A TYPICAL IOWA AUDIENCE

"I never said anything off the stump that I would not say on the stump, so that what I say now you can take as sincere.'

vast body of law-abiding merchants, the general public, and particularly of unfavored localities.

Under those circumstances it was a serious problem to determine the wise course to follow in vitalizing a law which had in part become obsolete or proved incapable of enforcement. Of what the Attorney-General did in enforcing it I shall speak later. The decisions of the courts upon the law had betrayed weaknesses and imperfections, some of them so serious as to render abortive efforts to apply any effective remedy for the existing evils.

It is clear that corporations created for quasi public purposes, clothed for that reason with the ultimate power of the state to take private property against the will of the owner, hold their corporate powers as carriers in trust for the fairly impartial service of all the public. Favoritism in the use of such powers, unjustly enriching some and unjustly impoverishing others, discriminating in favor of some places and against others, is palpably violative of plain

principles of justice. Such a practice unchecked is hurtful in many ways. Congress, having had its attention drawn to the matter, enacted a most important anti-rebate law, which greatly. strengthens the interstate-commerce law. This new law prohibits under adequate penalties the giving and as well the demanding or receiving of such preferences, and provides the preventive remedy of injunction. The rigorous administration of this law, and it will be enforced, will, it is hoped, afford a substantial remedy for certain trust evils which have attracted public attention and have created public unrest.

This law represents a noteworthy and important advance toward just and effective regulation of transportation. Moreover, its passage has been supplemented by the enactment of a law to expedite the hearing of actions of public moment under the anti-trust act, known as the Sherman law, and under the act to regulate commerce, at the request of the Attorney-General; and furthermore, additional funds have

been appropriated to be expended under the direction of the Attorney-General in the enforcement of these laws.

All of this represents a great and substantial advance in legislation. But more important even than legislation is the administration of the law, and I ask your attention for a moment to the way in which the law has been administered by the profound jurist and fearless public servant who now occupies the position of Attorney-General, Mr. Knox. The Constitution enjoins upon the President that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and under this provision the Attorney-General formulated a policy which was in effect nothing but the rigid enforcement, by suits managed with consummate skill and ability, both of the anti-trust law and of the imperfect provisions of the act to regulate commerce. The first step taken was the prosecution of fourteen suits against the principal railroads of the Middle West, restraining them by injunction from further violations of either of the laws in question.

About the same time the case against the Northern Securities Company was initiated. This was a corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey with a capital of four hundred million dollars, the alleged purpose being to control the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railroad companies, two parallel and competing lines extending across the northern tier of States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Whatever the purpose its consummation would have resulted in the control of the two great railway systems upon which the people of the Northwestern States were so largely dependent for their supplies and to get their products to market being practically merged into the New Jersey corporation. The proposition that these independent systems of railroads should be merged under a single control alarmed the people of the States concerned, lest they be subjected to what they deemed a monopoly of interstate transportation and the suppression of competition. The governors of