ABSTRACT

An inadvertent bit of humor by a defense attorney provided one of the major criminological motifs for "the most serious violations of the antitrust laws since the time of their passage at the turn of the century". The defendants, including several vice presidents of the General Electric Corporation and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation—the two largest companies in the heavy electrical equipment industry—stood somberly in a federal courtroom in Philadelphia on February 6, 1961. Edwin H. Sutherland was writing, of course, before the antitrust violations in the heavy electrical equipment industry became part of the public record. In particular, the antitrust cases provide the researcher with a mass of raw data against which to test and to refine earlier hunches and hypotheses regarding white-collar crime. The antitrust violations in the heavy electrical industry permit a re-evaluation of many of the earlier speculations about white-collar crime.