Understanding the Clayton Act of 1914: An Analysis of the Interest Group Hypothesis

The trusts issue culminated in the passage of the Clayton Act in 1914, which conventional wisdom holds was a response to the perceived ineffectiveness of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Using ordered and multinomial logit analysis, we were able to detect economic interest variables that explain the senators' votes. The empirical findings strongly support the wealth transfer hypothesis, and the regression results clearly show that senators responded to interest groups. While we also found some support for the ideological perspective, it is clear that there was much more to the vote than the conventional story would suggest.