GOVERNMENT: Defeat for United Shoe

As a rising young corporation lawyer, Louis Dembitz Brandeis helped in 1903 to put together Boston's United Shoe Machinery Corp. A combine of the three biggest companies in the business, United held more than 300 basic patents, and about 60 per cent of its line was made by no one else. By leasing and refusing to sell its machines, it was able to dominate the shoe-machine market; some 85% of all machines used in U.S. shoe factories were leased from United. Brandeis, later Supreme Court Justice, came to regret some of the company's practices. But the Justice Department...

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