A previous post discussed the November 13, 1901, formation of the Northern Securities Company by J. P. Morgan and James J. Hill to be a holding company for the common stock of two competing railroads (the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific) and the subsequent successful lawsuit by the President Theodore Roosevelt Administration alleging that this combination violated the Sherman Act’s prohibition of combinations in restraint of interstate trade and commerce.
The prequel to all of that was first the battle for control of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad that provided access to Chicago. The contestants were (a) the Great Northern/Northern Pacific Railways, which were controlled by Hill and Morgan, and (b) the Union Pacific Railroad, which was controlled by Edward H. Harriman and Jacob Schiff. Hill and Morgan won that round, in April 1901, and they put the Quincy stock into the Northern Pacific.[1]
Harriman with the backing of Schiff of the Wall Street banking firm of Kuehn Loeb in April-May 1901 then surreptitiously started to buy Northern Pacific common and preferred stock on the open market in an effort to gain control of the Northern Pacific and thereby the Quincy. Once Hill and Morgan realized what was happening, they started to buy Northern Pacific shares. This buying activity resulted in large and continued increases in the price of the stock.
Others in the stock market obviously noticed this activity and the upward jumps in price. Many started to sell Northern Pacific stock ‘short,” i.e., selling more shares than they owned at what many believed to be unsustainable high prices with the expectation they could buy the stock later at a lower price and thereby make a profit. That did not happen. The market was ‘cornered” with more shares committed to be sold than could be delivered. This forced speculators to sell other stocks to raise cash to buy Northern Pacific shares, resulting in the destabilization of the entire stock market.
This Wall Street Panic ended on May 9, 1901, when Harriman and Schiff capitulated to the victory of Hill and Morgan over Northern Pacific with an agreement for Hill and Morgan to bail out the shorts and thus restore market stability in return for Harriman and Schiff ‘s agreeing to end their effort to gain control of the Northern Pacific.
George F. Baker
Larry Haeg’s book—Harriman vs. Hill—is the most comprehensive telling of this remarkable story. It reads like a novel, and his descriptions of the participants in this stock market contest make the reader feel like an actual observer of the events. I was especially fascinated by the book’s following description of George F. Baker, a financial backer of Hill and Morgan: [2]
Baker then was 61 years old “and the unquestioned dean of New York banking [as the] president of the First National Bank of New York [which] he has helped found in 1863 as a mere twenty-three year old and had become its president in 1877. Also, as a venture capitalist he had bought and rejuvenated several railroads, and now, among America’s half dozen wealthiest men, served on the finance committee of Morgan’s new U.S. Steel, on the board of the Northern Pacific, and on the boards of some thirty banks, railways and insurance companies.”
“At a word from Baker, it was later said, ‘the 20th century would halt on its tracks. Indeed, the railroad came to Baker’s door. When he built a mansion further north at Ninety-Third and Park he had his own underground railroad siding in the basement where a train could stop to attach his private car.”
Baker had a “four-story, double row-house mansion at 256-258 Madison Avenue between Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth.” The “dark-paneled mansion [contained] eighteenth-century tapestries, paintings of the Barbizon school, Persian rugs, cabinets glistening with jade and Japanese enamel [and a] library with its hefty, upholstered chairs.”
The Wall Street Journal carried a favorable review of the Haeg book by Roger Lowenstein, the author of “The End of Wall Street” and “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist.” The review said Haeg’s book covered “a corporate dust-up that takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when tycoons who traveled by private rail merrily raided each other’s empires while the world around them cringed.” The book “conveys a vivid picture of the Gilded Age in splendor and in turmoil. Champagne still flowed in Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria, but fistfights erupted on the floor of the exchange, and a young trader named Bernard Baruch skirted disaster with the help of an inside tip, then perfectly legal. There were scant rules governing stock trading, the author reminds us—no taxes, either. ‘If you won in the market, you kept it all.’”
Warren Buffett added his praise for Haeg’s book with these words. “I first read about the Northern Pacific Corner when I was ten years old. When I opened my office on January 1, 1962, I put on the wall a framed copy of the New York Times of May 10, 1901, describing the fateful prior day. Larry Haeg now tells the full story, and I enjoyed every word of it.”
Haeg set out to write this book as “a character study of Hill and the businessmen known as the ‘robber barons.’ As he advanced in his research, however, [Haeg] found the true test of their character came during what is known today as the Northern Pacific Corner, a four-day run on the railroad company’s stock that roiled Wall Street and set off the country’s first stock market panic.”
[2] Haeg at 79-80, 106. Baker is of particular interest for me because I wan awarded a George F. Baker Scholarship for my four years at Grinnell College in Iowa.
As discussed in a prior post, the Hepburn Act, which became law on June 29, 1906, empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), upon complaint, to replace a railroad’s increased freight rates if the ICC determined found them to be “unreasonable” with what the ICC decided were “just and reasonable” rates.
This statute presented a new problem for the railroads. How could they justify any such increase in freight rates to the public at large, including major shippers, and thereby deter any complaint and, if challenged, justify the new rates to the ICC? In addition, various state laws imposed other restraints on the railroads.
A prior post examined the reactions to the new Hepburn Act in the last half of 1906 and President Roosevelt’s Annual Message to the Congress on December 3, 1906 while another post reviewed the general economic and securities markets conditions in 1906-1907. Now we look at additional public debate on this issue and the broader issue of federal and state regulation of the railroads in the first five months of 1907 before President Theodore Roosevelt made a major speech on railroad regulation in Indianapolis on Decoration Day (May 30, 1907).
Discussion
Frederick A. Delano
In a January 6, 1907, article, Frederick A. Delano, the President of the Wabash Railroad, said that railroad business “has been very good” and promises to continue to do so, but their costs are increasing along with demands for many improvements. But where will the railroads get the money? Investors are finding more remunerative returns than railroads. “Reducing passenger fares and freight rates will not help” the railroads raise the necessary capital.[1]
James J. Hill
A week later, James J. Hill, the President of the Great Northern Railway, reentered the public debate with a January 14, 1907, letter to the Governor of the State of Minnesota, John A. Johnson that was covered by the press.[2] The letter reiterated the main points of his previously discussed November 10, 1906, speech. Hill complained about the inadequacy of railroad trackage and terminals and said railroads needed to spend $5 billion over five years for such equipment, but that they had difficulty raising the necessary capital because investors decline “to put [their] money into enterprises under bias of unpopularity, and even threatened by individuals and political parties with confiscation or transfer to the State. This feeling must be removed and greater confidence be mutually established if any considerable portion of the vast sum necessary is to be available.”
On February 1, 1907, a Wall Street Journal editorial came to the aid of the railroads. It said they need “material and moral encouragement.” They need coal. They need cars and engines. They need more trackage. They need money. They need mercy. “They have been hammered and hammered by their critics from all directions and for so long that the time [has come for a] . . . sense of human appreciation . . . . Criticism . . . should not be carried to the point of abuse. The morale of the railroad service can be maintained at a high level only by the feeling that it is receiving and deserving a reasonable measure of public encouragement.”[3]
William C. Brown
The next day (February 2nd) William C. Brown, the Senior Vice President of the New York Central Railroad (and my maternal great-great uncle), after privately supporting the Wall Street Journal editorial,[4] made public a letter he had sent to a friend in Washington, D.C. about these issues.[5] Brown asserted that no prudent investor would invest in railroads, “against which every man’s hand, from the President down, seems to be raised, and in the defense of which few men hoping for political preferment dare raise their hand.” Indeed, said Brown, “the spirit of hostility against the railroads which seems to be felt by members of both parties and by the Administration . . . is rapidly creating a feeling of distrust, and is discrediting the railroads of this country . . . as to make it very difficult . . . to secure any money for needed improvements and promises to make it almost impossible to do so in the near future. The President [must make] . . . an appeal for fair and reasonable treatment for [the railroads in order to] restore confidence.”[6]
By February 6th it had become apparent that at least the railroads headquartered in New York City agreed with James J. Hill of the Great Northern that an increase in freight rates would soon be necessary. W.C. Brown made it emphatic in a New York Times article: an increase in freight rates “will have to come.”[7]
As mentioned in a prior post, on March 12th after a meeting with President Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan told reporters that the President had agreed to meet with four leading railroad executives to discuss these issues. This supposed meeting between Roosevelt and the four railroad presidents, however, never happened. Instead, Roosevelt met separately with railroad presidents: B. F. Yoakum of the Rock Island Railroad; E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific; A.B. Stickney of the Chicago Great Western Railroad, who opined that the unrest in the financial world was not due to Roosevelt’s policies, but rather to hostile state legislation; Charles S. Mellen of the New York, New Haven & Hartford; Marvin Hughitt of the Chicago & Northwestern; and Edward R. Bacon of the Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern. Other prominent individuals and representatives of shipping interests were also consulted in this time period on railroad issues by Roosevelt.[8]
Andrew Carnegie
After a White House luncheon meeting on March 27th, Andrew Carnegie said, “The President is the best friend the railroads have. . . . [T]he President’s railroad measures are moderate, and that if the railroads do not accept them they may be confronted by some other President very much more radical . . . . I indorse the President’s position on the railroad question without reservation. His influence on that subject I regard as entirely wholesome and conservative.”
Apparently the railroad men were urging Roosevelt to make a statement about his position regarding the railroads while Roosevelt was learning all he could about the railroads and a possible federal requirement for appraisals of the value of their physical assets in preparing a speech about railroad issues that he in fact delivered in Indianapolis, Indiana on Decoration Day, May 30th and that will be covered in a subsequent post. In late March the White House let it be known that the President did not intend to have any appraisal of railroad assets would not affect previously issued securities.
One idea that received a lot of coverage was put forward in late March by Jacob H. Schiff, the head of banking-house Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Responding to financial markets turmoil, he said steps must be taken “to allay the anxiety which exists among all classes of investors and business interests over the agitation against railroads.” Therefore, he proposed (1) the Interstate Commerce Commission host a conference with representatives of the railroads; (2) such a conference to review all legislative proposals affecting railroads and recommend some for new federal laws making further state laws unnecessary. ICC commissioners and J.P. Morgan liked the idea.[9]
On April 18th William C. Brown reentered the public arena as a featured speaker at a banquet held for 1,000 guests by the Buffalo, New York Chamber of Commerce. Brown said “Money for the great improvement and extension of our transportation facilities . . . must be provided . . . by private capital; and, in order to secure the vast amount of money required, the investment must be made reasonably attractive and secure. . . . But unless assurances can be had . . . of friendly co-operation, of protection, and aid, in every fair and legitimate manner against oppression and injustice; of such guarantee as the government can give of protection against [unjust] legislation . . . it is going to be impossible for the railroads to obtain the money necessary for such improvements.”[10]
Brown added, “the great business interests of the country should unite with the railroads in an appeal for a cessation of agitation looking to the enactment of further restrictive legislation.” Nevertheless, Brown said, President Roosevelt has exerted his “powerful influence . . . fearlessly and forcefully in correcting abuses by the railroads and I believe it will be exerted just as fearlessly and effectively in protecting the railroads from injustice.” Moreover, Brown admitted he was “firmly and unalterably in favor of the regulation of railroads and all other corporations by the Nation and by the States. . . . I would not, if I could, materially change the laws thus far enacted by the Congress.”
The New York Times article about Brown’s speech came to the attention of Roosevelt, and on April 29th, Brown had an extended meeting with the President about the railroad situation.[11]
The debate about railroad regulation continued that May with the President meeting with the general counsels of two railroads and the revelation that the President would be seeking legislation authorizing the federal government to undertake appraisals of railroads’ assets.[12]
On May 29th, the day before the President’s Indianapolis speech on railroad issues, the stock market prices were up, and a journalist opined that this strength was due “to the belief and in fact to the knowledge prevalent in the Street that Mr. Roosevelt’s Indianapolis address to-day will be at least so evenly balanced in its treatment of the railroad question that no harm to stocks will result from it.”[13]
Conclusion
From documents available from the Roosevelt archives, details about Brown’s meeting with Roosevelt and their 1907 correspondence on these issues have been obtained for discussion in a subsequent post. Another post will then examine the President’s May 30th speech in Indianapolis on railroad issues.
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[1] Delano, The Solution for Problems, N.Y. Times (Jan. 6, 1907).
[2]Must Spend Billions for Tracks, Says Hill, N. Y. Times (Jan. 15, 1907). Hill repeated these contentions the next day at a meeting in Minneapolis and added, “The railroads today are blamed for everything, practically that is wrong.” (Slow Paralysis, Says Hill, N.Y. Times (Jan. 16, 1907).)
[3] Editorial, Railroads Need Encouragement, W.S.J. (Feb. 1, 1907).
[4] Brown expressed his appreciation for this editorial in a letter to the newspaper. Brown said, “these words of kindly commendation are appreciated by all railroad men. . . . [Railroads] are not, even taken as a whole, entirely without virtue and merit” and “some roads are entitled to a very great deal of credit for the manner in which they have been operated, and their contribution to the growth and prosperity of the country. . . . Nothing can be more discouraging and disheartening than the wholesale, indiscriminate censure and criticism (which, in many instances, as you say, may almost be characterized as abuse) to which railroads as a whole have been subjected during the last two years.” (Letter, Brown to Dow, Jones & Co. (Feb. 1, 1907) (Image # 71-0626 provided courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Divisions and Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org.). As we will see in a subsequent post, Brown privately provided President Roosevelt with copies of this correspondence with the Wall Street Journal.
[5]Says Railway Whacking Menaces the Country, N.Y. Times (Feb. 3, 1907). As we will see in a subsequent post, a copy of this letter from Brown to a friend (T.P. Schonts) was privately made available to President Roosevelt.
[6] Brown on February 7th reiterated that “the agitation which is going on all over the country makes it impossible to raise money [for necessary railroad improvements] by the sale of bonds.” (Billions Needed for Roads, N. Y. Times (Feb. 8, 1907).) As discussed in a prior post, on March 14th, in reaction to the huge declines in the securities markets the prior day, W.C. Brown issued a public statement that talked about the problems railroads had in selling new issues of stock or debt.
[7] Railways in Dilemma Over Rate Problems, N.Y. Times (Feb. 7, 1907); Freight Rates going Up? N.Y. Times (Feb. 5, 1907) (Hill said, “{W]ith the present advances in cost the railroads will soon be forced to consider an advance in rates instead of a reduction” ).
[8]Yoakum Favors Federal Control, N.Y. Times (Mar. 12, 1907); Mr. Harriman in the Times, N.Y. Times (Mar. 13, 1907); Roosevelt Refuge of Railroad Men, N.Y. Times (Mar. 13, 1907); Stickney Fears a Panic, N. Y. Times (Mar. 13, 1907); Speyer Hastily Sees Roosevelt, N.Y. Times (Mar. 14, 1907); Railroad Heads Meet in New York, N.Y. Times (Mar. 15, 1907); Plan Meeting of Governors, N. Y. Times (Mar. 15, 1907); Did Not Invite Presidents, N. Y. Times (Mar. 15, 1907); [Mellen Announcement], N.Y. Times (Mar. 15, 1907); Washington’s View of It, N.Y. Times (Mar. 16, 1907); Roosevelt To Ask Hughes To Confer, N.Y. Times (Mar. 17, 1907); Mellen Going alone To See Roosevelt, N.Y. Times (Mar. 17, 1907); Yoakum To See Roosevelt, N.Y. Times (Mar. 18, 1907); Mellen Confers Just 25 Minutes, N.Y. Times (Mar. 20, 1907); President Is Receptive, N.Y. Times (Mar. 27, 1907); Roosevelt Confers on Railway Speech, N.Y. Times (Mar. 28, 1907); President May Modify Plans, N.Y. Times (Mar. 30, 1907);
[9]Get Together Says Schiff, N.Y. Times (Mar. 26, 1907); President Is Receptive, N.Y. Times (Mar. 27, 1907); Morgan Cables Roosevelt, N.Y. Times (Mar. 27, 1907); “Schiff’s Flag of Truce,” N.Y. Times (Mar. 30, 1907).
[10] William C. Brown, Address to the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce (April 18, 1907); Hughes Tells of Republic’s Foes, N.Y. Times (April 19, 1907). Brown also gave a speech on May 13, 1907, to the Syracuse, New York Chamber of Commerce that made many of the same points as the Buffalo speech. He again supported federal and state regulation of railroads so long as it was “undertaken in a spirit of the most liberal conservatism; the radical, the agitator, the reactionist on both sides should be suppressed.” (For Government Control, N. Y. Times (May 15, 1907).)
[11]W.C. Brown at the White House, N.Y. Times (Apr. 30, 1907).
[12]Roosevelt Favors Appraisals of Roads, N.Y. Times (May 17, 1907); Putting Value on Country’s Roads, N.Y. Times (May 20, 1907).
As discussed in a prior post, the Hepburn Act, which became law on June 29, 1906, empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), upon complaint, to replace a railroad’s increased freight rates if the ICC determined found them to be “unreasonable” with what the ICC decided were “just and reasonable” rates.
This statute presented a new problem for the railroads. How could they justify any such increase in freight rates to the public at large, including major shippers, and thereby deter any complaint and, if challenged, justify the new rates to the ICC?
This post examines the reactions to the new Act in the last half of 1906 and President Roosevelt’s Annual Message to the Congress on December 3, 1906. Subsequent posts will look at developments on the issue of freight rates in 1907 and 1908.
Public Reactions to the Hepburn Act
Melville E. Ingalls
On August 16th, Melville E. Ingalls, the Chairman of the Big Four Railway and a Cincinnati bank president, said at a public meeting of bankers that “the greatest menace to American business and banking interests is found in the various trade laws, particularly the Hepburn and the Sherman [Antitrust] acts.”[1]
William Jennings Bryan
Later that same month William Jennings Bryan, the unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1896 and 1900, in a speech to a crowd of 10,000 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden impliedly argued that the Hepburn Act did not go far enough. Bryan said, “I have reached the conclusion that there will be no permanent relief on the railroad question from discrimination between individuals and between places, and from extortionate rates, until the railroads are the property of the Government and operated by the Government in the interests of the people.”[2]
Bryan’s suggestion was rejected the next day in a New York Times editorial saying that the newspaper was “entirely confident that the Interstate Commerce [A]ct, the [Sherman] Anti-Trust [A]ct , . . ., the Elkins Anti-Rebate [A]ct, and the Hepburn [Act] . . . , the enforcement of which measures has been wonderfully facilitated by recent decisions of the Supreme Court, . . . supply adequate remedies . . . [to] protect the people from [railroads’] . . . insolence and their rapacity, and put a stop to unfair [rate] discrimination. . . . Mr. Bryan’s new doctrine of public ownership for the railroads . . . is [a] revolution . . ., and incalculable disaster would attend [such a revolution].” Moreover, the editorial stated the newspaper did “not believe that either the Democratic Party, or any great part of the membership of either party, is ready to accompany [Bryan] upon this perilous adventure in radicalism and centralization.”
Similar negative reactions to the Bryan proposal were expressed by leaders of the Democratic Party and most other newspapers. The New York Evening Post, however, said it thought the public ownership idea “will probably attract more voters, . . . than it will affright.”
James J. Hill
Another indirect attack on the Hepburn Act from a different perspective was made on November 10, 1906, by James J. Hill, the President of the Great Northern Railway.[3] In what the New York Times called “an indignant outburst” against public agitation against America’s railroads.[4] Hill complained that the railroads were considered “outlaws” and that they had “not been getting justice in this country.” In the 1904 election “the two great political parties [were] preaching the doctrine of the operation of the railroads by the Government . . . . Is that the way to get men to put more money in the country’s railroads?” Hill pleaded for “a halt to this treatment of the railroad.”
Hill also admitted that the entire country was “suffering from want of transportation facilities to move its business without unreasonable delay. The prevailing idea with the public is that the railways are short of cars, while the fact is that the shortage is in tracks and terminals to provide a greater opportunity for the movement of the cars.” He continued, “The traffic of the country is congested beyond imagination. The commerce of the country is paralyzed, which, continued, means slow death.”
To remedy this situation, Hill asserted, “will cost at least [a total of $ 4 billion to $ 5 billion or $1 billion] per year for five years. Why, there is not money enough [or] . . . rails enough in all the world to do this. [It also is impossible to get the labor to do this work.]”
Soon after Mr. Hill’s speech, two separate investigations of railroads in which Mr. Hill had major interests were announced:
On November 20th the ICC said it was opening an investigation into the impact on railroad freight rates by Hill’s control of the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific and the Burlington railways.[5]
On November 28th, the Minnesota Attorney General said he was considering bringing charges against the Great Northern for alleged duplicate issues of capital stock and, therefore, “watering” of stock in connection with its building new branch lines for a subsidiary.[6]
President Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress (December 3, 1906)
Theodore Roosevelt
On December 3, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt delivered to the Congress his written Annual Message. It echoed Hill’s sense of railroads being unjustly attacked and impliedly criticized Bryan’s public-ownership proposal. Roosevelt said “the men who seek to excite a violent class hatred against all men of wealth. They seek to turn wise and proper movements for the better control of corporations and for doing away with the abuses connected with wealth into a campaign of hysterical excitement and falsehood in which the aim is to inflame to madness the brutal passions of man kind.” Such men are “sinister demagogues and foolish visionaries.”
The President, however, commended the Congress on taking “long strides in the direction of securing proper supervision and control by the National Government over corporations engaged in interstate business.” In particular, he said, the “passage of the [Hepburn] railway rate bill [was] . . .an important advance.” In the upcoming congressional session, “it may be best to wait until the laws have been in operation for a number of months before endeavoring to increase their scope, because only operation will show with exactness their merits and their shortcomings and thus give opportunity to define what further remedial legislation is needed.”
In addition, Roosevelt said the Hepburn Act “has rather amusingly falsified the predictions, both of those who asserted that it would ruin the railroads and of those who asserted that it did not go far enough and would accomplish nothing. During the last five months the railroads have shown increased earnings and some of them unusual dividends; while during the same period the mere taking effect of the law has produced an unprecedented, a hitherto unheard-of, number of voluntary reductions in freights and fares by the railroads.”
Nevertheless, Roosevelt continued, there will “ultimately be need of enlarging the powers of the [ICC]. . . to give it a larger and more efficient control over the railroads.” Such enhanced control will “prevent the evils of excessive overcapitalization, and will compel the disclosure by each big corporation of its stockholders and of its properties and business, whether owned directly or through subsidiary or affiliated corporations. This will tend to put a stop to the securing of inordinate profits by favored individuals at the expense whether of the general public, the stockholders, or the wage-workers.”
Indeed, said Roosevelt, adoption of such measures is the “best way to avert the very undesirable move for the governmental ownership of railways.
Roosevelt also expressed disagreement with the Supreme Court’s March 1904 interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the Northern Securities case as barring all combinations of businesses. He said, “It is unfortunate that [the Sherman Act] should forbid all combinations, instead of sharply discriminating between those combinations which do good and those combinations which do evil.” Therefore, he urged Congress to give serious consideration to amending the Sherman Act to do just that.[7]
On other issues affecting the railroads, Roosevelt called for the “passing [of] the bill limiting the number of hours of employment of railroad employees. The measure is a very moderate one, and I can conceive of no serious objection to it.” Another measure he supported was improving the recent “employers liability law” so that it placed “the entire ‘risk of a trade’ upon the employer.”
Conclusion
President Roosevelt’s Annual Message did not end the public (and private) debate about federal regulation of railroads, and especially their freight rates. It merely was a prelude to continued debate in 1907 and 1908 as we will see in future posts.
[1]Trade Laws Denounced, N.Y. Times (Aug. 17, 1906).
[2] This discussion of Bryan’s speech and the reactions it provoked is based upon the following: Bryan’s Stand: End the Trusts, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); 10,000 Swelter as Bryan Speaks, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); Overflow Meeting Had a Small Crowd, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); Editorial, Mr. Bryan’s New Party, N.Y. Times (Aug. 31, 1906); Leaders Oppose Bryan’s Public Ownership Plan, N.Y. Times (Sept. 1, 1906); Newspapers Views, N.Y. Times (Sept. 1, 1906); From the New York Evening Post, N.Y. Times (Sept. 1, 1906).
[3]Hill, as previously discussed, was the co-creator of the Northern Securities Company and a co-defendant in the U.S. successful antitrust case against the creation and operation of that company.
[4]Justice for Railways, Demanded by J. J. Hill, N. Y. Times (Nov. 11, 1906).
[5]Hill’s Three Roads To Be Investigated, N.Y. Times (Nov. 21, 1906).
[6]May Attack Hill Stocks, N.Y. Times (Nov. 28, 1906).
[7] A New York Times editorial said this call for changing the Sherman Act Roosevelt’s “wisest counsel” in the Message. (Editorial, President’s “Coherent Plan,” N.Y. Times (Dec. 5, 1906).) As it turned out, there was no need for such an amendment when nearly five years later the Supreme Court ruled that the original Sherman Act only banned “unreasonable” combinations and restraints of trade.
