the regulation of capitalistic
combinations in the interest of the public.

Appreciation of the President's attitude on these matters may be
assisted by some notice of the then threatening vigor and universality
of the movement toward industrial combination. Mr. Beck, Assistant
Attorney-General of the United States, declared in 1892:

"Excessive capitalization of corporations, dishonest management by their
executive officers, the destruction of the rights of the minority, the
theft of public utilities, the subordination of public interests to
private gain, the debauchery of our local legislatures and executive
officers, and the corruption of the elective franchise, have resulted
from the facility afforded by the law to corporations to concentrate the
control of colossal wealth in the hands of a few men . . . . The
question presses ever more importunately for decision whether these
marvellous aggregations of capital can be subordinated to the very laws
which created them."

Legislation in many States, the enactment of the Sherman anti-trust law
by Congress, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the Trans-Missouri
case rendered insecure trust agreements of the old type, in which
constituent corporations surrendered the control of their affairs to
trustees. But the current merely shifted to a different channel, the
trust proper giving way to the giant corporation having the same aims,
methods, and efficiency, while, as more legal, it was less vulnerable.

In the railway world, "community of interest" assumed the place of
pooling agreements. The Union Pacific acquired large holdings from
Collis P. Huntington's estate and controlled the Southern Pacific. The
power behind the Southern Railway got control of nearly all the other
Southern railways, including the Atlantic Coast Line, the Plant System,
and at last even the Louisville and Nashville. The New York Central
dominated the other Vanderbilt roads. The Pennsylvania secured decisive
amounts of Baltimore and Ohio stock, as well as weighty interests in the
Chesapeake and Ohio and the Norfolk and Western, and so on.

[1902]

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Collis P. Huntington.

Great banking establishments, foremost among them the house of J. P.
Morgan & Co., took to financing these schemes. Morgan re-organized the
Northern Pacific, and it would forthwith have pooled issues with the
Great Northern but for opposition by the State of Minnesota. James J.
Hill was mas