In response to the rampant anticompetitive business practices of the Gilded Age, the 51st Congress authored what would prove to be one of the most enduring statutes in American law, the Sherman Act of 1890. More than a century later, it remains the cornerstone of antitrust law in this country. With fewer than 1,000 words altogether, the Sherman Act has also proved to be one of the most malleable, and courts have spent the ensuing decades interpreting the exact parameters of its two broad edicts. The first, that "every contract, combination … or conspiracy, in restraint of trade" was thenceforth illegal, and the second, which criminalized monopolization or attempts to do so. See 15 U.S.C. Section 1-2. The stringency of this statute, along with the complementary Clayton Act, has fluctuated over time in response to political and economic developments.