In the first ten years after the passing of the Sherman Act, the government attacked most successfully, not the great solidified aggregations of capital popularly known as trusts, but the more or less loosely organized federations of corporations, formed chiefly for the purpose of regulating and establishing prices. Trade agreements, not monopolistic corporations, became its chief quarry. In proscribing these agreements as illegal, the Sherman Act was found to be extremely effective. The very first case under this law was directed against a combination of coal-mining companies in Kentucky and Tennessee, which existed for the express purpose of regulating output and fixing prices. The courts promptly decided that this agreement violated the Sherman Act. In 1892 eighteen railroads, nearly all operating west of the Missouri River, organized what they called the Trans-Missouri Freight Association. This association included many of the great Western roads, companies of the magnitude of the Santa Fé, the Missouri Pacific, and the Rock Island. Its object, as clearly stated in the articles of association, was "mutual protection by establishing and maintaining reasonable rates, rules, and regulations, in all freight traffic, both through and local." In other words, it proposed to fix arbitrarily the price of transportation throughout the enormous territory covered by the eighteen railroads in question. The old "pooling" agreements, which had existed for many years, had been prohibited by the Interstate Commerce Law passed in 1887; and this Traffic Association was an attempt to accomplish the same end--that is, stop competition among the railroads and maintain rates--in a different way. The Supreme Court, by a vote of five to four, decided that this agreement was prohibited by the Sherman Anti-trust Act, because, as an attempt to fix prices, it restrained trade. The famous Trans-Missouri decision, which settled this case, made the Sherman Law an insurmountable bulwark against all railroad combinations of this kind. Until this decision was finally given in 1897, this act had not been seriously regarded; after the Supreme Court had spoken, however, capitalists suddenly awoke to its significance. The decision settled many important points, which will be referred to subsequently in this article, and it changed as well the whole policy of railroad management.