The Whiskey Trust: A Monopoly With Dynamite

In eighteen eighty-seven, the men who ran Peoria's distilleries decided to stop competing with each other. They formed the Distillers' and Cattle Feeders' Trust, which the newspapers immediately and accurately nicknamed the Whiskey Trust. The idea was straightforward: bring the major distillers under one umbrella, control production, set prices, and eliminate smaller competitors. Peoria, with more than a dozen distilleries by the late nineteenth century, was its natural center.

The Trust's tactics escalated quickly. When the H.H. Shufeldt distillery in Chicago refused to join, someone dynamited its facilities. The Trust was suspected but charges were never filed against the organization itself. However, the Trust's own secretary, a man named George Gibson, was arrested for attempting to blow up vats at the same Chicago plant. The episode did not suggest a group of gentlemen doing business in good faith.

Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in July of eighteen ninety, aimed in part at entities exactly like the Whiskey Trust. In eighteen ninety-three, the State of Illinois filed suit, charging that the Trust had exceeded its charter, destroyed competition, and was repugnant to public policy. The court agreed.

The Trust's legal death did not immediately end Peoria's distilling dominance. The industry continued for another generation, only to meet Prohibition in nineteen nineteen. But the episode established something: concentrated industrial power in Peoria had national consequences, and the federal government was watching. The Sherman Act that broke the Trust would go on to reshape American commerce for the next century.