discussed ways and means for meeting the attack. In the White House the movement was watched with interest and appreciation. The President called upon his AttorneyGeneral, Philander C. Knox, for an opinion as to the legality of the Northern Securities Company, and whether the device of a holding company succeeded in evading the prohibition against conspiracy.

prosecution

The appointment of Knox as Attorney-General had been criticized because his professional connections as a PittsNorthern burgh lawyer made him appear to be the servant Securities of big business. When he undertook to study the legality of this case, the Sherman Law was substantially, as Cullom, the author of the first Interstate Commerce Act declared, "a dead letter." But Roosevelt's action upon his opinion awoke the "slumbering conscience of the nation." On March 10, 1902, the National Government intervened in the situation in which the Northwestern States found themselves at a disadvantage, and Attorney-General Knox, by direction of the President, filed his petition for the outlawry of the Northern Securities Company.

Anti-trust laws, 1903

From this moment a new economic policy was taken on. The Government intervened to protect the people from the operations of big business. As soon as Congress adjourned in the summer of 1902, Roosevelt went upon a speaking tour directing his attention to those "great corporations commonly called trusts." The Outlook, that knew well of what it wrote, declared a little later that the "peculiar popularity of Theodore Roosevelt dates from the beginning of his campaign for the regulation of the trusts in the summer of 1902." In the following session of Congress three acts were passed looking toward the more effective control of trusts. The Expedition Act of February 11, 1903, made it possible to prosecute with firmness and quick results. Federal suits of this character were given precedence on the dockets of the courts, and the creation of special trial courts to hear Government prosecutions was provided for. The Northern Securities Case speedily found itself in one of these.

A few days after the Expedition Act, the Elkins AntiRebate Act struck at one of the most persistent and pernicious practices of the railroads. Many of the trusts were believed to have gained their dominance as the result of secret and unfair rebates on the carriage of their freight. The Department of Commerce and Labor was created on February 14, 1903, to provide a member in the Cabinet whose duty it should be to watch over the interests of the people in their economic relationships. The Commissioner of Labor, who had existed for nineteen years in the Interior Department, was brought into the new department with a going organization. A new Bureau of Corporations with duties to keep watch over business was entrusted to James R. Garfield, son of the former President, while George B. Cortelyou, who had risen from stenographer to Cleveland to private secretary to McKinley, entered the Cabinet as the new Secretary. Cortelyou's office, remarked the Nation, was the President's personal department, and a governmental field that was new and all his own.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charles A. Beard, Contemporary American History (1914), gives an effective presentation of the influence of business on politics. F. A. Cleveland and F. W. Powell, Railway Promotion and Capitalization in the United States (1909), contains an elaborate bibliography. Joseph G. Pyle, Life of James J. Hill (1917), is one of the best biographies of a captain of industry, and may be studied to advantage in connection with Beckles Willson, Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal (1915), and Henry Villard, Memoirs (1904). H. L. Wilgus, The United States Steel Corporation in its Industrial and Legal Aspects (1901), is a lawyer's analysis. The standard history of a trust is Ida M. Tarbell, History of the Standard Oil Company (1903).

CHAPTER XXXI

THE ROOSEVELT CAMPAIGN

BEFORE the first session of his first Congress adjourned, in the summer of 1902, Roosevelt had taken his stand with reference to big business, had assisted in the launching of the new Cuban Republic, and had threatened to precipitate a controversy over the protective tariff because of his interest in reciprocity with Cuba.

There was some danger that Cuba, independent of Spain, and under her own government, would be worse off than beCuban fore the Spanish War. Spain had at least given reciprocity the colony a privileged position in her own trade. This was lost. A dependent Cuba belonging to the United States might have expected to share in the advantages of the free trade that was extended to Porto Rico, but free Cuba was a foreign country outside the law. Its Government immediately endeavored to negotiate for easy trade relations with the United States, and received the spirited support of Roosevelt, to whom this was a matter of elementary fairness. The project was injured in the public mind by the fact that free trade in sugar was welcomed by the Sugar Trust; it was blocked in Congress by the stubborn antagonism of the "beet-sugar insurgents," who refused to permit a Cuban competition with their own domestic product. There were also some members who were quite willing to let Roosevelt learn that he could not expect Congress always to do his bidding. In June the President. sent in a vigorous message on the subject, but failed to get action from that Congress. Reciprocity with Cuba became one of the themes which he took with him upon his speaking trip.

Popular nervousness over the expansion of the trusts grew during the summer of 1902 and was paralleled in the Republican Party by an uneasiness as to the President's

probable attitude toward business. But a greater nervousness, steadily increasing during the summer, had

Anthracite

1902

to do with the comfort of the approaching win- coal strike, ter, for the second great strike of the anthracite miners had been under way since the middle of May and showed no prospect of yielding.

The leadership of John Mitchell in the strike of 1900 consolidated his power, increased the influence of the United Mine Workers, and engendered among the mineowners a feeling that their situation was in danger. The impending contest involved more than the conditions of labor, and looked toward a complete recognition of the union, but was met by an inflexible refusal to accept the doctrine of the "closed shop." There was no presidential canvass on to weaken the strategic position of the owners. "The rights and interests of the laboring man," wrote George F. Baer, who became the chief spokesman of the operators, "will be protected and cared for not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends."

With a public already suspicious of big business, Baer's letter, claiming that the capitalists were viceroys of Providence, had a wide and unexpected circulation. It gave the cue for cartoons without number, and from it may be traced the growth of sentiment that made it possible for the President to make another advance in policy.

The strike continued through the summer with the workers under steady discipline and with a minimum of lawlessness around the mines. Public sympathy was not alienated by misconduct on behalf of the miners. The unions showed a capacity to hold out and a deadlock threatened the country with a winter without coal. On October 3 Roosevelt summoned the presidents of the coal companies and Mitchell to a conference at the White House. He had already determined that if the deadlock could be broken in no other way he would "send in the United

States Army to take possession of the coal fields." He had discussed the details of this with General Scofield, and intimated his intention to Senator Quay. It was a part of his intention to appoint a commission under ex-President Cleveland to "decide on the rights of the case" while the army got out the coal. The White House conference was turbulent. The coal presidents got angry, and Roosevelt confessed that "he behaved very badly himself, and that Mitchell was the only one who kept his temper and his head."

The demand of the President was for an immediate resumption of mining, accompanied by an examination into the merits of the controversy by a public commission. As the deadlock continued, there appeared repeatedly all over the country angry assertions of a new third interest in the controversy. The interest of the public was avowed to be superior to that of either miners or operators. Conservative business tended to criticize the President for forcing himself into a struggle in whose determination he had no legal rights. The great majority, however, expressed satisfaction at his intervention, and looked to Roosevelt with increasing confidence as the only agent who could conserve the public interest. On October 13 the operators yielded; work was soon resumed, and a commission was set to study the controversy. The approaching fall elections found the National Administration headed upon the policy toward labor indicated by the anthracite strike, and the public discussing whether or not the party had started upon a

new career.

Congres

sional election, 1902

Four consecutive Republican Congresses were chosen in the four elections prior to 1902. The Republican Party approached the election of this year with confidence based upon its long tenure of office and its perfected party machine, and faced only those doubts that were indicated by the effect Roosevelt's new policies might have and the degree to which local leaders might dominate their regions. The tenure of the National Republican organization had been long