ABSTRACT
Antitrust is not a set of economic rules but institutional policy based on changing economic reality and expressed in changing historical forms. It is rooted not in deductive theory but in law and politics. Each of its major ideas has a history. Each can be identified (albeit sometimes in obscure and often in developing forms) in legislative debates, in the enforcement programs of sequential administrations, and in the holdings and dicta-the nonnative resolutions, the compromises, and sometimes the evasions-that make up the work product of courts. Our purpose here is to take a single antitrust idea-the notion that there are good trusts and bad trusts, identify its origin, and trace its evolution. To begin, we will recall how the trusts developed and how the public and Congress responded to them; and while we find little support for a good trust-bad trust conception in the public reaction to trusts in the late 19th century, we do find indications that Congress indirectly anticipated the dichotomy.
