| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jonathan W. Singer. Broken Trusts: The Texas Attorney General versus the Oil Industry, 1889–1909. (Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History, number 12.) College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 2002. Pp. 344. $49.95.
Everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas, but as this book demonstrates, when it comes to the oil business, Texas has had a history of deep ambivalence about the super-sizing of petroleum operations. Long a state that has embraced and even revered the wildcatter, Texas tried to break up the growing oligarchy of oil firms during the era in which the U.S. government was, at least rhetorically, committed to trustbusting but often, on the ground, not enforcing antitrust legislation to the degree that some of the states were attempting to do.	1
The story that Jonathan W. Singer lays out in this copiously detailed book follows the fate of the Waters-Pierce firm and its ties to Standard Oil following the passage of Texas's 1889 antitrust law. In a series of high-profile cases, the Texas attorney general's office went after the firm aggressively, not only in civil trials but also, as a grand finale, in a criminal trial for perjury against executive Henry Pierce in 1909. Although Pierce escaped conviction, the state of Texas did, in fact, achieve notable success in prosecuting Waters-Pierce for antitrust violation; indeed, in a 1909 opinion, the Supreme Court resoundingly supported the state's efforts to oust the firm from doing business in Texas and require it to pay a fine of well over a million dollars. The amount was "more than the federal Justice Department had recovered in all of its antitrust actions since 1890 combined," as Singer notes (p. 154).	. . .

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