Nineteenth-century editorial cartoons often pictured government and industry hand-in-hand. Yet as early as 1889 Texas had enacted an antitrust law to curb the power of monopolies, and in the first years of the industry that would bring untold riches to the state, the attorney general used that law against oil trusts to a surprising extent.
Ironically, for most of the first twenty-five years following the enactment of the Sherman Antitrust Act, federal enforcement efforts were extremely limited, leaving the field to the states. Texas was one of several states that had strong antitrust laws...