I have thought it useful over the years to examine in some close detail the antitrust debates of the Progressive Era, in their judicial, legislative, and political phases, in conjunction with a study of changes in property and market relations and in economic thought at the time. I have done so on the assumption that such inquiry might yield some altered perspectives on twentieth-century United States political history. I have long believed that, given the critical role of law and judicial process in a liberal-capitalist society, and at any rate in the United States, a close attention to the law is as necessary for interpreting twentieth-century United States political history as it has been found to be in relatively recent interpretations of earlier United States history.

A conclusion I have drawn from my efforts is that a closer attention to the law, in its judicial and legislative phases and as it relates to changing property-production relations, affords an understanding less ideologically predisposed and more receptive to retrieving past political discourses both on their own terms and in a larger historical context. In any event, as my study of these matters proceeded, my understanding of events, leaders, thought, and politics of the Progressive Era and subsequent times underwent changes, including those that carried me past some of my own earlier understandings, interpretations, and predispositions, as well as those of other writers in the field.