User:Rjensen/sandbox-Taft

Roosevelt's Antitrust record over eight years included 18 civil cases and 26 criminal antitrust cases resulting in 22 convictions and 22 acquittals. Taft's four years had 54 civil and 36 criminal suits and Taft's prosecutor secured 55 convictions and 35 acquittals. Taft's cases included many leading firms in major sectors: Standard Oil; American Tobacco; United States Steel; Aluminum Company of America; International Harvester; National Cash Register; Westinghouse; General Eectric; Kodak; Dupont; Union Pacific railroad; and Southern Pacific railroad. It also included trusts or combinations in beef, lumber, wine, turpentine, wallpaper, licorice, thread, and watches. The targets even included operations run by Taft's personal friends, such as Ohio-based National Cash Register. The media gave extensive exposure, especially to cases against Standard Oil and American Tobacco, which reached directly tens of millions of consumers. Taft's attorney general George W. Wickersham personally supervised the most important cases against Standard Oil and American Tobacco. He argued to the Supreme Court that trusts should be dissolved into their constituent parts, arguing they were artificial creations and did not achieve their positions through normal business methods and hence we're guilty of violating the Sherman act. The government brief argued that dismemberment would correct this inequity and would force and restore normal competition. The Court agreed in 1911 and ordered the Justice Department to draw up complete reorganization plans in six months. Wickersham and his staff, all expert lawyers, were not experts in business management. The hurriedly created over thirty new corporations to replace Standard, plus several in tobacco.

Public opinion was angry with inflation and reformers blamed the trusts and expected that breakups would reduce prices and make the voters happy. Actually, Standard Oil had steadily lowered the price of many oil products for 20 years. After the breakup prices to consumers went up, as the replacement firms lost the size efficiency of the trust. If, for example, five competing firms replaced one trust in a given market, then each had to advertise, and each had to hire new salespeople. The experienced staff was split up and new hires for sales and advertising had less experience and were likely not as efficient in identifying the products the customer needed. In terms of supplies and staff, the five new companies competed with each other and thus had to make higher bids to get the supplies and the staff. If 5 new companies were competing with each other where previously only one had dominated, then each of the 30 had to hire advertising teams; customers would be visited by five inexperienced salesman instead of one experienced person who could better appreciate the customers needs and how the trust could meet them. Efficiency down, expenses up, prices up. Wickersham discovered that trust busting meant higher prices for consumers. He told Taft, "the disintegrated companies of both the oil and tobacco trust are spending many times what was formerly spent by anyone in advertising in the newspapers " Wickersham realized the problem but Taft never did. He insisted that anti-trust lawsuits continue to the end; 16 cases were begun in the last 2 months of the Taft administration.

epresentatives instead of one, and the selling expenses would be dramatically increased. Furthermore by being small purchasers, the 30 successors would not be able to reach the scale of efficiency achieved by the trust. T Furthermore the 30 new structures would be poorly designed by a Justice department that did not have expertise experience or experience in designing complex business operations, and had no familiarity with the oil industry or the tobacco industry or whatever. The cost of operations had to go up. In terms of senior executives each of the 30 required a central command of high level administrators, so are there so there were 30 assistant vice presidents where there had been one before,- 30 inexperienced executives where there had been one experienced person====he cost of producing of selling oil to consumers would go up with antitrust, Wickersham, a corporate lawyer, realized the limitations of the antitrust solution, especially when it came to prices. Taft, not an expert in corporate affairs, never changed his opinion that antitrust was the sacred duty, and never understood the damage done to consumers by breaking up standard oil and American tobacco