Today -100: May 16, 1911: Of guns, trusts, and pogroms

Gun control (permits for sale or carrying, registration of sales) passes the NY Legislature.

The Supreme Court affirms that Standard Oil must be broken up within 6 months. However, it also, in an act of gross judicial over-reach, construes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to ban only “unreasonable” restraint of trade, despite the rejection of that language by Congress in 1890 and in attempts every session since then to so amend the Act, precisely because Congress didn’t trust the courts with the power to decide what constituted a reasonable or unreasonable restraint of trade.

Teddy Roosevelt refuses permission for the Progressive Republican League of Nebraska to put him on the Republican ballot for president in 1912.

Jews in Kiev have been expecting a pogrom ever since a boy was found murdered and mutilated near the Jewish quarter, leading to the traditional “ritual murder” rumors.