Looking For the Sherman Anti Trust Act

THERE WAS A TIME when you could sit on the runway on a Delta jet at the Atlanta airport, waiting to take off, with about forty identical jets in line ahead of you, and an untold number in line behind you. There was a certain thrill knowing that you were about to be lifted into the air by the largest airline in the country, at the largest airport in the country. Now, all that's changed, as U.S. Airways and American Airlines have merged to create the new American Airlines. The new American airlines is the largest carrier, suddenly. Move over Delta. They've already started repainting the old U.S. Airways planes, so you know they'll have to increase passenger fares to pay for that. So, how many airline passenger service carriers are there now? Four or five? No more than that, right? Hasn't the number of air carrier corporations dwindled significantly over the last few years? The United States used to have a law called the "Sherman Anti Trust Act". It was passed in 1892, thereabouts, and basically, it says "combinations in restraint of trade are illegal." Now, that seems pretty straight forward. You cannot combine two companies into one company if doing so is going to restrain, or in other words, diminish or damage free trade. But isn't trade restrained, diminshed, to at least some extent, anytime two companies are merged to form one company? How could it be otherwise? So, whatever happened to the Sherman Anti Trust Act? Have we simply forgotten about it in this era of big businesses swallowing up other businesses and getting bigger still? Or have we, through legal precedent of some sort, decided as a society that a sector of the economy which is dominated by a few very large companies which cooperate with each other rather than compete against each other is not in restraint of trade?