General Interest
Trust

The original sense of the word trust describes an arrangement for administering the affairs of a child or incompetent adult (beneficiary) by a person known as a trustee. A trustee is a person or party who acts on behalf of another or others, usually under the terms of a court order.

In a business application, the trust was an arrangement under which stockholders in a company would assign their shares to trustees, who have the voting power to guide the decision-making of that company.

In the United States, trusts came under increasing public criticism in the late 19th century and would become the subject of antitrust legislation. The state of New Jersey in 1889 enacted new corporation legislation, authorizing the use of the holding company to circumvent the discredited trust.

In actual practice, the word trust was frequently applied to any of a number of large (and often monopolistic) companies, such as the beef trust, oil trust or sugar trust, among others.

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