Susan Berfield's account of the clash between Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan over United States Steel — the antitrust case that established the precedent of federal power to regulate corporate concentration.
The antitrust origins story: Berfield documents the first major antitrust confrontation of the Progressive Era — Roosevelt's decision to invoke the Sherman Antitrust Act against J.P. Morgan's Northern Securities railroad trust (1902), establishing that the federal government could and would regulate private corporate power. The clash between Roosevelt (political power asserting itself over economic power) and Morgan (accustomed to settling things between the relevant gentlemen) defined the Progressive Era's central tension.
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