Published Articles
John K. Brown
The Sherman Act (1890) inaugurated the commitment of the American federal government to block the horizontal combinations or “trusts” then beginning to dominate many industries. But the statute’s sweeping language nearly demanded interpretation by the executive branch and the judiciary. Two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911, Standard Oil and American Tobacco, promulgated a “rule of reason” that sent American antitrust law in a new direction, grounded in economic analysis. In its next antitrust case, the court used the rule to uphold a monopoly for the first time. To date, historians have overlooked that case, United States v. Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (1912). This article reviews the events that led to this prosecution under the Sherman At, and it explores a fallacy at the heart of the justices’ unanimous opinion. Contrary to their analysis, the Terminal Railroad of St. Louis lacked any legitimate claim to being a natural monopoly. In turn, their egregious misreading of fact and theory suggests that the justices were ill-equipped to wield economic analysis in shaping antitrust law.
The Eads Bridge, a double-deck road and rail bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2024. It is the oldest bridge in daily use on the river, but the structure has been amazing and improbable from its origins. A riverman, James Eads, proposed it in 1867 with all its major design concepts. He had never designed or built a bridge, yet this one, his first offering, would break world records for the length of its spans and the depth of its stone foundations. To place those two piers on bedrock beneath the flowing Mississippi and its sandy riverbed, Eads became the North American pioneer in using pneumatic caissons. He was so influential that Washington Roebling went to St. Louis to learn all he could before undertaking his own bridge in Brooklyn.
Academic historians seldom write explicit counterfactuals, despite their value in isolating the causes and contingencies that shaped events. Surprisingly, historians of technology have ignored this analytic tool, even though firms and engineers commonly considered alternative designs and actions while developing a product or technology. This article provides a “constrained counterfactual,” comparing two designs for bridges across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, both proposed in 1867: the Eads Bridge, and the Boomer/Post bridge. It covers three topics: exploring the conventional narratives on the Eads Bridge (completed in 1874); comparing the Eads design to that of the Boomer/Post alternative; and offering a counterfactual service life for that proposed crossing. The article seeks to isolate why James Eads’s design and his company succeeded, and to show the analytic value of counterfactuals for historians of technology.
Assume that Lucius Boomer had won against James Eads in the summer of 1867, and that Boomer then completed his bridge at St. Louis by January 1871. Given those postulates, what results for railway development in the region might have flowed from the Boomer/Post bridge? And how does that counterfactual history compare to the events that transpired, the landscapes that were built? This analysis must be more speculative than a constrained counterfactual, considering ramifications across three decades, throughout the city and beyond. But these bridges served the corporate needs and strategies of railways. And those railroads in turn had broad regional and national consequences. So this contingent counterfactual takes us to some interesting and important historical developments.
Read “A Different Counterfactual Perspective on the Eads Bridge” Here
After 1865, a new industry, uniquely American, grew to prominence making standard and semi-custom iron bridges for roads and railways. Using illustrated catalogues, specialized firms like Keystone Bridge, Phoenix Bridge, and American Bridge Company created national markets for their pin-connected bridges. With nested routines and procedures ordering the processes of design and production, they transformed bridge building from a local and empirical art into a rationalized industry. After 1870, an innovative entrepreneur, James Eads, upset established procedures at these firms. Promoting a new arched design and a new material—steel—Eads insisted on new routines in the industry. Concurrently, civil engineers and editors of technical journals advocated new approaches in design and construction to counter the problem of bridge collapses. These novel routines became instruments to force institutional and technological change among the railroads, iron and steel mills, consulting engineers, and bridge makers that built these essential structures.
Saying that the Eads Bridge saved a riverboat town from irrelevance and created the modern city of St. Louis seems like a bold declaration, but it is entirely defensible. By 1860 the United States had 30,000 miles of railroads—roughly the same as Europe—but nearly all those tracks lay east of the Mississippi River. Without a direct rail connection to that network, the town would surely wither. The unique talents of Captain James Eads—a steamboat man, mechanical engineer, and promoter par excellence—eventually triumphed with the graceful structure that endures to this day.
Read “The Eads Bridge: The Structure that Made St. Louis” Here
The Eads Bridge (completed in 1874) was the first bridge to cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The Merchants Bridge (1890) was the second. Its owner/promoters had claimed their new crossing would finally create competition for shippers and travelers to and from the East. In fact, the Merchants company struck a secret price-fixing agreement with the owners of the Eads Bridge, the Terminal Railroad Association. The newcomer also took market share away from the TRRA. This profitable corporation further challenged the TRRA in 1893 when a consortium of railroads sought to buy it outright. To prevent that blow to its profits, the Terminal Association bought the Merchants company at a premium price, with financing provided by J.P. Morgan & Company. Because the consolidation violated core principles in antitrust law, these acts have been hidden behind a veil of lies for the past 131 years, to be revealed only now.
Today’s worldwide banking giant, JP Morgan Chase, originated in the London investment bank, J.S. Morgan & Company. Starting in the 1860s, its senior partner, Junius Morgan, specialized in connecting British investors with American corporations seeking capital, chiefly railroads. Working with his son, J.P. Morgan, in New York City, Junius built a reputation as a safe and sober banker. This article details his unheralded appetite for risk. In 1869, the Morgans took equity stakes in a new corporation formed to build a combination road and rail bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The project defined risk. It nearly defied fate. Its neophyte engineer, James Eads, had never done a bridge, yet he proposed to break world records for the depth of its stone piers and the length of its steel spans. The project would introduce pneumatic caissons in North America, and it became the first structure of any kind anywhere to rely on steel. How and why the Morgans sustained this daring work offers new insight into their rise and Gilded Age finance at large.
Read “Profit from Risk: Junius Morgan and the Eads Bridge” Here