destruction
and not for their control and regulation. I at once began to urge upon
Congress the need of laws supplementing the Anti-Trust Law--for this law
struck at all big business, good and bad, alike, and as the event
proved was very inefficient in checking bad big business, and yet was
a constant threat against decent business men. I strongly urged the
inauguration of a system of thoroughgoing and drastic Governmental
regulation and control over all big business combinations engaged in
inter-State industry.

Here I was able to accomplish only a small part of what I desired to
accomplish. I was opposed both by the foolish radicals who desired to
break up all big business, with the impossible ideal of returning to
mid-nineteenth century industrial conditions; and also by the great
privileged interests themselves, who used these ordinarily--but
sometimes not entirely--well-meaning "stool pigeon progressives" to
further their own cause. The worst representatives of big business
encouraged the outcry for the total abolition of big business, because
they knew that they could not be hurt in this way, and that such an
outcry distracted the attention of the public from the really efficient
method of controlling and supervising them, in just but masterly
fashion, which was advocated by the sane representatives of reform.
However, we succeeded in making a good beginning by securing the passage
of a law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, and with it the
erection of the Bureau of Corporations. The first head of the Department
of Commerce and Labor was Mr. Cortelyou, later Secretary of the
Treasury. He was succeeded by Mr. Oscar Straus. The first head of
the Bureau of Corporations was Mr. Garfield, who was succeeded by Mr.
Herbert Knox Smith. No four better public servants from the standpoint
of the people as a whole could have been found.

The Standard Oil Company took the lead in opposing all this legislation.
This was natural, for it had been the worst offender in the amassing of
enormous fortunes by improper methods of all kinds, at the expense of
business rivals and of the public, including the corruption of public
servants. If any man thinks this condemnation extreme, I refer him to
the language officially used by the Supreme Court of the nation in its
decision against the Standard Oil Company. Through their counsel, and
by direct telegrams and letters to Senators and Congressmen from various
heads of the Sta