{"value"=>"<p>The department studied the history of trusts and combinations and arranged a conference on the question in October 1907. Important members were Samuel Gompers, John Mitchell, August Belmont, Jr., Albert Shaw, and Franklin MacVeagh. The conference was called by NCF to discuss several of the essential questions of the period, including the desired level of severity of the State and Federal laws regulating combinations in transportation, production, distribution and labor; whether there should be national corporations as well as State; and how to distinguish between public service and other corporations, and between reasonable and unreasonable agreements.</p> <p>The subseries includes correspondence, 1907, with governors, senators, congressmen, municipal officials, businessmen, political economists and others, concerning preparations for the Chicago Conference on Trusts and Combinations. The preparations included appointing \"representative persons\" to attend the conference as regional delegates and asking for papers on the question of trusts and combinations; correspondence, 1908, regarding the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and miscellaneous papers, including statements by Jeremiah Jenks and Samuel Gompers of NCF and others, with reference to a hearing in April 1908 before the Congressional Committee on the Judiciary on proposed amendments to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; a questionnaire on various aspects of the anti-trust question which was sent to political economists, lawyers, statisticians, manufacturers, merchants, bankers, union officials, and organizations; papers concerning the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; a memorandum on the criticisms made of the Hepburn Bill; and lists of speakers at the anti-trust hearing.</p>"}