o it by the Northern
Securities case. After this later decision was rendered, suits were
brought by my direction against the American Tobacco Company and the
Standard Oil Company. Both were adjudged criminal conspiracies, and
their dissolution ordered. The Knight case was finally overthrown.
The vicious doctrine it embodied no longer remains as an obstacle to
obstruct the pathway of justice when it assails monopoly. Messrs.
Knox, Moody, and Bonaparte, who successively occupied the position of
Attorney-General under me, were profound lawyers and fearless and
able men; and they completely established the newer and more wholesome
doctrine under which the Federal Government may now deal with
monopolistic combinations and conspiracies.

The decisions rendered in these various cases brought under my direction
constitute the entire authority upon which any action must rest that
seeks through the exercise of national power to curb monopolistic
control. The men who organized and directed the Northern Securities
Company were also the controlling forces in the Steel Corporation, which
has since been prosecuted under the act. The proceedings against the
Sugar Trust for corruption in connection with the New York Custom House
are sufficiently interesting to be considered separately.

From the standpoint of giving complete control to the National
Government over big corporations engaged in inter-State business, it
would be impossible to over-estimate the importance of the Northern
Securities decision and of the decisions afterwards rendered in line
with it in connection with the other trusts whose dissolution was
ordered. The success of the Northern Securities case definitely
established the power of the Government to deal with all great
corporations. Without this success the National Government must have
remained in the impotence to which it had been reduced by the Knight
decision as regards the most important of its internal functions. But
our success in establishing the power of the National Government to curb
monopolies did not establish the right method of exercising that
power. We had gained the power. We had not devised the proper method of
exercising it.

Monopolies can, although in rather cumbrous fashion, be broken up by
law suits. Great business combinations, however, cannot possibly be made
useful instead of noxious industrial agencies merely by law suits, and
especially by law suits supposed to be carried on for their