Trade Associations--The Commerce Department under Herbert Hoover encouraged businesses to regulate themselves by forming trade associations.  Commerce would call a meeting of business leaders from a given industry and help them create codes of fair competition, which involved things such as agreeing upon minimum wages for workers and maximum hours.  Unfortunately, the larger corporations tended to dominate these associations, and often set standards too low for small business to match, driving them out of business or forcing them to merge in order to stay in business.  Government policy, therefore, helped promote economic concentration and discourage competition--exactly the opposite of the Progressives.  Moreover, these associations were, in effect, trusts, but the Republicans refused to prosecute them as such (given that they had helped create them!).

©  Kahne Parsons, 2007-08