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Abstract: “Banking and the Antimonopoly Tradition: The Long Road to the Bank Holding Company Act” excavates the history of the bank holding company, a corporation that owns or controls one or more US banks, and the movement to prevent its monopolistic expansion in the decades surrounding World War II. Staked on constitutional grounds that emphasized the dangers of concentrated financial power to democratic governance, the battle for bank holding company reform represents a pivotal, yet virtually unacknowledged, chapter of the American antimonopoly tradition. Culminating in the enactment of the Bank Holding Company Act in 1956, the struggle for bank holding company legislation challenges long-standing narratives of American political economy that portray World War II as the end of Progressive economic reform and the antitrust movement as a faded passion. Foregrounding the neglected history of the rise and regulation of bank holding companies in the twentieth century ultimately reveals that antimonopoly ideals survived long after their supposed demise and continued to structure national policymaking well into the postwar decades.
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