Monopolies in the 1900’s had immense powers in the market, and were able to have complete control because they had such power. A monopoly is the “exclusive control of commodity, market or means of production” where the “power is concentrated in the hands of a select few” (Beattie). While monopolies do get jobs done and inquire a large amount of money, their success it at the expense of the people and the power they have obtained is abused. They started off liked by small businesses because it helped with shipping costs, but eventually monopolies became too powerful. They are more hurtful to the public than helpful, and the benefits they gain from being a monopoly hurts the public, making them a collective dilemma.
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This act was passed to backup and clarify the loose language that was in the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Sherman Antitrust Act made monopolies illegal, but it did not specify exactly what behaviors are illegal. The Clayton Antitrust Act in turn clarified what practices businesses cannot take part in and broke up businesses taking part in behaviors that could lead to them being monopolies (Clayton). Along with the Sherman Antitrust Act needing provisions, the Clayton Antitrust Act also needed work done to keep enhancing it and preventing big businesses who cannot technically be classified as monopolies from overpowering the market. The Robinson-Patman Act was passed to clean up the Clayton Antitrust Act. The Robinson-Patman Act made sure that small businesses would not be pushed out of the market. By ensuring that small businesses did not get pushed out, it would keep competition towards big businesses, and then the big businesses would not turn into a monopoly with complete control over, preventing prices from getting too high for the public. This act prohibited discrimination in pricing, which meant that wholesale suppliers could not give big businesses discounts and not small businesses, prohibited promotional allowances, and prohibited advertising by large franchised companies. While this act did work towards preventing these things, they were hard to prove so the act could not be as effective as wished (Robinson). All of these acts were passed by Congress to get rid of the unfair pricing that monopolies were doing because it was a collective dilemma and hurting the