Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #762

Text 1 Historian A argues that the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act was fundamentally a symbolic gesture, a legislative placebo meant to placate public anger against monopolies without actually providing the executive branch the enforcement mechanisms or jurisdictional clarity necessary to genuinely dismantle corporate trusts. Text 2 Historian B points to the 1904 *Northern Securities Co. v. United States* decision as definitive evidence of the Sherman Act's latent teeth. They note that even if early executive enforcement was remarkably sparse, the statutory framework itself provided the exact legal scaffolding President Roosevelt's Justice Department needed to successfully dissolve the largest railroad conglomerate in the nation. Based on the texts, how would Historian B most likely respond to Historian A's characterization of the Sherman Antitrust Act?