purchase this stock as the only means of avoiding a failure. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick informed me that as a mere business transaction they do not care to purchase the stock; that under ordinary circumstances they would not consider purchasing the stock, because but little benefit will come to the Steel Corporation from the purchase; that they are aware that the purchase will be used as a handle for attack upon them on the ground that they are striving to secure a monopoly of the business and prevent competition -not that this would represent what could honestly be said, but what might recklessly and untruthfully be said. They further informed me that, as a matter of fact, the policy of the company has been to decline to acquire more than sixty per cent of the steel properties, and that this purpose has been persevered in for several years past, with the object of preventing these accusations, and, as a matter of fact, their proportion of steel properties has slightly decreased, so that it is below this sixty per cent, and the acquisition of the property in question will not raise it above sixty per cent. But they feel that it is immensely to their interest, as to the interest of every responsible business man, to try to prevent a panic and general industrial smash-up at this time, and that they are willing to go into this transaction, which they would not otherwise go into, because it seems the opinion of those best fitted to express judgment in New York that it will be an important factor in preventing a break that might be ruinous; and that this has been urged upon them by the combination of the most responsible bankers in New York who are now thus engaged in endeavoring to save the situation. But they asserted that they did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to be done. I answered that, while of course I could not advise them to take the action proposed, I felt it no public duty of mine to interpose any objections. Sincerely yours, (Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT. HON. CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, Attorney-General. The Attorney-General responded at once in person, saying that the legal situation had been in no way changed and that no sufficient ground existed for prosecution of the Steel Corporation. The Steel Corporation purchased the stock on the following day and the panic was arrested. While no details of the interview were published, the fact that it had been held was given to the press and its purpose and result were easily inferred from the purchase which was made on the following day and openly announced. There was no adverse comment on the President's action at the time but general and hearty praise from all quarters. After the lapse of a year or more, opponents of the President gave currency to assertions that he had been misled by Messrs. Gary and Frick, that the transaction had given the Steel Trust a monopoly of the steel industry and that by his action the President had been bound not to prosecute that trust. These assertions were repeated with increasing emphasis for several years, and in 1911 a committee of the House of Representatives conducted an inquiry on the subject. They summoned Mr. Roosevelt, who had returned in 1910 from his hunting expedition in Africa, to appear as a witness and he went before the committee with cheerful alacrity on August 5, 1911. He presented the note that he had dictated to the Attorney-General, and at the outset of a written statement which he had prepared, he said: "I wish it distinctly understood that I acted purely on my own initiative, and that the responsibility for the act was solely mine." His statement on this occasion was filed later in the suit which was brought under the Taft Administration against the Steel Trust in the United States District Court of New Jersey, in October 1911. In it he said: "I was dealing with a panic and a situation where not merely twenty-four hours, but one hour might cause widespread disaster to the public. "I ought to say that from New York I had been told by banker after banker that the Tennessee Coal and Iron securities were valueless as securities that counted in that panic. "There were two matters to which my attention was especially directed. One was the condition of things in New York, the relief that the action would bring, not merely to New York, but throughout the entire country-just as much in Louisiana and Minnesota and California as in New York. That was one thing. The other thing to which my attention was particularly directed was the percentage of holdings the Steel Corporation had, and had had and would have after the Tennessee Coal and Iron properties were acquired. "The knowledge that I had was that the Steel Corporation had some years previously possessed nearly sixty per cent of the holdings of the steel industry in the country; that its percentage had shrunk steadily; that the addition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, which was something in the nature of four per cent,-somewhere between two and four per cent, I have forgotten the exact amount, somewhere around there, did not bring up the percentage of holdings of the Steel Corporation to what it had been a few years previously. . "My knowledge was simply this, that it was a matter of general opinion among experts that the Tennessee Coal and Iron people had a property which was almost worthless on their hands, nearly worthless to them, nearly worthless to the communities in which it was situated, and entirely worthless to any financial institution that had the securities the minute that any panic came, and that the only way to give value to it was to put it in the hands of people whose possession of it would be a guaranty that there was value to it. "I believed at the time that the facts in the case were as represented to me on behalf of the Steel Corporation, and my further knowledge has convinced me that this was true. I believed at the time that the representatives of the Steel Corporation told me the truth as to the change that would be worked in the percentage of the business which the proposed acquisition would give the Steel Corporation; On June 3, 1915, the court rendered a decision adverse to the Government, dismissing as unproved the application for the dissolution of the corporation on the ground that it was a combination in restraint of trade. In its decision the court said the purchase of the stock of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company had been as stated by Roosevelt and was "made in fair business course," and, in the language of the Supreme Court, was the "honest exertion of one's right to contract for his own benefit, unaccompanied by a wrongful motive to injure others." This decision was a complete vindication of Roosevelt's course and put a permanent stop to all criticism of it. The Government took an appeal from the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States and on March 1, 1920, that court rendered a majority decision sustaining that of the New Jersey District Court. In this decision the Supreme Court Justice said: "There is, however, an important circumstance in connection with that of the Tennessee Company which is worthy to be noted. It was submitted to President Roosevelt and he gave it his approval. His approval, of course, did not make it legal, but it gives assurance of its legality, and we know from his earnestness in the public welfare he would have approved of nothing that had even a tendency to its detriment. And he testified he was not deceived and that he believed that 'the Tennessee Coal and Iron people had a property which was almost worthless in their hands, nearly worthless to them, nearly worthless to the communities in which it was situated, and entirely worthless to any financial institution that had the securities the minute that any panic came, and that the only way to give value to it was to put it in the hands of people whose possession of it would be a guarantee that there was value to it." Thus the highest tribunal in the nation ratified finally the complete vindication that the New Jersey tribunal had pronounced nearly five years earlier. In its decision the Supreme Court used the phrase: "The law does not make mere size an offense." This was the position which Roosevelt took toward corporations and trusts when he was Governor of New York, namely, that they must be judged not by size but by conduct,-a position which he held unswervingly ever afterwards. During the year 1907 the President made many addresses in various parts of the country and went on two tours through the West and South, one in the Spring and one in the Fall. In all his addresses he emphasized his unwavering adherence to the chief policies of his administration, showing that the financial disturbances that were current had not in the slightest degree influenced him in regard to them. In an address that he made at the opening of the Jamestown Exposition on April 26, 1907, he said: "Our purpose is to build up rather than to tear down. We show ourselves the truest friends of property when we make it evident that we will not tolerate the abuses of property." 66 "This great Republic of ours shall never become the government of a plutocracy, and it shall never become the government of a mob.” An address that he made at Indianapolis, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1907, aroused unusually bitter comment in capitalistic circles because of its vigorous defense of his railway and corporation policies and his avowed determination to pursue them without deviation or modification. "Every Federal law dealing with corporations or with rail |