control the entire production
of a commodity that was a necessary of life. The effect of this decision
was not merely the absolute nullification of the Anti-Trust Law, so
far as industrial corporations were concerned, but was also in effect a
declaration that, under the Constitution, the National Government could
pass no law really effective for the destruction or control of such
combinations.

This decision left the National Government, that is, the people of the
Nation, practically helpless to deal with the large combinations of
modern business. The courts in other cases asserted the power of
the Federal Government to enforce the Anti-Trust Law so far as
transportation rates by railways engaged in interstate commerce were
concerned. But so long as the trusts were free to control the production
of commodities without interference from the General Government, they
were well content to let the transportation of commodities take care of
itself--especially as the law against rebates was at that time a dead
letter; and the Court by its decision in the Knight case had interdicted
any interference by the President or by Congress with the production of
commodities. It was on the authority of this case that practically all
the big trusts in the United States, excepting those already mentioned,
were formed. Usually they were organized as "holding" companies, each
one acquiring control of its constituent corporations by exchanging its
stock for theirs, an operation which the Supreme Court had thus decided
could not be prohibited, controlled, regulated, or even questioned by
the Federal Government.

Such was the condition of our laws when I acceded to the Presidency.
Just before my accession, a small group of financiers, desiring to
profit by the governmental impotence to which we had been reduced by the
Knight decision, had arranged to take control of practically the entire
railway system in the Northwest--possibly as the first step toward
controlling the entire railway system of the country. This control of
the Northwestern railway systems was to be effected by organizing a new
"holding" company, and exchanging its stock against the stock of the
various corporations engaged in railway transportation throughout that
vast territory, exactly as the Sugar Trust had acquired control of the
Knight company and other concerns. This company was called the Northern
Securities Company. Not long after I became President, on the advice of