Temporary National Economic Committee Launches Comprehensive Investigation of Monopoly and Economic Concentration

Congress authorizes the Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC) on June 16, 1938, launching the most comprehensive investigation of monopoly power and economic concentration in American history. Chaired by Senator Joseph O’Mahoney of Wyoming, the committee conducts three years of hearings producing 31 volumes of testimony and 43 monographs documenting how concentrated corporate power distorts the American economy. President Roosevelt requests the investigation amid the 1937-38 “Roosevelt Recession,” which he attributes partly to monopolistic pricing practices that choke off economic recovery.

The TNEC investigation reveals staggering levels of economic concentration: fewer than 200 corporations control over half of all corporate assets; interlocking directorates connect supposedly competing firms; patent pools and licensing agreements suppress innovation and maintain artificial scarcity; price leadership and tacit collusion allow oligopolists to administer prices above competitive levels. The committee examines industry after industry—steel, oil, automobiles, aluminum, glass, chemicals, insurance, investment banking—documenting how concentrated ownership enables extraction of monopoly profits at the expense of consumers, workers, and smaller competitors.

Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold uses TNEC findings to support an aggressive antitrust enforcement campaign, filing more antitrust cases between 1938 and 1943 than had been filed in the previous 48 years combined. However, the committee’s final report in 1941 produces recommendations that Congress largely ignores, as wartime production concerns eclipse antitrust enforcement. The TNEC represents the last major congressional investigation into corporate concentration until the 1970s, and its documented concerns about monopoly power largely disappear from policy discourse during the post-war era of consumer prosperity. The committee’s findings anticipate the re-emergence of extreme corporate concentration in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when the industries it examined—and new sectors like technology—once again exhibit the monopolistic structures the TNEC identified as threats to democratic capitalism.