is but a little
over 54 per cent, and the percentage by all other steel manufacturers
but a fraction less than 46 per cent. Of the 54 3_10 per cent produced
by the Steel Corporation 1 9_10 per cent is produced by the former
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. In other words, these figures show that
the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company did not in the
slightest degree change the situation, and that during the ten
years which include the acquisition of these properties by the Steel
Corporation the percentage of total output of steel manufacturers in
this country by the Steel Corporation has shrunk from nearly 66 per cent
to but a trifle over 54 per cent. I do not believe that these figures
can be successfully controverted, and if not successfully controverted
they show clearly not only that the acquisition of the Tennessee
Coal and Iron properties wrought no change in the status of the Steel
Corporation, but that the Steel Corporation during the decade has
steadily lost, instead of gained, in monopolistic character.

[*] My own belief is that our Nation should long ago have
adopted the policy of merely leasing for a term of years
mineral-bearing land; but it is the fault of us ourselves,
of the people, not of the Steel Corporation, that this
policy has not been adopted.

So much for the facts in this particular case. Now for the general
subject. When my Administration took office, I found, not only that
there had been little real enforcement of the Anti-Trust Law and but
little more effective enforcement of the Inter-State Commerce Law,
but also that the decisions were so chaotic and the laws themselves so
vaguely drawn, or at least interpreted in such widely varying fashions,
that the biggest business men tended to treat both laws as dead letters.
The series of actions by which we succeeded in making the Inter-State
Commerce Law an efficient and most useful instrument in regulating the
transportation of the country and exacting justice from the big railways
without doing them injustice--while, indeed, on the contrary, securing
them against injustice--need not here be related. The Anti-Trust Law it
was also necessary to enforce as it had never hitherto been enforced;
both because it was on the statute-books and because it was imperative
to teach the masters of the biggest corporations in the land that they
were not, and would not be permitted to regard themselves as, above
the law