Allein, decided in the year 1600. Finally, the issue between
monopoly and free trade was fought out in the American Revolution, for
the measure which precipitated hostilities was the effort of England to
impose her monopoly of the Eastern trade upon America. The Boston Tea
Party occurred on December 16, 1773. Then came the heyday of competition
with the acceptance of the theories of Adam Smith, and the political
domination in England, towards 1840, of the Manchester school of
political economy.
About forty years since, in America at least, the tide would appear once
more to have turned. I fix the moment of flux, as I am apt to do, by a
lawsuit. This suit was the Morris Run Coal Company _v._ Barclay Coal
Company,[5] which is the first modern anti-monopoly litigation that I
have met with in the United States. It was decided in Pennsylvania in
1871; and since 1871, while the area within which competition is
possible has been kept constant by the tariff, capital has accumulated
and has been concentrated and volatilized until, within this republic,
substantially all prices are fixed by a vast moneyed mass.
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