The late-1800s trust scare concerned concentrated power, not legal form.

Evidence

In this period, John D. Rockefeller dominated the oil business, and his lawyers put together a voting trust to consolidate his holdings. The trust became a household word. Trusts were the bogeymen of the late 1880s, but it was power, not form, that was at issue. Corporations carved up markets; they made treaties with each other; and they formed huge and menacing agglomerations. The business frontier seemed as dead as the western land frontier. America was no longer individual men and women fighting to get ahead. Everything now was groups, entities, and institutions. Society was a seamless web. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3036

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes power-as-the-issue from the voting-trust legal form — shared vocabulary for downstream antitrust material.