Justice Department Files Antitrust Suit Against Beef Trust Monopoly

In May 1902, while the Northern Securities case proceeded through the courts, Attorney General Philander Knox filed a second major antitrust suit under President Theodore Roosevelt against the “Beef Trust”—a cartel of six major meatpacking companies (Swift, Armour, Morris, Cudahy, Wilson, and Schwartzchild) that controlled half the national meat market and up to 75% of the New York City market with combined annual revenues of $700 million. The companies had been engaged in pooling agreements, price-fixing, taking railroad rebates, and monopolistic practices to suppress competition and manipulate meat prices. When hit with federal injunctions in 1902, the Big Six attempted to evade antitrust enforcement by merging into the National Packing Company in 1903 to continue controlling the trade internally. The Justice Department filed suit in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which issued preliminary injunctions halting the companies’ monopolistic practices. The case expanded Roosevelt’s trust-busting campaign beyond railroads into food production, demonstrating the administration’s willingness to target consumer-facing industries where monopolistic practices directly affected Americans’ daily lives through inflated prices. The Supreme Court would ultimately rule against the Beef Trust on January 30, 1905, establishing the “stream of commerce” doctrine that allowed federal regulation of monopolies with direct effects on interstate commerce, a crucial expansion of antitrust enforcement power.