As we gear up for the presidential debates tonight, it’s worth reflecting on the presidential debates from exactly one hundred years ago.
Because the key issue debated then was how to handle the industrial monopolies of 1912: companies like Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company. The incumbent (Howard Taft) campaigned on breaking up the monopolies; the opposing party (Woodrow Wilson) campaigned on regulating competition to prevent monopolies from developing in the first place; and the third-party campaigner (Teddy Roosevelt) argued we should actually welcome monopolies while regulating their activities. Wilson won, and ended up signing two major antitrust laws to supplement the existing Sherman Act: the Clayton Act and FTC Act.
