Roosevelt's Proposal

    Everyone seemed to be in agreement on one thing in the election of 1912—the Sherman Act had to go. The Sherman act was weak or flawed in some way that made it entirely ineffective.

    The proposals parted ways on what to replace it with. According to Roosevelt and his supporters, the entire law was flawed. It set up a system under which trusts accused of anticompetitive practices were to be prosecuted and, if found guilty, were to be fined or broken up.

    The flaw as Roosevelt saw it was that this was destructive of industry and not conducive to economic development. He believed that there were benefits in having large corporations, and that competition among many small firms would create so much waste as to render the industries inefficient.

    His supporters also believed that competition was detrimental to the public interest. People rejected the unpredictable and violent price fluctuations that were common in highly competitive markets.

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