusts while it was engaged on
the futile Mills Bill in 1888, but it was the latter that furnished the
text for the ensuing presidential campaign.

So far as the parties were concerned the Republicans took the aggressive
in 1888. Cleveland's emphasis upon tariff reduction was personal and
never had the cheerful support of the whole party. The manufacturers,
however, were thoroughly scared by the continued threats of revision. As
they had come, by supporting the party in power, to support the
Republicans, so they now organized within that party to save themselves.
Their leaders sang a new note in 1888, no longer apologizing for the
tariff or urging reduction, but defending it on principle,--on Clay's
old principle of an American system,--and asking that it be made more
comprehensive. From Florence, and then from Paris, Blaine replied to
Cleveland's Message of 1887, and his friends continued to urge his
nomination for the Presidency. Only after his positive refusal to be a
candidate did the Republican Convention at Chicago make its choice from
a list of candidates including Sherman, Gresham, Depew, Alger, Harrison,
and Allison. The ticket finally nominated consisted of Benjamin
Harrison, a Senator from Indiana, and Levi P. Morton, a New York banker.
The platform was "uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of
protection." It denounced Cleveland and the revisionists as serving "the
interests of Europe," and condemne