The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 by President Benjamin Harrison. It requires that businesses do NOT trust each other in order to foster competition. It was a response to General William Sherman burning down the South in 1865 thereby destroying all the North's competition.
Criticisms[]
The Sherman Act is a violation of the free market. As Alan Greenspan said "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible." And that guys never been wrong.