This is probably my favorite scene of all time. It features three dead men, barstool cowboys set on killing mustangs in order to avoid working for a living, and the one solitary pacifist who dissents from the slaughter of the most noble critters in the picture (uncredited). It marked the first time in my movie-going experience that the passive and sensitive (woman) stopped the dread carousing mindless violent (male). Give Peace a Chance is the very best manner of living but it can make for dull movies.
Marilyn had just about chewed all the sweetness out of the gum of her marriage to the playwright who had written the story and film called The Misfits by the time it was filmed, and she dismissed the scene you just watched. That's what he thinks of me, she gloomed, winning with hysterics instead of logic.
Well, okay, then, how aboutIda M Tarbell for the effective use of reason? She shut down another occurance of heartless mercantilism, and she didn't use hysteria neither.
Once upon a time in America, the market was a wilderness, where the big animals scored all the game. One of the very biggest was named Rockefeller, and he was set upon owning the world with his Standard Oil. He would pay a premium for railroads to carry his goods and prevent competitors from the market. They would need to bring oil to customers, but Rocky bought up rail they needed to cross and blocked 'em. We would now be the United Standard of Oil, were it not for Ms Tarbell.
. . . Until the people of the United States have solved the question of free and equal transportation it is idle to suppose that they will not have a trust question. So long as it is possible for a company to own the exclusive carrier on which a great natural product depends for transportation, and to use this carrier to limit a competitor’s supply or to cut off that supply entirely if the rival is offensive, and always to make him pay a higher rate than it costs the owner, it is ignorance and folly to talk about constitutional amendments limiting trusts. . . So long as the Standard Oil Company can control transportation as it does to-day, it will remain master of the oil industry, and the people of the United States will pay for their indifference and folly. . . .
. . . We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce. As a consequence business success is sanctified, and, practically, any methods which achieve it are justified by a larger and larger class. . . .
You can see how the argument played out, and I recommend it, right here. The short answer is, due to and as a consequence of Ms Tarbell's non-hysterical and very cogent reasoning, the Sherman Antitrust Act was applied. Here's what the Supreme Court said, back before it became a corporate subsidiary and actually performed quite nobly sometimes, as in STANDARD OIL COMPANY OF NEW JERSEY et al.* v. UNITED STATES 221 U.S. 1 (1911):
We think no disinterested mind can survey the period in question without being irresistibly driven to the conclusion that the very genius for commercial development and organization which it would seem was manifested from the beginning soon begot an intent and purpose to exclude others which was frequently manifested by acts and dealings wholly inconsistent with the theory that they were made with the single conception of advancing the development of business power by usual methods, but which, on the contrary, necessarily involved the intent to drive others from the field and to exclude them from their right to trade, and thus accomplish the mastery which was the end in view. . . .
Now, this was all a hundred years ago nearabouts, and Standard Oil is no more, nor is the premise the tycoons can own the market and the horse it rode in on, so I was just reminiscing today of The Misfits, and Ms Marilyn, and that stupendous screaming scene out in that Black Rock desert which, for a brief time, brought humanity into play where grim inhuman commerce loomed.
Sorry I can't think of any modern application for the parable, but the movie is good, and the sentiment is first class, and I hope you liked it.