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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030942340 
 
THE ADMINISTRATION 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM H. TAFT 
 
 A HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 .? Y 
 
 ALBERT H. WALKER 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 . OP 
 
 THE HISTORY 
 
 -OP 
 
 THE SHERMAN LAW 
 
 E,Y, 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 For the information of some of my fellow citizens, 
 and also to furnish facts to future writers of history; I 
 am writing a series of histo rical sketches of the adminis- 
 tration of Presi dent T aft. That series will consist of 
 a number of parts, of which the following pages of this 
 pamphlet comprise the first. Those pages attend to the 
 three most noteworthy transactions, of the President, 
 during the first ten months of his administration ; ending 
 with his message of January 6, 1910, to the Senate of the 
 United States, relevant to the Grlavis case. The second 
 pamphlet of the series, will be published early in Septem- 
 ber, and will be devoted to what President Taft has done, 
 and what he has omitted to do, relevant to enforcing the 
 Sherman Law against industrial combinations. The third 
 number of the series will be published late in September, 
 and will attend to the acts and omissions of the Presi- 
 dent, in respect of enforcing and not enforcing the laws 
 of the United States against inter-state Eailroad Com- 
 panies. And early in October, the fourth part of the 
 entire historical sketch will be published, and will attend 
 to the Taft bill of 1911, to regulate commerce with Can- 
 ada; and which bill was promoted by him under the 
 name of "reciprocity." 
 
 A H. W. 
 Park Eow Building, 
 Manhattan, New York. 
 August 20, 1912. 
 
The Candidacy of William H. Taft. 
 
 The Republican National Convention of 1912, as col- 
 lected and organized under the presidency of Hon. Elihu 
 Boot, then a United States Senator, nominated William 
 H. Taft, then president of the United States, to be the 
 Eepublican candidate for a second election to that office. 
 That nomination was not the result of any action or 
 even of any desire of a majority of the members of the 
 Republican party; for the primary elections which were 
 held for delegates to the Convention in Pennsylvania, 
 Ohio, Illinois, California and other states, were nearly 
 unanimous in showing that only a small minority of 
 the Republicans in those states favored the nomination 
 of Mr. Taft; and that substantial uniformity of result 
 in those widely scattered states, fairly indicated the 
 opinion of Republicans in states where no such primary 
 elections were held. Moreover, the narrow majority of 
 delegates in the Republican Convention who did confer 
 the nomination upon Mr. Taft, did not generally reach 
 their seats by means of the spontaneous action of the 
 state conventions who nominally elected them. Quite 
 otherwise than this, those delegates were sent to Chi- 
 cago in pursuance of the personal and strenuous efforts 
 of Mr. Taft himself. Those efforts included some hun- 
 dreds of stump speeches delivered by him in Massachu- 
 setts, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and 
 other states, and included the securing of the election of 
 favorable delegates from other states, by memories of 
 past and hope of future appointments to Federal offices. 
 
 Never before in the history of the United States, 
 did any president so strenuously struggle to secure a 
 renomination ; and never before did any president sus- 
 pend his .official work and travel into any state to make 
 stump speeches for that purpose. These unprecedented 
 
facts make it particularly proper to write and publish a 
 thorough examination of the presidential merits and de- 
 merits of Mr. Taft, for he has thereby challenged the 
 criticism of his contemporaries and of history. 
 
 The Pbiob Life of President Taet. 
 
 On March 4, 1909, when William H. Taft was in- 
 augurated president of the United States, fortune had 
 favored him with better opportunities for acquiring 
 equipment for that office, than were ever given to any 
 of the twenty-five presidents who had preceded him. 
 He was then nearly fifty-two years old, and from his 
 birth, as the son of his eminent father, Judge Alphonzo 
 Taft, his environment had been almost ideally adapted 
 to equip him for the presidency. The education of his 
 childhood and boyhood was conducted under the direc- 
 tion of his distinguished father, and ended with his grad- 
 uation from the Woodward High School in Cincinnati, 
 at the age of sixteen. That graduation was followed 
 by four years of collegiate education in Yale University, 
 from which he graduated as class orator in 1878. Two 
 years later he graduated with high honors from the 
 Cincinnati Law School, and was admitted to the Ohio 
 Bar in 1880. The next year was spent by him as law 
 reporter; and in 1881, at the age of twenty-four, he was 
 appointed to his first office; and he continued to be an 
 office holder with hardly any interval of private life, for 
 twenty-eight years, until he was inaugurated president 
 in March 1909. During those twenty-eight years, he held 
 nine different offices, which he successively resigned 
 preparatory to accepting the next one in the list. Those 
 offices were assistant prosecuting attorney of Hamilton 
 County, Ohio; collector of internal revenue for the first 
 district of Ohio; assistant county solicitor of Hamilton 
 County, Ohio; judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, 
 Ohio; Solicitor General of the United States; United 
 
States 'Circuit Judge for the Sixth Judicial Circuit; 
 president of the United States commission to the Philip- 
 pine Islands; civil Governor of the Philippine Islands 
 and Secretary of War. Of these offices, seven were 
 executive and two were judicial ; and their occupancy by 
 Mr. Taft during more than a quarter of a century, con- 
 stituted a unique and varied experience, entirely un- 
 matched by that of any other man who ever attained the 
 presidency of the United States. 
 
 Moreover, in each of those nine offices, Mr. Taft was 
 undoubtedly an unqualified success. I first met him in 
 1896, when he was United States circuit judge for the 
 Sixth Judicial Circuit. I conversed with him in his of- 
 ficial chambers at that time, and shortly afterward 
 argued a couple of patent cases to him, both of which he 
 afterwards decided in favor of my clients. I remember 
 that on that occasion he told me that though he had 
 then been hearing and deciding patent cases for four 
 years, he had actually read the whole of the record in 
 each of those cases, however voluminous that record 
 might be. I know of no ground upon which his career 
 as a United States judge could be criticized, unless some 
 such criticism could be based upon the fact that in order 
 to increase his income, he taught law in the law depart- 
 ment of the University of Cincinnati for four years, while 
 he was Federal Judge, and upon the probable theory 
 that that extra work caused him to delay the rendering 
 of his judgments, in some of the cases which it was his 
 duty to decide. Nevertheless, I who have critically ex- 
 amined a large number of the decisions which he ren- 
 dered during his eight years upon the Federal Bench, 
 am able and am glad to testify that he was one of the 
 very best of the Federal judges of his time. 
 
 His services of four year* in the Philippine Islands, 
 from 1900 to 1904, and his services as Secretary of "War, 
 from 1904 to 1908, have been unanimously praised by 
 
those best acquainted with them, and particularly by 
 President Roosevelt, who undoubtedly knew more about 
 them than anybody else. 
 
 When delegates were being elected to the Republican 
 Convention of 1908, seven candidates for the Republi- 
 can nomination for president were brought forward. 
 These were Governor Hughes of New York, Senator 
 Knox of Pennsylvania, Senator Foraker of Ohio, Sen- 
 ator LaFollette of Wisconsin, "Vice-president Fairbanks, 
 Speaker Cannon and Mr. Taft. I had long been person- 
 ally acquainted with all of these candidates except the 
 vice-president and the speaker; and though my admira- 
 tion for several of them was very great, I believed that 
 Mr. Taft was even better equipped than any of the others 
 for the' presidency. President Roosevelt who had known 
 them all for many years, selected Mr. Taft as the one 
 to be advocated by him for the nomination. Several of 
 the others were so strong before the people that Mr. , 
 Taft publicly acknowledged, and everybody realized, 
 that without the active support of President Roosevelt 
 the nomination would not have been conferred upon Mr. 
 Taft. But that nomination was obtained for Mr. Taft 
 through the active and extraordinary advocacy of Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt; and it was his advocacy that was much 
 the most powerful of all the influences which resulted 
 in Mr. Taft's election in November 1908. 
 
 During the canvass which preceded that election, I 
 was an enthusiastic supporter of the Taft candidacy. 
 That support was expressed in a number of public 
 speeches which I made for him, and in a number of 
 articles which I communicated to the press, and in a 
 number of letters which I wrote to him, and which con- 
 tained information known to me, and not known to him, 
 such as was suitable for his own speeches, and which 
 he did incorporate in some of them. And thus it came 
 about that when Mr. Taft was chosen by the people in 
 
November 1908 to be president of the United States, 
 that event was a source, of exceptional political satis- 
 faction to myself, as it was to most of the millions of 
 members of the Eepublican party. It was then that 
 William H. Taft attained the highest level which his 
 reputation has ever attained. 
 
 "But character is not something cut in marble. It 
 is something living and changing and may become diseas- 
 ed, as our bodies do." 
 
 The Selection op the Taft Cabinet. 
 
 The first function which was imposed upon Mr. Taft 
 after his election to the presidency, consisted in select- 
 ing nine men to be heads of the executive departments 
 during his forthcoming administration. The first selec- 
 tion which he made in that behalf was made in astonish- 
 ing disregard of the Constitution and statutes of the 
 United States. 
 
 Paragraph 2 of Section 6 of Article I of the Consti- 
 tution of the United States, provides that "No Sena- 
 tor or Eepresentative shall, during the time for which 
 he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under 
 the authority of the United States, which shall have 
 been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been 
 increased during such time." For many years prior to 
 July 1, 1907, the salary of the Secretary of State, accord- 
 ing to the United States statutes, was eight thousand 
 dollars. That salary was increased to twelve thousand 
 dollars by a statute which was approved February 26, 
 1907. Hon. P. C. Knox was a Senator from Pennsylvania 
 from 1904 to 1909, and he even voted for that increase. 
 Congressional Record of January 23, 1907, page 1552. The 
 time for which he was last elected Senator was the term 
 of six years, beginning March 4, 1905, and ending March 
 4, 1911. The fact that the salary of Secretary of State 
 
was increased during that six years, by the statute of Feb- 
 ruary 26, 1907, was well known to Mr. Taft; for the 
 same statute increased his own salary as Secretary of 
 War from eight thousand dollars to twelve thousand 
 dollars. And Mr. Taft being presumably acquainted 
 with the Constitution of the United States, must have 
 known that the fact that the salary of Secretary of State 
 had been increased during the time for which Senator 
 Knox had been last elected, to take effect nearly four 
 years before the expiration of that time, would make 
 his appointment to be Secretary of State, nearly two 
 years before the expiration of that time, plainly violative 
 of the Constitution. 
 
 Nevertheless, he did publicly announce his intention to 
 appoint Senator Knox Secretary of State; and that an- 
 nouncement stood unwithdrawn for weeks, until a private 
 citizen caused to' be published in the newspapers the 
 statement that the announced appointment would plainly 
 violate the Constitution. This public statement was first 
 made known to Mr. Taft, when he landed in New Orleans 
 on his return from a visit to Panama. Thereupon he 
 promoted a plan to evade the Constitution, instead of 
 faithfully obeying it or plainly violating it. 
 
 That plan consisted in procuring the insertion in the 
 Legislative, Executive and Judicial Appropriation Bill 
 for the year beginning July 1, 1909, of a provision that 
 the compensation of the Secretary of State should be 
 reduced from twelve thousand dollars to eight thousand 
 dollars on March 4, 1909. That reduction having been 
 made, Mr. Taft appointed Senator Knox Secretary of 
 State, and he held that office at the salary of eight thous- 
 and dollars, from March 4, 1909 to March 4, 1911, on 
 the theory that though the salary of Secretary of State 
 was increased in 1907, during the six years for which 
 he was last elected Senator, it had been decreased back 
 to the old rate in 1909, and before he was appointed 
 Secretary of State. 
 
But even this transparent attempt to evade the 
 Constitution was discredited early in 1911, by means 
 of a provision in the Legislative, Executive and 
 Judicial Appropriation Act of that year, which statute a 
 second time increased the salary of the Secretary of State 
 from eight thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars, 
 and made that second increase before the end of the time 
 for which Mr, Knox was last elected to the Senate. Con- 
 gressional Eecord Vol. 46, pp. 1471, 1480, 3720, 3750 and 
 4336. Alnd Mr. Knox has now been drawing, for more 
 than a year, a salary of twelve thousand dollars as Sec- 
 retary of State. 
 
 The second in rank of the heads of departments to 
 be selected by Mr. Taft, was the Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury. Instead of selecting for that important office some 
 financier, banker, political economist, statesman or other 
 properly equipped man, he selected Mr. Franklin Mac- 
 Veagh, a gentleman nearly seventy years old, who had 
 never held any public office, and whose business since 
 early manhood, during forty-three years, consisted in 
 running a wholesale grocery store in Chicago. The un- 
 suitability of that selection has been lately proved to 
 the public by elaborate statements of one of Mr. Mac- 
 Veagh's subordinates in the Treasury Department, 
 which statements consist in detailed specifications of 
 the unique inefficiency of Mr. MacVeagh. 
 
 The third in rank of the heads of departments selected 
 by Mr. Taft, was the Secretary of "War. Instead of 
 conferring that office upon some man acquainted with 
 military matters, or at least having- some experience in 
 governmental affairs, he appointed Mr. Jacob M. Dick- 
 inson, who then was, and for many years had been, the 
 leading lawyer employed by the Illinois Central Railroad 
 Company. 
 
 The fourth in rank of the heads of departments to 
 be selected by Mr. Taft, was the Attorney General of 
 
8 
 
 the United States. For that office he selected Mr. George 
 W. Wickersham, a New York lawyer who happened to 
 be the partner of his brother, Henry W. Taf t. Mr. Wick- 
 ersham turned out to be an able man. During his ad- 
 ministration of the Department of Justice, I have met 
 him often, exchanged letters with him several times, 
 and have been careful to keep track of his work, as far 
 as propriety and opportunity would permit. He has cer- 
 tainly done much to enforce the statutes of the United 
 States against violators thereof; but it is my opinion 
 that he could and should have brought many more suits 
 to enforce the Sherman Law than he has, and that he 
 could and should have prosecuted with more vigor and 
 effectiveness, those which he has conducted. 
 
 The fifth in rank of the heads of departments in Pres- 
 ident Taft's administration, is the Postmaster General. 
 He conferred that office upon Frank H. Hitchcock, a 
 young man of forty-one, who had been chief clerk in the 
 Department of Commerce & Labor, and afterward as- 
 sistant Postmaster General, and still later had been the 
 chairman of the Eepublican National Committee, and 
 as such had managed Mr. Taft's presidential campaign 
 of 1908. 
 
 The sixth in rank of the heads of departments is 
 the Secretary of the Navy. To this office Mr. Taft ap- 
 pointed Mr. George Von. L. Meyer, a good man who had 
 been Postmaster General in the cabinet of President 
 Roosevelt for two years. 
 
 The seventh in rank of the heads of departments is 
 the Secretary of the Interior. During the last two years 
 of the administration of President Roosevelt, this office 
 had been occupied with great efficiency by James R. Gar- . 
 field, a son of James A. Garfield. He was willing to 
 continue in that office during the administration of Presi- 
 dent Taft, and ex-President Roosevelt favored such a 
 Continuation. But Mr. Taft instead of availing himself 
 
of the services of Mr. G-arfield, appointed in his place 
 Mr. Richard A. Ballinger, a lawyer of Seattle, Washing- 
 ton. That appointment turned out to be a bad one, by- 
 resulting in a notorious scandal, which placed an indel- 
 ible stain upon President Taft's administration, and 
 which naturally resulted in the separation of Mr. Ballin- 
 ger from his office, in March, 1911. 
 
 For the head of the eighth in rank of the executive 
 departments, Mr. T'aft continued Mr. James Wilson in 
 office as Secretary of Agriculture. That gentleman was, 
 or at least had formerly been, particularly well equipped 
 for the duties of that office, which he had already occu- 
 pied for twelve years, through the administrations of 
 Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. 
 
 The ninth and newest of the executive departments 
 is the Department of Commerce & Labor. The Secre- 
 tary of that department during President Taft's ad- 
 ministration has been Mr. Charles Nagel, a St. Louis 
 lawyer, who during his life of nearly sixty years prior 
 to his appointment, was not generally known to take 
 any particular interest in any of the problems with 
 which a Secretary of Commerce and Labor has to deal. 
 
 The Tabiff Law of 1909. 
 
 President Taft, having launched his administration 
 with the foregoing nine heads of departments, took the 
 next important step by calling an extra session of the 
 Sixty-first Congress. That session was begun on. 
 March 15, 1909, and continued till August 5, 1909, to ex- 
 clusively attend to the work of amending the tariff 
 laws. Paragraph 1 of Section 7 of Article I of the Con- 
 stitution provides that: "All bills for raising revenue 
 shall originate in the House of Representatives ; but the 
 Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on 
 other bills". Very soon after March 15, a Committee 
 
10 
 
 on Ways and Means was appointed for the House, and a 
 Committee on Finance was elected for the Senate by 
 the Senators. The chairman of the Committee on 
 Ways and Means was Mr. Payne of New York; while 
 the chairman of the Committee on Finance was Sen- 
 ator Aldrich of Ehode Island. Mr. Payne and his com- 
 mittee on March 18, 1909, reported a bill to amend the 
 tariff laws from beginning to end; and that bill was 
 passed by the House on April 9, 1909. On the next day 
 it was received by the Senate, and there referred to its 
 Committee on Finance. That committee had however, 
 framed a bill of its own, while the Payne bill was being 
 framed by the Committee on Ways and Means of the 
 House. Without paying any detailed attention to the 
 Payne bill, Mr. Aldrich reported it back to the Senate in 
 two days, accompanied by the Aldrich bill, which had 
 been framed under his direction by the Committee on 
 Finance, and he accompanied that report by a recom- 
 mendation that the Aldrich bill be substituted for the 
 Payne bill. Thereupon no detailed attention was given 
 to the Payne bill in the Senate ; but the Aldrich bill was 
 elaborately considered and debated in that body until 
 it was passed on July 8, 1909. During that long de- 
 bate, a group of ten Bepublican Senators, comprising 
 Senators Beveridge, Bristow, Brown, Burkett, Clapp, 
 Crawford, Cummins, Dolliver, LaFollette and Nelson, 
 strenuously strove to induce the Senate to reduce many 
 of the duties provided by the Aldrich bill, on the unde- 
 niable ground that those duties were much too high, 
 even when measured by the protective principles of the 
 Bepublican platform of 1908. Those Senators were 
 sustained in their motions to amend, by the votes of all 
 the Democratic Senators, except McEnery; but those 
 two classes of Senators taken together were not quite 
 numerous enough to be a majority of the Senate. 
 Therefore it resulted that the excessive duties which 
 
It 
 
 Mr. Aldrich advocated and embodied in the Aldrich bill, 
 were nearly all adopted by the Senate, and incorpor- 
 ated in the bill as it passed that body, 
 
 Paragraph 2, of Section 7, of Article I of the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, confers power upon the 
 president to participate with Congress in the enact- 
 ment of statutes. The power thus conferred is equal 
 to the votes of one-sixth of the Eepresentatives, plus 
 the votes of one-sixth of the Senators in Congress. Ac- 
 cording to that paragraph of the Constitution, that 
 presidential power is exercised by signing, or by veto- 
 ing, each bill which shall have been passed by a majority 
 vote in each of the two Houses. But in order to guard 
 against loss of time and labor, which might be ex- 
 pended in framing and debating elaborate bills which 
 the president might veto on account of some objection- 
 able parts only; it is proper and has always been cus- 
 tomary, for presidents to consult with leading members 
 of Congress, while particular bills are under considera- 
 tion in one or the other of the two Houses, for the pur- 
 pose of helping to put those bills into such shapes as 
 entitle them to the approval of the president. 
 
 But during the three months, through which the 
 Aldrich bill was pending in the Senate, President Taft 
 refrained from taking any effective part in its construc- 
 tion; though he was urged to do so by some of the ten 
 Bepublican Senators who were striving to reduce its 
 duties to proper levels. Instead of attending to that 
 part of the duties of the presidential office, during those 
 three months, President Taft occupied in pleasure seek- 
 ing, many days which he might have devoted to that 
 work. That pleasure seeking comprised playing golf at 
 the Chevy Chase Golf Grounds in Maryland, attending 
 base ball games in a number of different cities, frequent 
 attendance at theatres, and riding around Washington 
 
12 
 
 and other places in automobiles, at high and dangerous 
 speeds, much beyond those allowed by the local laws. 
 
 After the Aldrich bill was passed by the Senate, it 
 was found to differ in some respects from the Payne 
 bill, for which it was a proposed substitute. There- 
 fore, the two bills had to be sent by the two houses to a 
 Committee of Conference, of which Mr. Payne was the 
 leading member on the part of the House, and Senator 
 Aldrich was the leading member on the part of the Sen- 
 ate. But that Committee of Conference had no juris- 
 diction to do anything relevant to the two bills, except 
 to make them agree where they differed from each 
 other; and inasmuch as the excessive duties which the 
 ten progressive Senators had striven to reduce, were 
 all of them present in both bills, it was too late for any- 
 body to do anything toward improving the proposed 
 legislation, except in the respects in which one bill was 
 even worse than the other. 
 
 It was at this belated point of time, that President 
 Taft intervened, and sought to induce the Committee of 
 Conference to improve the proposed legislation in some 
 of the particulars over which that committee had juris- 
 diction. The committee yielded to his contentions on 
 some points, but refused to yield on others, and there- 
 upon agreed to report to the two houses a compromise 
 bill. That compromise bill was a somewhat better bill 
 than it would have been if President Taft had not at 
 the last moment intervened to take part in its framing. 
 But it was a much worse bill than it would have been if 
 President Taft had intervened in that work, when the 
 Aldrich bill was pending in the Senate, and had sup- 
 ported those criticisms of the Payne- Aldrich Tariff law 
 as finally enacted, which he himself has since repeatedly 
 acknowledged in public speeches, to be unanswerable. 
 
 The Payne Aldrich Bill, having been finally passed 
 by the two houses early in August, 1909, was delivered to 
 
13 
 
 the President August 5, 1909, and instantly signed by 
 him. On the same day, he published a statement that 
 though it was not a very good bill, it might have been 
 worse than it was, and anyhow was the best bill that he 
 could get Congress to pass. It may have been the best 
 bill that he could get Congress to pass, when in July, 
 1909, he first endeavored to influence Congress relevant 
 thereto. But it is absurd for him to claim that it was 
 the best bill that he could have induced Congress to pass, 
 if he had intervened in its framing in April, May and 
 June, as he ought to have done. 
 
 The GiiAVis Case,. 
 
 On August 18, 1909, Louis E. Grlavis, a very able 
 young man of twenty-four, who was Chief of the Field 
 Division of the General Land Office, with headquarters 
 at Seattle, called on President Taft in person, and 
 told him that in the course of his official duties, he 
 had discovered certain facts which indicated the 
 existence of a conspiracy to rob the United States 
 of a large amount of very valuable coal lands in Alaska, 
 by means of the Cunningham claims; and at the same 
 time he delivered to President Taft a statement in writing 
 to the same effect, together with many pieces of support- 
 ing documentary evidence. (Senate Documents, Third 
 Session, 61. Congress, Vol. 35, pages 1 to 62). That state- 
 ment expressed, or at least implied, the theory that Rich- 
 ard A. Ballinger, the Secretary of the Interior, was a 
 party to such conspiracy. Thereupon President Taft 
 called upon Secretary Ballinger to answer the Glavis 
 paper, and also called for statements on the subject 
 from some subordinate officers of the Interior Depart- 
 ment. In pursuance of that call, on Monday, September 
 6, 1909, Secretary Ballinger delivered to President Taft, 
 at his summer home in Beverly, Massachusetts, a 
 
14 
 
 statement in writing, together with copies of numerous, 
 records and files of the Interior Department, relevant 
 to the Glavis charges. Arid on Saturday, September 11,. 
 1909, still another lot of written statements from the 
 Interior Department, were delivered to the President.. 
 All the papers mentioned in this paragraph were after- 
 ward printed as the first 717 pages of Volume 35 of Sen- 
 ate Documents of the Third Session of the 61. Congress j. 
 and the number of words therein is nearly half a 
 million. Reading matter of that kind can not be under- 
 stood, when read at a higher speed than one hundred 
 words a minute, and no pair of eyes and no brain can 
 endure such dry and difficult reading more than ten hours 
 a day, at the utmost. At that rate, it would take an 
 able man, who had nothing else to do, about eight days- 
 to read and comprehend all that voluminous and compli- 
 cated matter. 
 
 On Monday, September 13, 1909, President Taft 
 wrote a letter of about three thousand words from Bev- 
 erly, to Secretary Ballinger in Washington, which was 
 published in many papers throughout the United States- 
 on September 16, 1909. In that letter, the President re- 
 ferred to all the papers, copies, records and files which 
 had been delivered to him, and which we now know con- 
 tained nearly half a million words ; and without indicat- 
 ing their real voluminousness he told Ballinger that he 
 had examined them "most carefully" and had reached 
 a very definite conclusion thereon. He thereupon pro- 
 ceeded to express that conclusion, by applying a very 
 thick coat of whitewash to Ballinger, and to everybody 
 else in the Interior Department; except Grlavis, whom 
 he unsparingly condemned. And thereupon he express- 
 ly authorized and impliedly directed Secretary Ballinger 
 to dismiss Mr. Glavis from the public service, which 
 Ballinger instantly did. 
 
15 
 
 On December 21, 1909, the United States Senate 
 adopted a resolution -which requested the President to 
 iransmit to Congress any reports, statements, papers 
 or other documents, upon which he acted when he di- 
 rected the dismissal of Mr. Glavis (Congressional Rec- 
 ord of December 21, 1909, page 281). On January 6, 
 1910, President T'aft responded to that request with a 
 special message, in which he transmitted to Congress, 
 as being the papers called for by the resolution, all of 
 the above mentioned papers ; and also another document, 
 in two parts, which purported to be a "Report and Sum- 
 mary" of all the others. That "Report and Summary" 
 was dated September 11, 1909, and was signed by George 
 W. Wickersham, Attorney General. It was composed 
 of more than fifty thousand words, and is now printed 
 as pages 718 to 805, of Volume 35, of Senate Documents, 
 of the Third Session of the 61. Congress. 
 
 On May 15, 1910, President T'aft wrote a letter to 
 Senator Nelson of Minnesota (Volume 41 of Senate Docu- 
 ments of the Third Session of the 61. Congress, pages 
 4398-4394) in which he informed the Senator that the 
 aforesaid "Report and Summary" of Attorney General 
 Wickersham was written by the Attorney General at 
 the direction of the President some time after Septem- 
 ber 13, 1909, and was at his direction, ante-dated to 
 September 11, 1909, in order to make it appear that his 
 letter of September 13 was fortified thereby, when that 
 letter was written. The President did not state in his 
 letter to Senator Nelson how long after September 13, 
 1909, it was that Attorney General Wickersham wrote 
 his fifty thousand word "Report and Summary." But 
 I, who for many years have been accustomed to do work 
 of that general character, am of opinion that the At- 
 torney General could not have analyzed the half mil- 
 lion word record and composed his "Report and Sum- 
 mary" thereof, in less than two weeks. The Attorney 
 
& 
 
 16 
 
 General in the fall of 1909, was so pressed for time 
 that he felt compelled in October, to ask the Supreme 
 Court to postpone the hearing of the American Tobacco 
 case; and the Supreme Court did thereupon postpone 
 that hearing against the opposition of the attorneys 
 for the defendants. It is very improbable that at 
 any time during that fall, the Attorney General de- 
 voted two weeks, or any other length of time, to 
 composing his "Report and Summary" of the rec- 
 ord in the Ballinger case, or that President Taft 
 would ask him to undertake that work ; f or ; throughout 
 that fall and during the first three weeks in December, 
 President Taft's letter of September 13 to Ballinger, was 
 generally considered by the public as closing the inci- 
 dent. There was therefore no prospect that President 
 Taft would ever have any use for any such "Eeport and 
 Summary," until that prospect was made known to him 
 by the Senate Resolution of December 21, 1909, which 
 called upon him for any reports, statements, papers or 
 documents upon which he acted when he directed the dis- 
 missal of Mr. Glavis in his letter to Ballinger of Sep- 
 tember 13, 1909. 
 
 But when that resolution reached the President (if 
 we assume the then non-existence of the Wickersham 
 "Report and Summary"), the half a million words of 
 reports, statements, papers and documents which he had 
 to send to Congress in response to the Senate resolution, 
 must have appeared to the President to be much too 
 complicated and extensive to justify his statement 
 of September 13, 1909, that he himself analyzed 
 and summarized them, during the few, otherwise 
 mainly occupied days, in which, they were in his pos- 
 session before he wrote his letter to Ballinger, direct- 
 ing the dismissal of Glavis. This circumstantial evi- 
 dence indicates that that "Report and Summary" 
 was written by Attorney General Wickersham during the 
 
17 
 
 fifteen days which intervened between the passage of the 
 Senate resolution of December 21, 1909, and President 
 Taft's response to that resolution on January 6, 1910. 
 And this indication is corroborated by the fact that when 
 the "Report and Summary" of Mr. Wickersham was 
 subjected to critical examination, after it first saw the 
 light on January 6, 1910, it was found to have inadvert- 
 ently stated an event which did not occur until several 
 months after the date, back to which President Taft 
 stated in his letter to Senator Nelson he had directed the 
 Attorney General to ante-date the same. 
 
 The date of the Wickersham "Report and Summary" 
 was as truly its essential feature as is the date of a Will 
 which is presented for probate in contest with a conflict- 
 ing Will of the same testator. Any man who would 
 fraudulently misdate a Will so as to make it supersede 
 another Will of a different date, would be guilty of forg- 
 ery in the first degree. But the same degree of turpitude 
 can not be ascribed to President Taft for uttering and 
 sending to Congress the Wickersham "Report and Sum- 
 mary" with a date which he had himself caused to be 
 made fictitious; for that wrong doing did not directly 
 effect any property right. However, his sending to Con- 
 gress of the ante-dated Wickersham "Report and Sum- 
 mary" did operate to injure the good name and general 
 reputation of Louis R. Grlavis, for it falsely purported to 
 constitute a foundation for the statements which Presi- 
 dent Taft had asserted in his letter of September 13 to 
 Ballinger, and which statements were so severely con- 
 demnatory of Mr. Glavis as to be very injurious to his 
 reputation and his future. The sending to Congress of 
 that falsely dated "Report and Summary," if it can be 
 distinguished from uttering a forgery, was non-ethical 
 to say the least. 
 
 But the sending to Congress on January 6, 1910, of 
 the ante-dated Wickersham "Report and Summary" 
 
18 
 
 was not the only error which President Taft committed 
 in that message. For that message purported to trans- 
 mit to Congress all the reports, statements, papers and 
 documents upon which he acted when he directed the 
 dismissal of Mr. Glavis. . But President Taft carefully 
 omitted from the papers which he transmitted, one pa- 
 per which in his letter of May 15, 1910, to Senator Nel- 
 son, he said had existed and had been the very paper 
 upon which he had chiefly acted when he directed the dis- 
 missal of G-lavis. That omitted paper had been prepared 
 in the Interior Department by Oscar Lawler, the assist- 
 ant Attorney General assigned to that Department ; and 
 had been thus prepared at the personal request of Presi- 
 dent Taft during the week ending September 11, 1910, 
 and was delivered to the President at his home in Bev- 
 erly on Sunday morning, September 12, 1909. In his 
 letter to Senator Nelson, President Taft stated that he 
 had requested Mr. Lawler when preparing that paper, 
 to write it as if he were President of the United States, 
 so that when Mr. Taft came to read it, if he thought it 
 would be suitable for the purpose, he could sign it and 
 publish it as his own written judgment of the merits or 
 demerits of the case which Glavis had made against 
 Ballinger. But President Taft also stated in his letter 
 to Senator Nelson, that when he came to read the Law- 
 ler paper, he found it only partly satisfactory to him, 
 and therefore instead of signing it and adopting it, he 
 did on the following day, himself compose his letter of 
 September 13, 1909, to Ballinger. 
 
 The Taft letter to Ballinger and the Lawler draft 
 upon which it was partly based, were afterward printed 
 in parallel columns on pages 4507-4514 of Volume 41 of 
 Senate Documents of the Third Session of the 61. Con- 
 gress. And a comparison of those sets of parallel col- 
 umns will show that the Lawler paper was so much the 
 foundation of the Taft letter to Ballinger, that truth 
 
19 
 
 required it to be sent tb Congress on January 6, 1910, 
 with the other papers on which that letter was also 
 partly based. 
 
 What is written in this pamphlet relevant to the Bal- 
 linger scandal and relevant to the conduct of President 
 Taft in whitewashing Ballinger and dismissing G-lavis, 
 has been carefully collected by me personally out of the 
 official records of Congress ; and anyone Who will imitate 
 my industry in making that collection, can verify all my 
 statements upon the subject. And I would recommend 
 any Such person to begin by reading Taft 's letter to Nel- 
 son of May 15, 1910, as it is printed at page 4393 of Vol- 
 ume 41 of Senate Documents of the third session of the 
 Sixty-first Congress. The humiliating confessions con- 
 tained in that letter were not spontaneously made. They 
 were made only after the investigating committee of 
 Congress had spent months in detecting and exposing the 
 facts to which those confessions related, and after the 
 ante-dating of the Wickersham "Report and Summary" 
 and the suppression of the Lawler document, had been 
 discovered and had been published. 
 
 Volumes 35 to 44 of Senate Documents of the Third 
 Session of the 61. Congress, comprise a library of 
 books, occupying about two feet on a shelf. Those 
 books are devoted entirely to the record of the joint 
 investigating committee of Congress, relevant to the 
 case of Glavis against Ballinger, and to the Ballinger 
 scandal as a whole. Ballinger anl Glavis both testified 
 at great length on that subject during that investiga- 
 tion. The testimony of Ballinger was evasive, con- 
 tradictory, and very unconvincing. But the testi- 
 mony of Glavis was responsive, consistent, and 
 persuasive to a unique degree. It also proved to the 
 satisfaction of everybody who heard it, that Glavis 
 was a young man of extraordinary powers of memory 
 and of statement. During four days,: he was cross ex- 
 amined relevant to the contents of letters .and other .pa- 
 
20 
 
 pers in the Interior Department, which he had not seen 
 for .months ; and when that testimony was afterward 
 compared with those letters and other papers, it was 
 found that it did not contain any material misstatement 
 or other error. .The entire investigation showed that 
 Ballinger was pitifully weak, if he was not willfully 
 wicked. It also showed that Glavis had been a singularly 
 faithful and efficient field agent of the General Land 
 Office. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the facts 
 which Grlavis presented to President Taft, in August, 
 1909, in causing the investigation which resulted from 
 those facts, were the means which did prevent the 
 consummation of the Cunningham fraud, and did pre- 
 serve to the Government and to the people of the United 
 States, the many millions of dollars worth of public prop- 
 erty of which the United States were about to be robbed 
 by means of the Cunningham conspiracy, when Glavis 
 exposed that conspiracy to President Taft. 
 
 The Ballinger scandal was odious in many ways 
 which are disclosed in the record of the investigation of 
 the joint Congressional committee. Ballinger himself 
 has escaped into obscurity, and the public is forgetting 
 him. But Congress has recorded, and history will not 
 forget, that when President Taft was trying to white- 
 wash that scandal, he set his big foot down upon the good 
 name of Louis R. Glavis, and afterward tried to justify 
 that action by sending to Congress with a special mes- 
 sage, a written opinion of the Attorney General of the 
 United States, which derived its apparent significance 
 from its apparent date ; and which date was made ficti- 
 tious, by the order of President Taft himself, for the ex- 
 press purpose of giving that apparent significance to 
 that written opinion. 
 
 Albert H. Walker. 
 Park Row Building, 
 Manhattan, New York. 
 August 20, 1912. 
 
PRESIDENT TAFT 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SHERMAN LAW. 
 
 A HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT H. WALKER 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 OF 
 
 \ 
 
 THE HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SHERMAN LAW 
 
 e.;V' 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 T his pamphlet is Number 2 of a series of historical 
 sketches of the administration of President Taft, which 
 I am writing and publishing. The first number of the 
 series was published August 20, 1912, and attended to 
 the three most noteworthy transactions of the President, 
 during the first three months of his administration. 
 Those transactions were the selection of the Taft cabi- 
 net, and the Tariff Law of 1909, and the Glavis case. 
 This pamphlet is devoted to what President Taft has 
 done, and what he has omitted to do, relevant to enforc- 
 ing the Sherman Law against industrial combinations. 
 The third number of the series will be published late in 
 September, and will attend to the actions and omissions 
 of the President, in respect of enforcing the laws 
 of the United States against interstate Railroad 
 Companies. Early in October, the fourth part of the ser- 
 ies will be published, and will attend to the Taft bill of 
 1911 to regulate commerce with Canada, and which bill 
 was promoted by him under the name of "reciprocity." 
 This pamphlet brings its history down to July 1, 1912, 
 that being the latest date to which the public records 
 reach, and little or nothing relevant thereto having been 
 done by the Taft administration since that date. 
 
 Park Row Building, A. H. W. 
 
 Manhattan, New York. 
 September 11, 1912. 
 
SHERMAN LAW INDUSTRIAL CASES 
 
 Transferbed From Roosevelt to Taet. 
 
 Seventeen cases which had been brought by the 
 United States against industrial combinations for viola- 
 tion of the Sherman Law, were pending when President 
 Taft succeeded President Roosevelt on March 4, 
 1909. During the first three years and four months of 
 the Taft administration, those seventeen cases had the 
 following histories respectively: 
 
 United States v. Metropolitan Meat Co. et al. This 
 is an action in equity, under Section 4 of the Sherman' 
 Law, in the United States Court for Hawaii, to stop the 
 operation of alleged unlawful combinations in restraint 
 of trade in beef and beef products. The Taft adminis- 
 tration never did anything to prosecute this case. 
 
 United States v. Allen & Robinson, et al. This was 
 an action in equity, under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, 
 in the United States Court for Hawaii, to stop the oper- 
 ation of alleged unlawful combinations to restrain trade 
 in lumber. This case was prosecuted by the Taft ad- 
 ministration; but on March 30, 1911, it was decided 
 against the United States. 
 
 United States v. American Ice Co., et al. This is an 
 indictment under Section 3 of the Sherman Law, in the 
 Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, charging an 
 agreement to restrain trade in ice. The Taft administra- 
 tion never sought to have the case tried, and never did 
 anything else relevant thereto. 
 
 United States v. Chandler Ice & Cold Storage Plant, 
 et al. This was an indictment, in the United States Dis- 
 trict Court for the Territory of Oklahoma, charging a 
 violation of Section 3 of the Sherman Law by means of 
 a combination to restrain trade in ice. The Taft admin- 
 
istration never prosecuted the case, and it was dismissed 
 by the court on April 10, 1911. 
 
 United States v. Alfred M. Gloyd et al. This was an 
 indictment, in the United States District Court for the 
 Territory of Oklahoma, based on alleged violation of 
 Section 3 of the Sherman Law, by a combination to re- 
 strain trade in lumber. The Taft administration never 
 prosecuted the case, and it was dismissed by the court. 
 
 United States v. American Seating Co., et al. This 
 is an action in equity, in the United States Circuit Court 
 for the Northern District of Illinois, brought under Sec- 
 tion 4 of the Sherman Law, to stop the operation of an 
 alleged unlawful combination in restraint of trade in 
 school and church furniture. During the Roosevelt ad- 
 ministration, a decree was entered granting a perpetual 
 injunction against all the defendants, except one corpor- 
 ation and three persons. The Taft administration never 
 did anything to prosecute the case against those four de- 
 fendants, and as to them the case is still pending. 
 
 United States v. American Seating Co., et al. This is 
 an indictment, in the United States District Court for the 
 Northern District of Illinois, based on alleged violation 
 of Section 1 of the Sherman Law, by a combination in 
 restraint of trade in school and church furniture. Prior 
 to the beginning of the Taft administration, the case 
 had been disposed of, except as against one of the de- 
 fendants, namely, The E. H. Stafford Manufacturing Co. 
 As to that defendant, the case then stood upon a plea of 
 not guilty. But the Taft administration never brought 
 the case on for trial, or did anything else about it. 
 
 United States v. E. H. Stafford Mfg. Co. This is an- 
 other indictment against the last mentioned defendant, 
 in the United States District Court for the Northern Dis- 
 trict of Illinois, charging another violation of Section 1 
 of the Sherman Law, by engaging in a combination in 
 restraint of trade in school and church furniture. The 
 Taft administration never prosecuted this case. 
 
United States v. One Hundred and Seventy-five Cases 
 of Cigarettes. This is a proceeding in the United States 
 District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, un- 
 der Section 6 of the Sherman Law, which was instituted 
 by the Eoosevelt administration, to adjudicate a forfeit- 
 ure to the United States of 175 cases of cigarettes, which 
 were alleged to be the subject of a combination in re- 
 straint of trade in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman 
 Law. The Taft administration never prosecuted the 
 case, or did anything to enforce the forfeiture of those 
 cigarettes. 
 
 United States v. Joseph Stiefvanter et al. This was 
 an indictment in the United States Circuit Court for the 
 Eastern District of Louisiana, which charged a combin- 
 ation in restraint of trade in plumbers' supplies in vio- 
 lation of Section 1, of the Sherman Law. The case was 
 dismissed on June 25, 1910. 
 
 United States v. Charles L. Simmons et al. This 
 was an indictment pending in the United States District 
 Court for the Southern District of Alabama, charging 
 violation of Section 1, of the Sherman Law, by a com- 
 bination in restraint of trade in plumbers ' supplies. The 
 Taft administration prosecuted this case to the extent 
 of getting a plea of guilty on December 1, 1910, followed 
 by fines aggregating $265. 
 
 United States v. E. J. Bay et al. This is the name of 
 each of two cases in the United States Circuit Court for 
 the Eastern District of Louisiana, upon two indictments 
 against seventy-two laborers, charging combination and 
 conspiracy in restraint of foreign trade, in violation of 
 Section 1 of the Sherman Law. On January 26, 1911, 
 the Taft administration prosecuted these two cases, to 
 the extent of bringing them on for trial, getting a ver- 
 dict of guilty as to the three of the defendants, and se- 
 curing the imposition of fines aggregating $110. There- 
 upon however, an appeal was taken and the cases were 
 
transferred to the United States Circuit Court of Ap- 
 peals for the Fifth Circuit, where they are still pending. 
 
 United States v. Union Pacific Coal Co., et al. This 
 was an indictment in the United States District Court for 
 the District of Utah, charging a violation of Section 1 
 of the Sherman Law, by means of a conspiracy to re- 
 strain trade in coal. The case had been tried and a ver- 
 dict of guilty rendered, during the Roosevelt adminis- 
 tration. In pursuance of that verdict, on March 29, 
 1909, fines aggregating $13,000 were imposed on the de- 
 fendants. But the defendants appealed from that judg- 
 ment, and secured a reversal thereof, in November 
 1909, by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth 
 Circuit. And in pursuance of that reversal, the case 
 was dismissed on March 21, 1910. 
 
 United States v. American Naval Stores Co., et al. 
 This was an indictment in the United States Circuit 
 Court for the Southern District of Georgia, charging 
 violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Law, by a com- 
 bination in restraint of trade in turpentine. The Taft 
 administration prosecuted the case, by bringing it on for 
 trial, and securing a verdict of guilty against five indi- 
 vidual defendants on May 10, 1909. The court thereupon 
 imposed fines on those defendants, aggregating $17,500, 
 and sentenced two of the defendants to three months im- 
 prisonment in jail. That judgment was afterwards af- 
 firmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
 Circuit. But the Supreme Court granted to the defen- 
 dants a writ of certiorari to take the case to that tri- 
 bunal, where it is now pending, but where it will not 
 be reached for argument until some time in 1913 or 1914. 
 
 United States v. E. I. duPont deNemours Co. et al. 
 This was an action in equity under Section 4 of the 
 Sherman Law, pending in the United States Circuit 
 Court for the District of Delaware, and based upon al- 
 leged violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Law by a 
 
combination in restraint of trade in gun powder and 
 other explosive substances. The Taft administration 
 prosecuted this case successfully, and obtained on June 
 13, 1912, a final decree dissolving the combination. 
 
 United States v. American Tobacco Co., et al. This 
 was an action in equity brought under Section 4 of the 
 Sherman Law, in the United States Circuit Court for 
 the Southern District of New York, which was pend- 
 ing on appeal in the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 at the beginning of Taft's administration, March 4, 1909. 
 When it was about to be reached for argument, in Octo- 
 ber 1909, Attorney General Wickersham moved the 
 court to postpone the hearing until the following year, 
 without stating any reason for that motion, further than 
 to say that the reason was personal in its nature. That 
 motion being granted, the case was argued in January 
 1910, but not having been decided prior to the death of 
 Justice Brewer in March of that year, the case was re- 
 stored to the docket for reargument at some future time. 
 That future time was not reached until January 1911, 
 and the case was not decided by the Supreme Court un- 
 til May 29, 1911. That decision remanded the case to the 
 United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of 
 New York, for further proceedings to be taken in ac- 
 cordance with the opinion of the Supreme Court. Dur- 
 ing the next six months, such proceedings were taken 
 in that tribunal, and a final decree dissolving the Amer- 
 ican Tobacco Company was entered there on November 
 16, 1911. But that decree has not yet operated benefi- 
 cially to the general public; and is not known to have 
 done anybody any good. Though, contrary to the gen- 
 eral opinion, it has established a real and even a stren- 
 uous competitive condition between the corporations, 
 which it caused to be created or reorganized from the 
 materials of the corporation which it dissolved. That 
 competitive condition will probably soon develop higher 
 
prices for leaf tobacco, and lower prices for tobacco pro- 
 ducts, than would otherwise prevail. 
 
 United States v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, et 
 al. This was an action in equity, brought under Section 
 4 of the Sherman Law, in the United States Circuit Court 
 for the Eastern District of Missouri, which was pending 
 in that tribunal and nearly ready for argument, at the 
 beginning of Taft's administration. On November 20, 
 1909, that court rendered a decree dissolving the com- 
 bination of more than thirty Standard Oil corporations, 
 which had been effected, and for many years maintained, 
 by means of all the stocks of those corporations being 
 owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. 
 
 The defendants appealed from that decree to the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, and that appeal 
 was first argued in that tribunal in January 1910. But 
 the case not having been decided prior to the death of 
 Justice Brewer in March of that year, the case was re- 
 stored to the docket for reargument at some future 
 time. That future time was not reached until January 
 1911, and the case was not decided by the Supreme 
 Court until May 15, 1911. That decision was an affirm- 
 ance of the decree of dissolution which had been ren- 
 dered by the Circuit Court. That dissolution was ef- 
 fected by conveying to each of the stockholders of the 
 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, the same propor- 
 tion of the shares of each subsidiary corporation, that 
 the stock of that stockholder in the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany of New Jersey, bore to the entire stock of that cor- 
 poration. It was the theory of this dissolution that, 
 thereafter, the subsidiary corporations would not be 
 managed with unity of action, but would compete with 
 each other, as if the stockholders in each of the sub- 
 sidiary corporations were a different set of men from the 
 stockholders in each of the other subsidiary corporations. 
 But if the former unity of control of all the subsidiary 
 
corporations by the Standard Oil Company of New Jer- 
 sey, has been followed by mutual competition between 
 them, that fact is not generally known nor generally be- 
 lieved. Indeed, it is not generally believed that the dis- 
 solution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey 
 has ever done anybody any good, except such speculators 
 and other persons as have derived profits from the enor- 
 mous increase in total market prices of the stocks of the 
 subsidiary corporations, as compared with the market 
 price before dissolution, of the stock of the Standard Oil 
 Company of New Jersey. 
 
 Sherman Law Industrial Cases. 
 
 During the First Ten Months of Taft's 
 Administration. 
 
 During these ten months, the Taft administration 
 did nothing relevant to the Sherman Law industrial cases 
 which had been transferred from Roosevelt to Taft, ex- 
 cept to observe the courts in which they were pending, 
 proceed with them by dismissal or otherwise, or do noth- 
 ing at all about them, respectively. And during those 
 ten months, none of those courts did anything impor- 
 tant about any of those cases; except to hear arguments 
 in the Standard Oil case in April 1909, and decide that 
 case in November of that year, upon a record which had 
 been completed during the administration of President 
 Roosevelt. 
 
 During those ten months, the Taft administration did 
 nothing toward beginning any new suit to enforce the 
 Sherman Law against any industrial combination; ex- 
 cept that the United States District Attorney for the 
 Southern District of New York, on July 1, 1909, obtained 
 an indictment against the American Sugar Refining Com- 
 pany et al., and on December 7, 1909, obtained an indict- 
 ment against the Albia Box & Paper Co., et al. No sue- 
 
8 
 
 cess attended either of these indictments until after Jan- 
 uary 1910; and no permanent success has ever attended 
 the indictment against the American Sugar Befining 
 Co., et al., though pleas of guilty were made in the Albia 
 case in February 1910, and were followed by fines aggre- 
 gating $57,000. 
 
 It was in this negligent situation of affairs relevant 
 to the enforcement of the Sherman Law against indus- 
 trial combinations, that on January 7, 1910, I ventured 
 to write to President Taft a letter, conveying to him 
 much elaborate and carefuly collected information, to 
 the effect that a particular industrial combination of 
 great magnitude had been violating the Sherman Law 
 all the time for some years, without being prosecuted for 
 that violation. The last paragraph of that letter ran as 
 follows : 
 
 ' ' I have written this letter to your Excellency in plain 
 terms, because I believe you are entitled to receive the 
 information I am conveying, and because I know you 
 would rather read the naked truth than to bother with 
 interpreting ambiguous phrases. It was always the pe- 
 culiar misfortune of chief magistrates of great nations 
 to be kept partly uninformed of important facts which 
 were well known to many other men. This misfortune 
 has partly arisen from fear of giving offense in high 
 quarters by plain statements. But I am not afraid of 
 giving you any offense, because I know and you will be- 
 lieve that my motives are such as spring from warm and 
 entirely disinterested friendship." 
 
 On January 8, 1910, President Taft sent me an auto- 
 graph reply to my letter of January 7, which reply was 
 as follows: 
 
 "My dear Mr. Walker: I have your letter of Jan- 
 uary 7th and have referred it to the Attorney General. 
 The pendency of the Tobacco Trust case in the Supreme 
 Court, and the Standard Oil Trust case, make us slower 
 
now, than we expect to be after the Court has disposed 
 of those two all-embracing cases." 
 
 When I received the foregoing letter, I was disap- 
 pointed, because it appeared to me to indicate serious 
 presidential procrastination. And that procrastination 
 appeared to me to be quite uncalled for; be- 
 cause I knew that the facts in the American To- 
 bacco case and the facts in the Standard Oil case, 
 were such that there was no necessity for wait- 
 ing for the Supreme Court decision in those cases, 
 before beginning suits against other industrial combin- 
 ations violative of the Sherman Law, such as the par- 
 ticular combination which I had described in my letter 
 of January 7, 1910, to the President. 
 
 Sherman Law Industrial, Cases 
 Begun Between January 8, 1910, and May 29, 1911. 
 
 It was during this time of nearly seventeen months, 
 after writing to me his letter of January 8, 1910, that 
 President Taft was waiting for the Standard Oil case 
 and the American Tobacco case to be decided by the Su- 
 preme Court, before proceeding to enforce the Sherman 
 Law against industrial combinations as vigorously as 
 he expected to do afterward. Nevertheless, during those 
 seventeen months, the Taft administration did begin 
 twenty prosecutions of industrial or commercial combin- 
 ations for alleged violations of the Sherman Law. Those 
 twenty cases were as follows, and they respectively had 
 the following histories prior to July 1, 1912. 
 
 United States v. John 8. Steers et al. This was an 
 indictment returned February 7, 1910, in the United 
 States District Court for the Eastern District of Ken- 
 tucky, which charged that the defendants who were com- 
 monly called "Night Riders", were guilty of restraining 
 interstate trade in tobacco, by means of violence and in- 
 
10 
 
 timidation, used to prevent its shipment by growers. 
 The ease was tried, and on April 16, 1910, a verdict of 
 guilty was returned as to eight o? twelve defendants, and 
 fines aggregating $3,500 were imposed upon them. That 
 judgment was affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals 
 for the Sixth Circuit on December 5, 1911 ; but on May 
 11, 1912, President Taft remitted the fines, upon the pay- 
 ment of costs by the defendants. 
 
 United States v. National Packing Co., et al. This 
 was an indictment returned March 2, 1910, in the United 
 States District Court for the Northern District of Il- 
 linois, charging a combination to restrain trade in fresh 
 meats. A demurrer to this indictment was sustained 
 June 23, 1910, and the case was thus defeated. 
 
 United States v. National Packing Co., et al. This 
 was a suit in equity, brought under Section 4 of the 
 Sherman Law March 21, 1910, in the United States Cir- 
 cuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois, charging 
 a combination in restraint of trade in fresh meats, and 
 praying for a dissolution of the combination. In the 
 fall of 1911, this suit was dismissed at the motion of 
 the United States, in order to avoid all possible conflict 
 with an indictment against the same defendants. 
 
 United States v. Armour Packing Co., et al. This is 
 an indictment which was returned in April, 1910', in the 
 United States District Court for the Southern District 
 of Georgia, charging a combination to restrain trade in 
 fresh meats. The defendants appeared and filed a de- 
 murrer to the indictment, and that demurrer has not yet 
 been decided. 
 
 United States v. Imperial Window Glass Co., et al. 
 This was an indictment returned April 17, 1910, in the 
 United States District Court for the Western District 
 of Pennsylvania, charging a combination to restrain 
 trade in window glass. On November 10, 1910, pleas of 
 nolo contendere were entered, and fines aggregating*, 
 $10,000 and costs were imposed and collected. 
 
11 
 
 United States v. Southern Wholesale Grocers' As- 
 sociation. This was an action in equity, under Section 
 4 of the Sherman Law, begun June 9, 1910, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Ala- 
 bama, alleging a combination to restrain trade in gro- 
 ceries. In pursuance of an agreement between counsel 
 for the United States and counsel for the defendants, a 
 decree was entered by the Court October 17, 1911, per- 
 petually restraining the association, its officers and 
 members, from doing any of the acts complained of. 
 
 United States v. Chicago Butter d Egg Board. This 
 is an action in equity, under Section 4 of the Sherman 
 Law, begun June 13, 1910, in the United States Circuit 
 Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Issue has 
 been joined in the case, and some testimony has been 
 taken therein, during the more than two years which 
 have passed since the action was begun. 
 
 United States v. Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, under Section 4 of the Sher- 
 man Law, which was begun July 22, 1910, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the District of Maryland, charg- 
 ing a combination to restrain trade in enameled ware, 
 such as bath tubs and other sanitary apparatus. The 
 Circuit Court decided the case in favor of the United 
 States by a decree entered November 25, 1911. The de- 
 fendants took an appeal from that decree to the Su- 
 preme Court, in which tribunal the case is set for hear- 
 ing in October, 1912. 
 
 United States v. Frank Hayne, James A. Patten, et 
 al. This is an indictment which was returned August 4, 
 1910, in the United States District Court for the South- 
 ern District of New York, alleging a combination to re- 
 strain trade in cotton by means of speculative manipu- 
 lation of prices thereof. Demurrers were sustained as 
 to some counts of the indictment, and overruled as to 
 other counts, and thereupon the case was appealed by 
 
12 
 
 the United States to the Supreme Court. It was argued 
 in that tribunal in November, 1911, but was afterward 
 restored to the docket for reargument, at some future 
 time which has not yet been reached. 
 
 United States v. Louis F. Swift, et al. This was an 
 indictment returned in September, 1910, in the United 
 States District Court for the Northern District of Il- 
 linois, against ten persons, charging a combination in 
 restraint of trade in fresh meats and other provisions. 
 The case was tried during three months, ending March 
 27, 1912, when the jury returned a verdict of acquittal. 
 
 United States v. John Reardon S Sons Co., et al. 
 This was an indictment, returned in October, 1910, in 
 the United States District Court for the District of 
 Massachusetts. A demurrer to the indictment was sus- 
 tained on June 23, 1911, and the case of the Government 
 was thus defeated. 
 
 United States v. Purrington et al. This is in indict- 
 ment returned September 14, 1910, in the United States 
 District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 
 charging a combination to restrain trade in paving 
 bricks and blocks. A demurrer to the indictment was 
 overruled November 9, 1911, and the case is still pend- 
 ing. 
 
 United States v. Horatio W. Heath, et al. This was 
 an indictment, returned in October 1910, in the United 
 States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 
 A demurrer to the indictment was sustained June 23, 
 1911, and the case was thus ended with the defeat of 
 the United States. 
 
 United States v. Ferdinand Sulzberger, et al. This 
 was an indictment, returned in October 1910, in ihe 
 United States District Court for the District of Mass- 
 achusetts. A demurrer to the indictment was sustained 
 on June 23, 1911, and the case was thus ended in favor 
 of the defendants. 
 
13 
 
 United States v. American Sugar Refining Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, begun November 28, 1910, 
 in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern 
 District of New York, charging alleged violation of the 
 Sherman Law by the American Sugar Refining Com- 
 pany, and praying for its dissolution. Issues were 
 joined in the case and some testimony has been taken 
 therein; but much remains to be done before the case 
 can be argued to the court. 
 
 United States v. Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co., et al. 
 This was an indictment returned in the United States 
 District Court for the District of Michigan on Decem- 
 ber 6, 1910, against the same defendants, and charging 
 the same violations of the Sherman Law, that were in- 
 volved in the case in the United States Circuit Court 
 for the District of Maryland. This criminal case in 
 Michigan was tried during six weeks, ending March 
 14, 1912, with a disagreement of the Jury. 
 
 United States v. General Electric Co., et al. This 
 was an action in equity, under Section 4 of the Sherman 
 Law, begun March 3, 1911, in the United States Circuit 
 Court for the Northern District of Ohio, charging a com- 
 bination to restrain trade in incandescent electric lamps. 
 A final decree was agreed upon between counsel for the 
 United States and counsel for the defendants, and was 
 approved and entered by the Court, October' 12, 1911. 
 
 United States v. William C. Geer et al. This is an 
 indictment, returned April 28, 1911, in the United States 
 District Court for the Southern District of New York, 
 charging a combination to restrain trade in paper 
 board. A demurrer to the indictment was filed, and has 
 not yet been decided. 
 
 United States v. Eastern States Retail Lumber 
 Dealers' Association. This is an action in equity, begun 
 May 19, 1911, in the United States Circuit Court for 
 the Southern District of New York, charging a combi- 
 
14 
 
 nation to restrain trade in lumber. Issues have been 
 joined in the case, and the taking of testimony has been 
 nearly completed therein. 
 
 United States v. Isaac Whiting et al. This is the 
 title of two indictments, returned May 26, 1911, in the 
 United States District Court for the District of Mass- 
 achusetts, charging a combination to restrain trade in 
 milk throughout the New England states. Demurrers 
 have been filed to the indictments, but have not yet been 
 decided. 
 
 Only five of the foregoing twenty cases have resulted 
 in enforcing the Sherman Law against anybody. These 
 are the "Night Eiders" case in Kentucky, wherein fines 
 aggregating $3,500 were imposed by the Court and after- 
 ward remitted by the President; and the Window Glass 
 case in Pennsylvania, wherein fines aggregating $10,000 
 were imposed and collected; and the Standard Sani- 
 tary case in Maryland, wherein a decree was entered 
 against the defendants, but appealed to the Supreme 
 Court; and the wholesale Grocers case in Alabama, 
 wherein the defendants consented to a decree, restrain- 
 ing them from violating the Sherman Law any more; 
 and the Electric Lamp case in Ohio, wherein the defend- 
 ants consented to a decree dissolving their combination. 
 
 Sherman Law Industrial Cases 
 begun between may 29, 1911 and july 1, 1912. 
 
 During the more than thirteen months after the de- 
 cision of the Supreme Court in the Standard Oil case 
 and the American Tobacco case, and before July 1, 1912 ; 
 the Taft administration began twenty-three prosecu- 
 tions or groups of prosecutions of industrial or com- 
 mercial combinations for alleged violations of the Slier- 
 
15 
 
 man Law. Those twenty-three litigations were as fol- 
 lows, and they respectively had the following histories 
 prior to July 1, 1912. 
 
 United States v. Periodical Publishing Co. This was 
 an action in equity, begun in June 1911, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New 
 York, under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, against the 
 members of the Magazine Combination. Issues have 
 been joined in the case, and the evidence on those issues 
 has been taken; but the case has not been submitted to 
 the Court for adjudication. 
 
 United States v. Lumber Secretaries' Bureau of In- 
 formation, et al. This is an indictment returned June 
 23, 1911, in the United States District Court for the 
 Northern District of Illinois, charging a combination 
 in restraint of trade in lumber. A demurrer to the 
 indictment has been filed, but has not been decided. 
 
 United States v. E. E. Jackson, Jr., et al. These were 
 nine indictments, returned June 29, 1911, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New 
 York, against nine groups of defendants, of each of 
 which E. E. Jackson, Jr. was one, and charging viola- 
 tions of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Law, by nine 
 separate combinations in restraint of trade in wire and 
 so forth. All the defendants entered pleas of nolo 
 contendere, and each was fined $1,000 or more, aggre- 
 gating $128,700, imposed upon more than eighty de- 
 fendants. 
 
 United States v. Jay B. Pearce, et al. This was an 
 indictment, returned June 19, 1911, in the United States 
 District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, charg- 
 ing violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Law by a com- 
 bination in restraint of trade in wall paper. The case 
 was tried in May 1912, and resulted in a verdict of not 
 guilty on May 24, 1912. 
 
16 
 
 United States v. Edward E. Hartwick, et al. This is 
 an action in equity, begun August 31, 1911, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Michi- 
 gan, under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, charging a 
 combination in restraint of trade in lumber. Issues have 
 been joined, and testimony is now being taken but ha? 
 not been completed. 
 
 5 United States v. Standard Wood Co., et al. This was 
 an action in equity, begun in September, 1911, ' in the 
 United States Circuit Court for the Southern District 
 of New York, under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, charg- 
 ing a combination to monopolize trade in kindling wood, 
 contrary to Section 2 of that statute. In default of an 
 answer, a decree was entered against the defendants, on 
 March 11, 1912. 
 
 United States v. Hunter Milling Co., et al. This is an 
 indictment, returned September 10, 1911, in the United 
 States District Court for the Western District of Okla- 
 homa, charging violation of Section 1 of the Sherman 
 Law. A demurrer was filed and was argued March 4, 
 1912, but has not yet been decided. 
 
 United States v. S. W. Winslow, et al. This is the 
 title of each of two indictments, returned September 
 19, 1911, in the United States District Court for the Dis- 
 trict of Massachusetts, charging violations of Sections 1 
 and 2 of the Sherman Law, by combinations and conspir- 
 acies in restraint and monopolization of trade in shoe 
 machinery. Demurrers were filed to the two indictments, 
 and were sustained in part and overruled in part; and 
 thereupon the cases were taken by appeal to the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, where they are now pending. 
 
 United States v. Colorado <& Wyoming Lumber Deal- 
 ers' Association, et al. This is an action in equity, filed 
 September 25, 1911, in the United States Circuit Court 
 for the District of Colorado, based on Section 4 of the 
 Sherman Law, and charging a combination to restrain 
 
17 
 
 trade in lumber. Issues have been joined in the case, 
 and testimony is now being taken therein, but has not 
 been completed. 
 
 United States v. Willard G. Hollis, et al. This is an 
 action in equity, begun in October, 1911, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the District of Minnesota, charg- 
 ing conspiracy and combination in restraint of trade in 
 lumber, contrary to Section 1 of the Sherman Law. Is- 
 sues have been joined in the case, and testimony is now 
 being taken therein. 
 
 United States v. United States Steel Corporation, et 
 al. This is an action in equity, begun October 27, 1911, 
 in the United States District Court for the District of 
 New Jersey, against thirty-seven corporations and twen- 
 ty-three persons, under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, 
 for alleged violations of Sections 1 and 2 of that statute, 
 by means of numerous combinations and combinations of 
 combinations, in restraint of trade in iron, steel, coal and 
 so forth. The defendants filed answers early in 1912, 
 and the complainant has begun to take testimony in sup- 
 port of the complaint. 
 
 United States v. National Cash Register Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, begun December 4, 1911, in 
 the United States Circuit Court for the Southern Dis- 
 trict of Ohio, under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, al- 
 leging conspiracy and combination in monopoly of trade 
 in cash registers and other registering devices. The 
 prosecution of this case has not proceeded far. 
 
 United States v. United Shoe Machinery Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, begun December 12, 1911, 
 in the United States District Court for the District of 
 Massachusetts, alleging combinations and conspiracies in 
 restraint of trade in shoe machinery. But little progress 
 has yet been made in the prosecution of this case. 
 
 United States v. Pacific Coast Plumbing Supply Asso- 
 ciation, et al. This is an action in equity, begun Decern- 
 
18 
 
 ber 18, 1911, in the United States Circuit Court for the 
 Southern District of California, alleging combinations, 
 conspiracies and boycotting in restraint of trade in 
 plumbing supplies. A preliminary injunction was or- 
 dered on January 6, 1912, to restrain the defendants from 
 thereafter committing any such acts as those complained 
 of. 
 
 United States v. Keystone Watch Case Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, begun December 20, 1911,. in 
 the United States Circuit Court for the Eastern District 
 of Pennsylvania, alleging combinations and conspiracies 
 to monopolize trade in filled watch cases and in Howard 
 watches. Issues have been joined and some testimony 
 has been taken in the case. 
 
 United States v. American Naval Stores Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, begun January 8, 1912, in the 
 United States District Court for the Southern District of 
 Georgia, alleging a combination and conspiracy, in re- 
 straint of trade in turpentine and resin. The defendants 
 filed a demurrer, but that demurrer has not been decided. 
 
 United States v. New Departure Manufacturing Co., 
 et al. This is an indictment, returned January 8, 1912, 
 in the United States District Court for the Western Dis- 
 trict of New York, charging a combination and con- 
 spiracy to monopolize trade in coaster-brakes for bi- 
 cycles. A plea in abatement was filed by the defendants, 
 but was overruled April 2, 1912. 
 
 United States v. North Pacific Wharves <& Trading 
 Co., et al. This was an indictment, returned February 
 12, 1912, in the United States District Court for the First 
 Division of the District of Alaska, charging a conspiracy 
 to monopolize the coal business in Skagway, Alaska, in 
 violation of Section 3 of the Sherman Law. The defend- 
 ants filed a demurrer to the indictment and that demur- 
 rer was sustained, May 3, 1912. 
 
39 
 
 United States v. John H. Patterson, et al. This is an 
 indictment, returned February 12, 1912, in the United 
 States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, 
 against thirty officials and employees of the National 
 Cash Register Company, for participation in a conspir- 
 acy to restrain trade in cash registers, and to thereby 
 monopolize that trade. The defendants filed a demur- 
 rer, but that demurrer was overruled June 26, 1912. 
 
 United States v. Julius F. Miller, et al. This 1 is an in- 
 dictment, returned April 2, 1912, in the United States 
 District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 
 charging a combination and conspiracy to restrain trade 
 in charcoal. The defendants filed a demurrer, but that 
 demurrer has not been decided. 
 
 United States v. International Harvester Co., et al. 
 This is an action in equity, begun April 30, 1912, in the 
 United States District Court for the District of Minne- 
 sota, alleging a combination to restrain and monopolize 
 trade in harvesters and other agricultural machinery 
 and implements, and in binding twine. Little or no 
 progress has been made in the prosecution of this case. 
 
 United States v. Aluminum Co. of America. This is 
 an action in equity, begun May 16, 1912, in the United 
 States District Court for the Western District of Penn- 
 sylvania, charging a combination to restrain and mo- 
 nopolize trade in aluminum and aluminum wares. A con- 
 sent decree granting substantially the relief prayed for 
 in the case, was entered by the Court on June 7, 1912. 
 
 United States v. Herman Sielcken, et al. This is an 
 action is equity, begun May 18, 1912, in the United States 
 Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, 
 alleging a combination in restraint of international com- 
 merce in coffee, consisting of an alleged conspiracy to 
 reduce the exports of coffee from the State of San Paulo, 
 Brazil to the United States. A motion for a preliminary 
 injunction in this unique case was denied by the Court. 
 
20 
 
 Only four of the foregoing twenty-three cases or 
 classes of cases have resulted in enforcing the Sherman 
 Law against anybody, or in punishing anybody for its 
 violation. The most important of these were the "Wire 
 Pool" cases, but even in those cases the defendants were 
 not restrained from doing anything in the future, and the 
 only punishment inflicted on them for the past, was a 
 compulsory payment to the United States of only $128,- 
 700, out of several millions of dollars which they had 
 derived, from those violations of the Sherman Law for 
 which they were nominally being punished. The other 
 three of the twenty-three cases in which something af- 
 firmative was accomplished against the defendants, were 
 the Standard Wood case, in New York, the Plumbing case 
 in California, and the Aluminum case in Pennsylvania. 
 But nothing was accomplished in either of those three 
 cases, except to enjoin the future continuance, of the re- 
 straints of trade upon which they were based. 
 
 The entire work of the Taft administration, relevant 
 to Sherman Law industrial cases, has been fairly stated 
 and reviewed in this pamphlet. That work was confined 
 to seventeen cases transferred from Roosevelt to Taft, 
 and two cases which were begun during the first ten 
 months of Taft's administration, and twenty prosecu- 
 tions which were started during its next seventeen 
 months, and twenty-three prosecutions or groups of 
 prosecutions, which were commenced during the next 
 thirteen months of that administration, ending July 1, 
 1912. 
 
 This aggregate of sixty-two Sherman Law prosecu- 
 tions, includes eight cases in which no action was ever 
 taken by the Taft administration; and ten others in 
 which such action as was taken, resulted in final failure ; 
 and thirty-two others in which no affirmative result has 
 ever been reached, or is likely to be reached during the 
 
21 
 
 Taft administration; and only twelve, in which anything 
 final was accomplished. 
 
 The only cases, among the sixty-two, which ever de- 
 veloped any hope of general public benefit, are the Stan- 
 dard Oil case, the American Tobacco case, the DuPont 
 Powder case, the Electric Lamp case, the Standard San- 
 itary case, the Wire Pool cases, the Sugar Refining case, 
 the Shoe Machinery case, the United States Steel case, 
 the Cash Eegister case, and the International Harvester 
 case. Moreover, the contributions of the Taft adminis- 
 tration to the first three of those eleven cases, consisted 
 only in reaping some results from the long previous 
 work of the Roosevelt administration. Only the next 
 three of the eleven cases have ever been prosecuted 
 so far as to reach even a final Circuit Court Judgment, 
 and the first of those judgments was reached by consent 
 of the defendants, while the second is the subject of a 
 pending appeal in the Supreme Court. And the judg- 
 ments in the Wire Pool cases, were obtained through 
 pleas of nolo contendere, and amounted only to collect- 
 ing from the defendants a small percentage of the plun- 
 der which they had derived from their violations of the 
 Sherman Law. 
 
 Having now ascertained and stated what the Taft 
 administration has done, and has omitted to do, relevant 
 to enforcing the Sherman Law against industrial com- 
 binations, in all the Sherman Law industrial cases which 
 have been pending during that administration ; it is now 
 in order to ascertain and state, as far as practicable, 
 what combinations, violative of the Sherman Law, have 
 been doing business in the United States since President 
 Tarft's inauguration, without being prosecuted by him or 
 under his authority. It is impossible for any private in- 
 vestigator to make any such ascertainment complete. 
 But it is possible to ascertain and state the names of the 
 great corporations which are "holding companies," own- 
 
22 
 
 ing and controlling the stocks and assets of subsidiary in- 
 dustrial corporations, which if not thus held and con- 
 trolled, would be competitors of each other. It is true, 
 that a restraint of mutual competition between subsi- 
 diary companies, by means of one holding company con- 
 trolling them all, does not necessarily result in restraint 
 of trade or commerce in the commodities made and sold, 
 or purchased and sold, by those subsidiary companies. 
 But such restraint of trade or commerce is such a nat- 
 ural and almost universal result of such restraint of 
 competition, that a critical investigator is fully justified 
 in assuming, that a list of such holding companies will 
 include few, if any, in which the inevitable restraint of 
 competition does not also involve restraint of trade or 
 commerce. And where the subsidiary corporations of 
 such a holding company, are engaged in interstate or in- 
 ternational trade or commerce; the presumption that 
 their confederation constitutes, or at least causes, a vio- 
 lation of Section 1 of the Sherman Law, is strong enough 
 to fully justify a working hypothesis to that effect. 
 
 Proceeding upon that working hypothesis, it is neces- 
 sary to state at this place, the existence of more than a 
 thousand holding companies in the United States, which 
 respectively combine the operations of nearly ten thous- 
 and industrial corporations, being an average of nearly 
 ten subsidiary industrial corporations, confederated to- 
 gether under the control of each of the one thousand 
 holding companies. 
 
 During the Taft administration, actions have been 
 prosecuted for violation of the Sherman Law against a 
 few of those holding company organizations, including 
 the United States Steel Corporation, the American To- 
 bacco Company, the Standard Oil Company of New Jer- 
 sey, the American Sugar Refining Company and the In- 
 ternational Harvester Company. But more than a thous- 
 and other holding company organizations of the same 
 
23 
 
 general character and mode of operation, have been en- 
 tirely undisturbed, in their regular business of violating 
 the Sherman Law, throughout the administration of 
 President Taft. The following is a list of fifty of those 
 undisturbed holding companies, which list includes their 
 names, their capitalization, and an approximation of the 
 number of subsidiary corporations controlled by them, 
 respectively. 
 
 NAME OF HOLDING COMPANY CAP 
 
 ITALIZi 1 
 
 iTION 
 
 SUBSIDIARIES 
 
 Amalgamated Copper Co. 
 
 155 i 
 
 millions 
 
 12 
 
 American Smelting & Refining Co. 
 
 100 
 
 . t 
 
 14 
 
 American Can Co. 
 
 88 
 
 C i 
 
 73 
 
 American Woolen Co. 
 
 80 
 
 i i 
 
 28 
 
 Central Leather Co. 
 
 80 
 
 i t 
 
 14 
 
 Corn Products Refining Co. 
 
 80 
 
 i i 
 
 7 
 
 United Copper Co. 
 
 80 
 
 i i 
 
 2 
 
 United States Rubber Co. 
 
 75 
 
 I i 
 
 14 
 
 United States Refining & Mining Co. 
 
 75 
 
 1 1 
 
 12 
 
 Pittsburg Coal Co. 
 
 64 
 
 i i 
 
 16 
 
 American Car & Foundry Co. 
 
 60 
 
 I t 
 
 19 
 
 Lackawanna Steel Co. 
 
 60 
 
 I i 
 
 3 
 
 Virginia-Carolina Chemical Co. 
 
 58 
 
 t i 
 
 6 
 
 National Biscuit Co. 
 
 55 
 
 i i 
 
 5 
 
 Republic Iron & Steel Co. 
 
 55 
 
 t i 
 
 57 
 
 Allis-Chalmers Co. 
 
 50 
 
 i I 
 
 6 
 
 American Locomotive Co. 
 
 50 
 
 i I 
 
 13 
 
 Crucible Steel Co. of America 
 
 50 
 
 I i 
 
 15 
 
 National Lead Co. 
 
 50 
 
 i i 
 
 19 
 
 Independent Fertilizer Co. 
 
 50 
 
 < . 
 
 4 
 
 Pennsylvania Steel Co. of N. J. 
 
 50 
 
 1 i 
 
 7 
 
 International Paper Co. 
 
 45 
 
 i t 
 
 6 
 
 Copper Range Consolidated Co. 
 
 40 
 
 i ( 
 
 8 
 
 Intercontinental Rubber Co. 
 
 40 
 
 i i 
 
 6 
 
 International Steam Pump Co. 
 
 39 
 
 I i 
 
 11 
 
 American Hide & Leather Co. 
 
 35 
 
 £ ( 
 
 25 
 
 American Cotton Oil Co. 
 
 35 
 
 t i 
 
 17 
 
 Eastman Kodak Co. 
 
 35 
 
 i i 
 
 9 
 
 American Linseed Co. 
 
 33 
 
 i i 
 
 46 
 
 Distillers' Securities Corp. 
 
 32 
 
 t i 
 
 7 
 
 General Asphalt Co. 
 
 31 
 
 ( i 
 
 69 
 
 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 
 
 30 
 
 C i 
 
 8 
 
 Great Western Sugar Co. 
 
 30 
 
 i i 
 
 8 
 
 International Salt Co. 
 
 30 
 
 i t 
 
 4 
 
24 
 
 NAME OF HOLDING COMPANY 
 
 CAPITALIZATION 
 
 SUBSIDIARIES 
 
 National Enamel & Stamping 
 
 Co. 
 
 30 
 
 millions 
 
 6 
 
 U. S. Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry Co. 
 
 30 
 
 t i 
 
 15 
 
 Singer Mfg. Co. 
 
 
 30 
 
 i i 
 
 4 
 
 Railway Steel Spring Co. 
 
 
 27 
 
 1 1 
 
 11 
 
 Union Bag & Paper Co. 
 
 
 27 
 
 t i 
 
 8 
 
 General Chemical Co. 
 
 
 25 
 
 i i 
 
 13 
 
 Pressed Steel Car Co. 
 
 
 25 
 
 i t 
 
 8 
 
 United Fruit Co. 
 
 
 25 
 
 < t 
 
 12 
 
 United Lead Co. 
 
 
 25 
 
 < 1 
 
 20 
 
 International Nickel Co. 
 
 
 24 
 
 i i 
 
 7 
 
 American Writing Paper Co. 
 
 
 22 
 
 < i 
 
 32 
 
 American Beet Sugar Co. 
 
 
 20 
 
 i i 
 
 3 
 
 Union Typewriter Co. 
 
 
 20 
 
 1 1 
 
 7 
 
 International Silver Co. 
 
 
 20 
 
 i i 
 
 21 
 
 Royal Baking Powder Co. 
 
 
 20 
 
 i i 
 
 fi 
 
 Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co. 
 
 
 20 
 
 i < 
 
 11 
 
 The foregoing fifty holding companies have a capi- 
 talization of more than twenty-three hundred million 
 dollars, and have more than seven hundred subsidiary 
 corporations; the average number of their subsidiary 
 corporations being more than fifteen, and their average 
 capitalization being more than forty-six million dollars : 
 
 I can furnish a list of more than nine hundred and 
 fifty other industrial holding companies which have an 
 aggregate capitalization of more than five thousand mil- 
 lion dollars, with more than six thousand subsidiary cor- 
 porations, but I will not expand this pamphlet enough to 
 make it include that list; though I do not doubt that 
 most of those holding companies and subsidiary corpora- 
 tions are regularly engaged in violating the Sherman 
 Law. But most of them are less extensively thus en- 
 gaged, than is each of the fifty holding companies, with 
 their subsidiary corporations, which are specified in the 
 foregoing list. 
 
 I am writing this historical sketch of the adminis- 
 tration of President Taft, relevant to the Sherman Law, 
 for the purpose of imparting the truth, the whole truth 
 and nothing but the truth on that subject, to such of my 
 
; L.25 
 
 fellow citizens as may do me the honor to read this 
 pamphlet, either now or in future times. And I hereby 
 challenge President Taft, Attorney General Wickersham, 
 and every other man, to specify any error which he may 
 claim to exist in any of these pages. 
 
 But the historical sketch which I have thus written, 
 and am now about to print and publish, presents to the 
 people a picture which has no resemblance to what Pres- 
 ident Taft said upon the same subject, in his speech of 
 August 1, 1912, accepting his nomination for the Presi- 
 dency. He devoted six paragraphs of that speech to the 
 Sherman Law, and that one of those paragraphs which 
 purported to comprehensively state what his administra- 
 tion had done toward enforcing that statute was as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "I think I may affirm without contradiction, that the 
 prosecution of all persons reported to the Department of 
 Justice to have violated the antitrust law, has been car- 
 ried on in this administration without fear or favor ; and 
 that everyone who has violated it, no matter how prom- 
 inent or how great his influence, has been brought before 
 the bar of the court, either in civil or criminal suit, to 
 answer the charge." 
 
 When President Taft wrote that paragraph into his 
 speech of acceptance his character had radically changed 
 from what it was when he was a judge; but when he 
 read that speech to Senator Root and the other members 
 of the notification committee, it must have been difficult 
 for him to avoid a blush, and for everybody who heard 
 it, to avoid a gasp. 
 
 There is one substantive section of the Sherman Law, 
 which the administration of President Taft has never 
 made the slightest effort to enforce against anybody. 
 That is Section 6; which is as follows : — 
 
 "Sec. 6. Any property owned under any contract or 
 by any combination, or pursuant to any conspiracy (and 
 
26 
 
 being the subject thereof) mentioned in section one of 
 this act, and being in the course of transportation from 
 one State to another, or to a foreign country, shall be 
 forfeited to the United States, and may be seized and 
 condemned by like proceedings as those provided by law 
 for the forfeiture, seizure and condemnation of prop- 
 erty imported into the United States contrary to law." 
 
 This Section 6, originated with a very great constitu- 
 tional lawyer, Senator Edmunds of Vermont, the chair- 
 man of the Judiciary Committee of the United States Sen- 
 ate, when the bill which afterward became the Sherman 
 Law, was being framed by that Committee in the exact 
 words in which it was passed by both houses of Congress, 
 and approved by President Harrison. There is no reason 
 whatever upon which to base any denial or even any 
 doubt of the constitutionality of that section. The only 
 objection which anybody can make to that section would 
 have to be based upon the fact that if enforced, it would 
 work most effectively to divert men and corporations 
 from violating Section 1 of the statute. President T'aft 
 has understood that section for many years, for he wrote 
 about it when he was a judge, delivering the opinion of 
 the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in the 
 case of the United States v. Addyston Pipe & Steel Co., 
 et al. 85 Fed. Rep. 301, 1898; and what he there wrote 
 about it, was exactly as follows: 
 
 "The sixth section of the Anti-Trust Act, after pro- 
 viding that property owned and in transportation from 
 one state to another, or to a foreign country, under a 
 contract inhibited by the act "shall be forfeited to the 
 United States", continues "and may be seized and con- 
 demned by like proceedings as those provided by law for 
 the forfeiture, seizure and condemnation of property im- 
 ported into the United States contrary to law". This 
 requires a like procedure to that prescribed in sections 
 3309-3391, Eev. St., and involves a trial by jury." 
 
27 
 
 On February 24, 1911, Attorney General Wickersham 
 wrote a letter to me, the only permanently important 
 part of which was as follows : 
 
 "The forfeiture section (Sec. 6) of the Sherman act 
 has never been before the Supreme Court, and in view 
 of the trend of decisions in that court, I have great doubt 
 whether they will sustain it. For that reason I have hesi- 
 tated to resort to it when the ordinary processes of a 
 court of equity were adequate to accomplish a purpose in 
 view. No doubt resort will have to be made to that sec- 
 tion at some time. ' ' 
 
 This letter from Attorney General Wickersham to 
 myself, implies that he did not feel bound to do any- 
 thing toward enforcing Section 6 of the Sherman Law, 
 though he entertained the opinion that resort would have 
 to be made to that section at some future time; which, 
 being interpreted, appears to mean that it was the policy 
 of the Taft administration, relevant to the Sherman Law, 
 to enforce or not enforce, its various sections, according 
 to circumstances, as circumstances might from time to 
 time arise. The doubt expressed by the Attorney Gen- 
 eral, that the Supreme Court would sustain Section 6 of 
 that statute, has no known foundation, and is inconsist- 
 ent with the high authority of the author of the section, 
 and is also inconsistent with the fact that similar statutes 
 relevant to the forfeiture, seizure and condemnation of 
 property imported into the United States contrary to law, 
 have been in force and enforced throughout the history 
 of our nation, and have never been held to be uncon- 
 stitutional or otherwise invalid. 
 
 When William H. Taft took the presidential oath of 
 office, he did solemnly swear to faithfully execute the 
 office of President of the United States; and he knew, 
 or at least ought to have known, that Section 3 of Article 
 II of the Constitution of the United States, expressly 
 provides that the President "shall take care that the 
 laws be faithfully executed." 
 
28 
 
 This pamphlet shows, beyond all possibility of de- 
 nial or doubt, that President Taft has not taken care, 
 that the Sherman Law be faithfully executed; and that 
 on the contrary, he has not done anything toward exe- 
 cuting any section of that law against more than five per 
 cent of its violators, and has not done anything what- 
 ever toward executing Section 6 of that law, against 
 even one of the thousands of corporations which have 
 incurred the forfeitures prescribed by that section. 
 
 The historical fact is, and is undeniable, that Presi- 
 dent Taft, in order to induce the common people to vote 
 for his reelection, stated, in his acceptance speech of 
 August 1, 1912, that everyone who has violated the Sher- 
 man Law, no matter how prominent or how great his in- 
 fluence, has been brought before the bar of the Court, 
 either in civil or criminal suit, to answer the charge. 
 And the fact is equally undeniable, that President Taft, 
 in order to induce the great industrial corporations to 
 support him for reelection, has never endeavored to 
 execute the full force of the Sherman Law against, even 
 one of them, and has never taken a single step toward 
 enforcing any portion of that law, against more than 
 one-twentieth of their number. 
 
 Park Row Building, Albert H. Walker, 
 
 Manhattan, New York, 
 September 11, 1912. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 The foregoing pages are devoted to destructive criti- 
 cism. Eeaders may properly expect the critic to add 
 to his work, by stating exactly how the Sherman Law 
 might have been effectively executed during the adminis- 
 tration of President Taft. I reply that that adminis- 
 tration could have obtained from Federal Grand Juries, 
 five hundred indictments, for violations of Sections 1, 2 
 and 3 of the Sherman Law; and ought to have begun a 
 thousand actions in equity, under Section 4, of that stat- 
 ute ; and ought to have prosecuted its Section 6, by pro- 
 ceedings to forfeit, to the United States, the property 
 outlawed by that Section, in five hundred cases more. 
 Attorney G-eneral Wickersham could have done all that 
 work, with the help of the eighty United States District 
 Attorneys who are constantly subject to his orders, and 
 with the special assistance of a few able and earnest 
 lawyers, devoting their whole time to Sherman Law 
 cases. Congress would have appropriated all the money 
 President Taft would ask for, to enable the Attorney 
 General to pay whatever expenses would be caused by 
 such really earnest work. But President Taft never 
 asked for any such appropriation ; and he never engaged 
 in any really strenuous campaign to enforce the Sherman 
 Law against its violators. No law can be truly said to 
 have failed until it has been tried. And the Sherman 
 Law was never really tried, by the administration of 
 President Taft. 
 
 A. H. W. 
 
PRESIDENT TAFT 
 
 AND 
 
 THE RAILROADS 
 
 A HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT H. WALKER 
 
 *3 ' 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 OP 
 
 THE HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SHERMAN LAW 
 
 E.Y, 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 This pamphlet is Number 3 of a series of historical 
 sketches of the administration of President Taft, which 
 I am writing and publishing. The first number of the 
 series was published August 20, 1912, and attended to 
 the three most noteworthy transactions of the President 
 during the first ten months of his administration. Those 
 transactions were the selection of the Taft cabinet, and 
 the Tariff Law of 1909, and the Grlavis case. The second 
 number was published September 11, 1912, and was de- 
 voted to what President Taft has done and what he has 
 omitted to do, relevant to enforcing the Sherman Law 
 against industrial combinations. This pamphlet attends 
 to the actions and omissions of the President, in respect 
 of enforcing the Sherman Law against combinations of 
 interstate Railroad Companies. Early in October, the 
 fourth part of the series will be published, and will 
 attend to the Taft bill of 1911, to regulate commerce 
 with Canada, and which bill was promoted by him under 
 the name of "reciprocity". This number brings its 
 history down to July 1, 1912, that being the latest date 
 to which the available public records reach, and little or 
 nothing relevant thereto having been done by the Taft 
 administration since that date. 
 
 A. H. W. 
 Park Row Building, 
 
 Manhattan, New York. 
 September 21, 1912. i 
 
SHERMAN LAW RAILROAD CASES 
 
 Tbansferked pbom Roosevelt to Taft. 
 
 Pour cases which had been brought by the United 
 States against railroad combinations for violation of 
 the Sherman Law, were pending when President Taft 
 succeeded President Roosevelt on March 4, 1909. Dur- 
 ing the first three years and four months of the Taft 
 administration, those four cases had the following his- 
 tories, respectively. 
 
 United States v. Terminal Railroad Association of St. 
 Louis et al. This is an action in equity, begun in the 
 United States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of 
 Missouri, on November 25, 1905, under Section 4 of the 
 Sherman Law, against thirty-eight defendants. The 
 principal defendant, is the Terminal Railroad Associa- 
 tion of St. Louis, which is a Missouri corporation, and 
 which I will hereafter designate as the Terminal Com- 
 pany. When the suit was brought, all the stock of the 
 Terminal Company was owned by the fourteen defendant 
 railroad companies ; the railroads of some of which were 
 located entirely west of the Mississippi River, with their 
 eastern termini at St. Louis, Missouri, while the rail- 
 roads of the others of which, were located entirely east 
 of the Mississippi River, with their western termini at 
 East St. Louis, Illinois. At that time, the Terminal 
 Company owned the stock of the Union Railway & Tran- 
 sit Company of St. Louis and East St. Louis; and the 
 stock of the Terminal Railroad Company of St. Louis 
 and East St. Louis; and the stock of the Union Depot 
 Company of St. Louis ; and the stock of the Tunnel Rail- 
 road Company of St. Louis; and the stock of the St. 
 Louis Bridge Company; and the stock of the St. Louis 
 
Merchants' Bridge, Terminal Railway Company; and 
 the stock of the St. Louis Merchant's Bridge Company; 
 and the stock of the St. Louis Bridge Company ; and the 
 stock of the Wiggins Ferry Company. It resulted from 
 this combination of ownership, that the fourteen railway 
 companies, through the Terminal Company, had joint 
 control of every means of transporting freight or 
 passengers between the western termini at East St. 
 Louis, of railroads located east of the Mississippi River, 
 and the western termini at St. Louis, of railroads located 
 west of the Mississippi River. 
 
 The question in the case, was whether that joint con- 
 trol was a combination in restraint of interstate com- 
 merce, and therefore violative of Section 1 of the Sher- 
 man Law. The case was heard by the four circuit 
 judges for the Eighth Circuit, sitting together as the 
 Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. 
 Those judges were equally divided in opinion ; two hold- 
 ing that the question in the case ought to be answered 
 in the affirmative, and two holding that it ought to be 
 answered in the negative. It ultimately resulted from 
 this equal division of opinion, that the Court dismissed 
 the case without filing an opinion. From the decree of 
 dismissal, the United States appealed to the Supreme 
 Court, and the case was decided in that tribunal on April 
 22, 1912. That Court unanimously decided the question 
 in the case in the affirmative ; and remanded the case to 
 the lower Court, with directions to enter a decree, provid- 
 ing that the terminal properties and facilities of the 
 Terminal Company, should no longer be subject to the 
 exclusive control of the fourteen railroad companies 
 which owned the stock of the Terminal Company, but 
 should be permitted to be used by any other existing or 
 future railroad company, under reasonable regulations 
 and upon reasonable terms 
 
United States v. Beading Company, et al. This is 
 an action, in equity, which was brought June 12, 1907, 
 under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Penn- 
 sylvania, against twenty-five corporations. 
 
 The defendants included the Beading Company, 
 which is a "holding" company not nominally engaged in 
 any business, except to own and control all the stock of 
 the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company, and also 
 all the stock of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & 
 Iron Company, both of which corporations were also 
 defendants in the case ; and except also, to own and con- 
 trol a small majority of the stock of the Central Railroad 
 Company of New Jersey. And the defendants also includ- 
 ed the Delaware, Lackawanna & "Western Railroad Com- 
 pany, which was engaged in the double business of min- 
 ing anthracite coal from its own coal mines, and in trans- 
 porting that coal from Pennsylvania across New Jersey 
 to tidewater at New York Harbor, and there selling that 
 coal. The defendants also included the Lehigh Valley 
 Railroad Company, and the Central Railroad Company 
 of New Jersey, and the Erie Railroad Company, and the 
 New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, 
 each of which was engaged in transporting anthracite 
 coal in interstate commerce, as a common carrier. The 
 defendants also included fifteen coal companies which 
 were engaged in mining anthracite coal, and nearly or 
 quite all of the stock of each of five of which was owned 
 by one or another of the four last mentioned railroad 
 companies; while ten of which were independent coal 
 companies, mining their own coal from their own mines, 
 and selling it to the coal companies which were owned 
 by the railroad companies; except so far as they sold 
 it to the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Com- 
 pany ; or to the Philadelphia & Reading Coal& Iron Com- 
 
pany. Tie defendants also included the Temple 
 Iron Company, which was engaged in mining anthracite 
 coal from its own mines, and all the stock of which was 
 owned by the Beading Company, the Central Railroad 
 Company of New Jersey, the Lehigh Valley Railroad 
 Company, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Rail- 
 road Company, the Erie Railroad Company and the New 
 York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, in 
 varying proportions. And finally, the defendants in- 
 cluded the Mercantile Trust Company, for a technical 
 reason of no public interest. 
 
 Voluminous evidence having been taken, the case was 
 argued in 1910, by twenty-four lawyers, before all three 
 of the United States circuit judges for the Third Circuit,, 
 sitting together to constitute the Circuit Court of the' 
 United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 
 in Philadelphia. Those judges were Gray, Buffington 
 and Lanning. Each of them wrote a separate opinion 
 in the case, and filed it on December 8, 1910 ; and all three 
 of those opinions are printed on pages 430 to 497 inclu- 
 sive, of Volume 183 of the Federal Reporter. As no 
 two of those opinions agreed in all respects, no one of 
 them stated the entire opinion of the court. But inas- 
 much as all three of the judges agreed on three of the 
 five fundamental questions in case, and as one set of 
 two of them agreed on the fourth question in the case, 
 and another set of two of them agreed on the fifth ques- 
 tion in the case ; the conclusion of the court is separately 
 printed under the title "Per Curiam" on page 497 of 
 Volume 183 of the Federal Reporter. 
 
 The first fundamental question in the case was 
 whether the Sherman Law was violated by the acquisi- 
 tion, in 1898, by the Erie Railroad Company, of substan- 
 tially all the capital stock of the New York, Susquehanna 
 & Western Railroad Company. The court unanimously 
 
decided this question in the negative, on the ground that 
 that acquisition did not constitute or cause any restraint 
 of interstate trade or commerce, or any monopolizing 
 thereof. 
 
 The second fundamental question in the case, was 
 whether the Sherman Law was violated by the acquisi- 
 tion, in 1901, by the Reading Company of a small major- 
 ity of the capital stock of the Central Railroad Company 
 of New Jersey. The court unanimously decided this 
 question in the negative, on the ground that that acquisi- 
 tion did not constitute or cause any restraint or monopo- 
 lizing of interstate trade or commerce. 
 
 The third fundamental question in the case, was 
 whether the evidence proved a general combination or 
 conspiracy in restraint of interstate trade or commerce 
 among all the defendants, or at least among most of 
 them. The court unanimously decided this question in 
 the negative, on the ground that most of the defendants 
 had never had any dealings or understandings what- 
 ever with more than a few of the other defendants, and 
 that such combinations in restraint of interstate trade 
 or commerce as may have existed between a few sets 
 of a few of the defendants, respectively, were independ- 
 ent combinations and did not constitute any general com- 
 bination or conspiracy among all the defendants. 
 
 The fourth fundamental question in the case, was 
 whether a contract of sale, by one of the independent 
 coal companies, to one of the coal companies which was 
 controlled by one of the railroad companies, of the entire 
 product of that independent coal company, for sixty-five 
 per cent of the market price of such coal on the shores 
 of New York Harbor, was violative of the Sherman Law 
 as being in restraint of interstate trade or commerce; 
 Chief Judge Gray and Judge Lanning held the negative 
 of this question, while Judge Buffington held that it ought 
 to be decided in the affirmative. The decision of the 
 
Court was therefore in the negative, and was mainly 
 based upon the fact that the coal thus sold was delivered 
 and paid for at the mines in Pennsylvania, and that 
 therefore the transaction was not interstate in its char- 
 acter, and was therefore not violative of the Sherman 
 Law. Judge Buffington dissented from this view, on the 
 ground that all of the independent coal company defend- 
 ants, had, respectively, made such contracts of sale with 
 all of the dependent coal companies, respectively, or with 
 the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Com- 
 pany. He held that the fact that all those contracts 
 were substantially alike in their terms, and exactly alike 
 in respect of the sixty-five per cent paid to the independ- 
 ent coal companies, proved a combination between all 
 the parties to all the contracts. He also held that the 
 contracts were really made to restrain commerce in 
 coal between Pennsylvania and New Jersey or New York ; 
 though they were performed in Pennsylvania by the de- 
 livery of the coal by the independent, coal companies to 
 the dependent coal companies in that state, and also 
 by the payment for that coal in that state. 
 
 The fifth fundamental question in the case, was whe- 
 ther the Sherman Law had been violated by the joint 
 ownership of the stock of the Temple Iron Company by 
 the Eeading Company, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Com- 
 pany, the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, 
 the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Com- 
 pany, the Erie Railroad Company and the New York, 
 Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, or had been 
 violated by anything done by the Temple Iron Company 
 while its stock was thus jointly owned. Chief Judge 
 Gray and Judge Buffington held that this question ought 
 to be answered in the affirmative, in so far as the Temple 
 Iron Company had prevented the building of a new 
 railroad from one of the anthracite coal fields in Penn- 
 sylvania to tide water at New York Harbor, which pre\, 
 
vention was accomplished by buying out the parties who 
 would otherwise have built that railroad, including the 
 purchase of eight collieries which were to furnish freight 
 to the new railroad, and including the railroad charter 
 and project. That transaction was ancient history in 
 1910; and the finding by Judges Gray and Buffington 
 that it was violative of the Sherman Law, resulted in 
 nothing except an injunction prohibiting the Temple 
 Iron Company and the owners of its stock from there- 
 after combining to prevent the building of a new rail- 
 road from the anthracite coal fields in Pennsylvania into 
 some other state. 
 
 Judge Lanning dissented from the view of Judges 
 Gray and Buffington, on this fifth point in the case, on 
 the ground that the evidence did not show that the new 
 railroad would have been built, even if the Temple Iron 
 Company had not interfered with the scheme, by pur- 
 chasing it and suppressing it. But whether he was right 
 or was wrong in entertaining that opinion; it is certain 
 that the decision of the court on this fifth fundamental 
 question, is adapted to restrain the Temple Iron Com- 
 pany, and the corporations which own its stock, from 
 hereafter suppressing any railroad enterprise which may 
 hereafter develop, with a view to build a new railroad 
 from the anthracite coal fields in Pennsylvania, to be 
 used in carrying coal therefrom, into some other state 
 or states. 
 
 Thus it appears that this complicated case resulted in 
 favor of the defendants on every point, except in enjoin- 
 ing the Temple Iron Company and the owners of its stock, 
 from hereafter restraining interstate trade or commerce 
 in coal, by the particular means of buying up and sup- 
 pressing new railroad projects for engaging in that busi- 
 ness. 
 
 This case was taken from the Circuit Court to the 
 Supreme Court, by cross appeals of the United States 
 
8 : 
 
 arid of the defendants, and was argued in the higher 
 tribunal, many months ago. It will probably be decided 
 in October, 1912 ; but that decision may have no public 
 importance, except certainly in respect of the question of 
 the legality of the sixty-five per cent contracts. It is 
 to be devoutly hoped, that those contracts will be held 
 to be contrary to the Sherman Law. Otherwise, tbis 
 long and complicated litigation will have been quite dis- 
 appointing to justice; and also quite useless to the 
 people, except in a future contingency, which is not like- 
 ly to happen, and which will probably do no good to the 
 public, even if it does occur. 
 
 United States v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. et al. 
 This is an action in equity, under Section 4 of the Sher- 
 man Law, which was begun in the United States Circuit 
 Court for the District of Utah, on February 1, 1908. The 
 corporations and persons accused by the United States 
 of having violated Section 1 of the Sherman Law in this 
 case, were the following: The Union Pacific Railroad 
 Company; the Southern Pacific Company; the Oregon 
 Short Line Railroad Company; the Oregon Railroad & 
 Navigation Company; the San Pedro, Los Angeles & 
 Salt Lake Railroad Company; the Atchison, Topeka & 
 Santa Fe Railway Company; the Northern Pacific Rail- 
 way Company; the Great Northern Railway Company; 
 the Farmers Loan & Trust Company ; Edward H. Harri- 
 man; Jacob H. Schiff; Otto H. Kahn; James Stillman, 
 Henry H. Rogers, Henry C. Frick, and William A. Clark. 
 
 Much evidence having been taken, this case was 
 argued early in 1911, by five lawyers, orally, and by three 
 others in print, before all four of the United States cir- 
 cuit judges for the Eighth Circuit, sitting together to 
 constitute the Circuit Court of the United States for the 
 District of Utah. Those Judges were Sanborn, Van 
 Devanter, Hook and Adams. The opinion of the Court 
 was delivered by Judge Adams on June 23, 1911, and 
 
was concurred in by Judges Sanborn and Van Devanter* 
 Judge Hook also concurred with the other judges relev-t 
 ant to all the questions in the case except one, which 
 however, was much the most important question in the 
 case, and which was as follows : 
 
 Did the acquisition in 1901, by the Union Pacific Rail- 
 road Company, of a majority of the capital stock of the 
 Southern Pacific Company, constitute or cause such a 
 restraint or monopolization of interstate commerce, as 
 is prohibited by Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Law. 
 Three of the four judges of the Court held that this ques- 
 tion must be answered in the negative; whereas Judge 
 Hook held that it ought to be answered in the affirmative. 
 All the judges held that the question whether the control 
 of the Southern Pacific Company, and its transportation 
 lines, by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, constituted 
 a restraint of commerce, depended upon the question 
 whether it constituted a restraint of mutual competition 
 between those corporations; and that question depended 
 upon the question whether prior to 1901, there was any 
 mutual competition between them to restrain. On this 
 question of fact, hundreds of witnesses testified; and 
 nearly all of them testified that, using the word competi- 
 tion as business men generally understand and use it, 
 there was active, vigorous and substantial competition 
 between the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific, until 
 the former obtained control of the latter. 
 
 Concisely stated, the situation was this: In 1901, 
 when the Union Pacific purchased the Southern Pacific 
 stock, the Union Pacific had a line of railroad running 
 from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Cheyenne, Wyoming; and 
 another line running from Kansas City, Missouri, to 
 Cheyenne, Wyoming; and another line from Cheyenne to 
 Ogden, Utah; and another line through Ogden to Port^ 
 land, Oregon; and a line of steamers from Portland to 
 San Francisco, California ; and another line of steamers 
 
10 
 
 from those Pacific ports, to ports in eastern Asia. At 
 the Missouri River, the Union Pacific had many connec- 
 tions with the valley of the great lakes, and with the 
 Mississippi Valley, and with the Atlantic coast, by means 
 of the railroads of other companies, which were directly 
 interested in co-operating with the Union Pacific lines, 
 rather than with the lines of the Southern Pacific. In 
 1901, also, the Southern Pacific had a steamship line 
 from New York to New Orleans; and had a railroad 
 running from New Orleans through Louisiana, Texas, 
 New Mexico, Arizona and California, to Portland 
 Oregon; and had a railroad from San Francisco, Cali- 
 fornia, to Ogden, Utah; and also had a steamship line 
 from San Francisco to Panama, and another steamship 
 line, across the Pacific Ocean, to Asiatic ports. The 
 Southern Pacific also had at New Orleans, eastward con- 
 nections by the railroads of other companies, which were 
 directly interested in co-operating with the Southern 
 Pacific lines, rather than with the lines of the Union 
 Pacific Co. 
 
 The most important competition between the two 
 companies was for business between the Atlantic coast 
 and the Pacific coast; though there was also active com- 
 petition between them for business which passed between 
 the Pacific coast and the valley of the Mississippi. 
 
 Prior to 1901, the two companies were distinct in con- 
 trol, management and operation, with separate directors, 
 ofiicers, and agents. But since the acquirement by the 
 Union Pacific Railroad Company, of control of all the 
 Southern Pacific property; both systems of transporta- 
 tion lines have had the same set of officers, and agents ; 
 and both systems have been managed as one system of 
 transportation, consisting of many parts without any 
 competition among them. 
 
 The majority of the Court held that the Sherman Law 
 was not violated by the union of these two systems, and 
 
11 
 
 any consequent suppression of competition in ocean to 
 ocean traffic which resulted therefrom; because such 
 traffic could not be carried all the way between its 
 ppints of origin and its points of destination, on the 
 Union Pacific road; and because the only competition 
 between the two companies, the suppression of which 
 would violate the Sherman Law, in the opinion of that 
 majority, would be competition relevant to traffic which 
 ■could pass from its points of origin to its points of des- 
 tination, entirely over one or more of the Union Pacific 
 lines, or entirely over one or more of the Southern 
 Pacific lines, as the party paying for the transportation 
 might himself select. 
 
 Having thus narrowed the field of competition to sup- 
 press which, would violate the Sherman Law, the ma- 
 jority of the Court minimized the matter still further, 
 by holding that inasmuch as that narrowed field of com- 
 petition amounted to only about one per cent of the total 
 state and interstate business of the Union Pacific and 
 Southern Pacific Companies, it was too small for the 
 •Court to recognize, being properly referable to the class 
 de minimis. On this point the majority of the judges 
 seemed not to have been duly impressed with the fact 
 that one per cent of the state and interstate earnings 
 of the Union Pacific Eailroad Company and of the Sou- 
 thern Pacific Company, amounts to more than $2,000,000 
 each year; and that to restrain commerce of that amount 
 is not a small matter, and cannot logically be excluded 
 from the operation of the Sherman Law, on the ground 
 -that it is too minute to be punished or even prevented. 
 
 The Taft administration met with a complete defeat 
 in this Union Pacific case in the Circuit Court ; but that 
 defeat was not due to any fault of the Taft administra- 
 tion. Moreover, that administration properly and 
 promptly carried the case by an appeal to the Supreme 
 ■Court of the United States, and urged it to an early 
 
12 
 
 argument in that tribunal. The case was argued there, 
 near the end of 1911, and will probably be decided by 
 that Court in October or November, 1912. That decision 
 will be vastly important to the railroad companies and 
 to the people of the United States; for it will decide 
 whether the control of the Southern Pacific Company by 
 the Union Pacific Eailroad Company is lawful or unlaw- 
 ful; and will thereby decide whether the consolidation 
 of great railroad systems which has been going forward 
 in this country for many years, is to be confirmed and 
 extended, or is to be checked and undone. 
 
 United States v. New York, New Haven & Hartford 
 R. B. Co., et al. This was an action in equity, begun 
 May 22, 1908, in the United States Circuit Court for 
 the District of Massachusetts, under Section 4 of the 
 Sherman Law, against the New York, New Haven & Hart- 
 ford Eailroad Co., the Boston & Maine Railroad Co., the 
 Consolidated Railway Co., and the Providence Securi- 
 ties Co. The bill was based upon the fact that the New 
 York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company had 
 acquired more than half the stock of the Boston &) Maine 
 Railroad Company; and had absorbed the control of the 
 Consolidated Railway Company, (which corporation con- 
 trolled many electric railroads in New England) and, 
 through the Providence Securities Company, and other- 
 wise, had acquired the possession and management of 
 enough additional steam and electric railroads to amount 
 to the confederation, under one management, of nearly all 
 the steam railroads and many of the electric railroads in 
 Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island 
 and Connecticut. The case was much like that of the 
 United States v. the Union Pacific Railroad et al, which 
 had been begun a few weeks earlier, and the history of 
 which has been just stated in this pamphlet. Neverthe- 
 less, on June 26, 1909, this New York, New Haven & 
 Hartford case was dismissed from the Court upon mo- 
 
13 
 
 tion of the United States. In his report for the year 1909, 
 Attorney General Wickersham stated that that dismissal 
 was directed by him, after a careful investigation had 
 satisfied him that the facts did not disclose any viola- 
 tion of the Sherman Law. But Attorney General Bona- 
 parte entertained a contrary opinion of those facts, when 
 he began the action in May, 1908; and Attorney General 
 Wickersham was hardly justified in abandoning the case 
 without submitting all the facts to the Court. President 
 Taft said, in his speech of August 1, 1912, accepting his 
 nomination for the Presidency, that "the prosecution of 
 all persons reported to the Department of Justice to have 
 violated the anti-trust law, has been carried on in this ad- 
 ministration without fear or favor". But the Roosevelt 
 administration had "reported" with great formality and 
 particularity, in the petition of the United States in this 
 New York, New Haven & Hartford case, that four great 
 corporations had violated the anti-trust law by confeder- 
 ating together; and the Taft administration, instead of 
 carrying on any prosecution of the corporations thus 
 "reported", abandoned that case without doing anything 
 whatever to prosecute it. Thus encouraged, the New 
 York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company has 
 now acquired control of the Rutland Railroad Company, 
 which runs lengthwise through Vermont, and is reaching 
 out after the Boston, Revere Beach & Maine Railroad 
 Company, in Massachusetts. 
 
 SHERMAN LAW RAILROAD CASES 
 Begun During Taft's Administration. 
 
 Only two actions of any kind have ever been begun 
 during Taft's administration against railroad companies, 
 for violation of the Sherman Law. Those two cases 
 were the following : 
 
14 
 
 United States v. Missouri Pacific R. R. Co., et al. This 
 was an action in equity, begun May 31, 1910, in the United 
 States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, 
 against twenty-five railroad companies, under Section 4 
 of the Sherman Law, for the temporary purpose of get- 
 ting a preliminary injunction to prevent the defendants 
 from executing a plan, to which they had agreed, to ad- 
 vance on June 1, 1910, the freight rates in the western 
 trunk-line territory. Such a preliminary injunction was 
 immediately granted ; and thereupon the twenty-five rail- 
 road companies, after consultation with President Taft, 
 agreed to withdraw their proposed advances in freight 
 rates, with the understanding that he would recommend 
 Congress to provide for a reference to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission of the question whether those advances 
 should be allowed. Congress did make such a provision 
 in a statute which President Taft approved, on June 18, 
 1910. Thereupon, this Sherman Law case 'against the 
 twenty-five railroad companies was withdrawn by the 
 Taft administration; and thereafter the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission made an order, in pursuance of the 
 statute of June 18, 1910, prohibiting the advances in 
 freight rates which the twenty-five railroads had been 
 temporarily enjoined from making. 
 
 United States v. Lake Shore £ Michigan Southern 
 Railway Company, et al. This is an action in equity, 
 under Section 4 of the Sherman Law, which was begun 
 August 4, 1911, in the United States Circuit Court for 
 the Northern District of Ohio, against the Lake Shore Sc 
 Michigan Southern Eailway Company, the Chesapeake 
 & Ohio Railroad Company, and several other railroad 
 companies. The case is based upon the claim of the 
 United States, that the defendants have subjected their 
 railroads to one control, by means of a combination arid 
 conspiracy, resulting in restraint of interstate commerce 
 
15 
 
 •over those railroads. The case has been argued, but has 
 not yet been decided. 
 
 A review of the foregoing six cases will show that 
 only two of them have yet resulted in preventing any per- 
 son or corporation from violating the Sherman Law; 
 though it is possible that three others of them will have 
 that operation, at some future time. The fewness of the 
 railroad Sherman Law cases which have been pending 
 during the administration of President Taft, indicates 
 that the railroad companies of the United States are re- 
 markably law abiding corporations; unless President 
 Taft was wrong in saying in his speech of August 1, 
 1912, accepting his nomination for the Presidency, "that 
 everyone who has violated the anti-trust law, no matter 
 how prominent or how great his influence, has been 
 brought before the bar of the Court, either in civil or 
 criminal suits, to answer the charge." But the fact is 
 that President Taft was entirely wrong in making that 
 statement, so far as it reiers to industrial corporations, 
 as the second pamphlet of the present series has already 
 shown. And I shall now show that he was entirely wrong, 
 so far as his statement refers to railroad corporations; 
 though this pamphlet must be too small to explain all 
 of the railroad combinations, violative of the Sherman 
 Law, which have been doing business, throughout Presi- 
 dent Taft's administration, without being prosecuted 
 therefor. 
 
 But there is one such combination, which I have my- 
 self investigated and can explain, and relevant to which 
 I can also set forth the neglect of the Taft administration. 
 That is the present and long existing combination be- 
 tween eight railroad companies which transport, from 
 the anthracite coal regions in Pennsylvania to other 
 
16 
 
 states, substantially all the anthracite coal which is thus- 
 transported. 
 
 Those eight railroad companies, in the order of the- 
 magnitude of their anthracite coal transportation busi- 
 ness, are the following : the Philadelphia & Beading Rail- 
 way Company; the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company;, 
 the Delaware, Lackawanna & "Western Railroad Com- 
 pany ; the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey ; the 
 Erie Railroad Company; the Delaware & Hudson Com- 
 pany ; the Pennsylvania Railroad Company ; and the New 
 York, Ontario & "Western Railway Company. 
 
 Only five of these eight railroad corporations, are de- 
 fendants iri the case of the United States v. the Read- 
 ing Company, et al, which is explained on pages 3, 4, 5, 
 6, 7 and 8 of this pamphlet. That case is based upon the 
 contention that those five corporations are chargeable 
 with several illegal combinations with twenty other cor- 
 porations, not including the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 Company, the Delaware & Hudson Company, or the 
 New York, Ontario & Western Railroad Company. But 
 the illegal combinations charged in that case, do not in- 
 clude the illegal combination which I am now about to 
 explain, and which relates entirely to uniform and ex- 
 cessive charges, made by all of the eight railroad com- 
 panies, for transporting anthracite coal from Pennsyl- 
 vania, into some other state or states. 
 
 This pamphlet can not be long enough to set forth all 
 those uniform and excessive charges, and must be confined 
 to such of them as have been made for transporting an- 
 thracite coal from the mines in Pennsylvania to tidewater 
 on the New Jersey shore of the harbor of New York. The 
 distances over which that transportation occurred, varied 
 among the eight railroads, but is about 150 miles, in each 
 case. The charges made by the eight railroads for trans- 
 porting anthracite coal from the mines to New York 
 
17 
 
 harbor, have not always been absolutely identical; but 
 they have been nearly identical, ever since the nineteenth 
 •century. They have, during that long time, been ap- 
 proximately $1.55 per ton on prepared sizes of coal 
 (larger than pea coal), and $1.40 on pea coal, and $1.20 
 on buckwheat coal, and $1.13 on all sizes smaller than 
 buckwheat ; though some of the eight railroad companies 
 charged a few cents more than these rates, on account of 
 "transporting the coal over somewhat longer distances 
 than some others of the eight railroad companies. 
 
 I have investigated, by three different methods, the 
 question of the excessiveness of these charges, with the 
 result of reaching the conclusion by each method, that 
 each of these rates is more than double what it ought to 
 be; and that rates ranging from seventy-five cents per 
 ton on prepared sizes, down to fifty cents per ton on all 
 sizes smaller than buckwheat, would be abundantly re- 
 munerative to each of the eight railroad companies which 
 divide between themselves the entire business of trans- 
 porting anthracite coal from Pennsylvania into other 
 states. This pamphlet must be too short to contain de- 
 tailed statements of the evidence and of the calculations 
 which have carried me to this conclusion ; but I have long 
 been expressing to the Department of Justice my ability 
 and my willingness, to submit that evidence and those 
 calculations to the consideration of the Attorney General, 
 in support of my suggestions that the eight anthracite 
 coal carrying railroad companies ought to be prosecuted, 
 as a combination violative of the Sherman Law, by means 
 of uniform and excessive charges for transporting an- 
 thracite coal. 
 
 In the spring of 1910, I wrote three letters to Attor- 
 ney General Wickersham, calling his attention to what I 
 claimed to be violations of Federal law, which had been 
 participated in by the Philadelphia & Reading Railway 
 
18 
 
 Company, and which comprised excessive charges for 
 transporting anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to other 
 states. And on May 3, 1910, I sent to President Taft 
 himself, a still more elaborate communication, to the* 
 same effect. 
 
 On May 6, 1910, 1 received a letter from Mr: William 
 S. Kenyon, who was then assistant to the Attorney Gen- 
 eral, saying that my last letter to the Attorney Gen- 
 eral, had been referred to him for consideration. 
 Still later in that month, Mr. Kenyon came to- 
 my office and conferred with me at considerable 
 length, upon the subject of railroad charges for 
 transportation of anthracite coal. When he went 
 away he told me that my views of the matter 
 appeared to him to be correct, and that the Government 
 ought to intervene and correct those charges, and that 
 it would do so if he could have his way about it. On 
 July 13, 1910, Mr. Kenyon wrote me a letter saying that 
 he was compelled, on the following day, to go to Chicago 
 to take part in the Beef Trust investigation, which would 
 
 take all his time for at least six weeks, and make it un- 
 it * 
 
 possible for him to give any attention to the anthracite 
 coal matter till after that time ; but that he hoped then 
 to be able to put a special man on the coal investigation, 
 or to give it his own personal attention. On September 
 20, 1910, Mr. Kenyon wrote me that his work with the 
 Grand Jury in the Beef Trust case had occupied nine 
 weeks, but that he hoped shortly to get at the question 
 raised by me, with reference to coal carrying railroads. 
 But the multiplicity of his duties in the Department of 
 Justice, turned out to be so great that he was not able 
 to do anything whatever relevant to anthracite coal trans- 
 portation, during the time he continued to be an officer 
 in that Department. That time came to an unexpected 
 end early in 1911, by reason of the death of Senator Dol- 
 
19 
 
 liver of Iowa, and the election of Mr. Kenyon to take his 
 place. 
 
 Thereupon on July 3, 1911, I' ventured to again call 
 the attention of Attorney General Wickersham himself, 
 to the subject of illegal charges for transportation of 
 anthracite coal, which I had previously called to his at- 
 tention in one letter written in March, and in another 
 written in April, and in another written in May, 1910. My 
 letter of July 3, 1911 to Attorney General Wickersham, 
 was composed of the following four paragraphs : 
 
 "During more than a year, I have been studying the 
 anthracite coal business ; and I have today been studying 
 the decision of the United States Circuit Court for the 
 Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in the case of the 
 United States v. the Reading Company, et al, the decision 
 of which case however, I examined soon after it was pro- 
 mulgated." 
 
 "The particular point which I venture to suggest to 
 you today, is that there is a stronger ground for prosecut- 
 ing some of the defendants in that case, for violating 
 the Sherman Law, than any ground upon which that case 
 was based. That stronger ground consists of the fact 
 that some of the defendants in that case, have for years 
 been combined together to charge uniform and grossly 
 extortionate rates for transporting anthracite coal from 
 the coal fields of Pennsylvania, to tidewater in New 
 Jersey, near the city of New York. The rate for do- 
 mestic sizes of anthracite coal has been $1.55 per ton, 
 whereas, I think I can prove that 75 cents per ton would 
 be a liberal compensation for .that service; and I also 
 think I can prove that the grossly extortionate rates 
 which have been uniformly charged for the last ten years, 
 have been thus charged as the result of a combination in 
 restraint of interstate trade, violative of Section 1 of the 
 Sherman Law." 
 
"If you were to begin a new action in equity against 
 "those defendants on the ground I mention, the defendants 
 could not plead any former action as res judicata, for the 
 new action would be based upon a new ground. And 
 the prosecution of such an action would be incomparably 
 less complicated and less expensive, than the prosecution 
 must have been in the case to which I refer, and which as 
 you know, is reported in 183 Federal Reporter, on pages 
 427 to 497, inclusive: I understand that that case has been 
 appealed by you to the Supreme Court, and that it has 
 been set for argument in that tribunal for some time in 
 October, 1911. So far as the decision of that case was 
 favorable to the G-overnment, I do not see how it can ever 
 operate to reduce the price of coal to consumers ; and so 
 far as it was favorable to the defendants, I do not see 
 how a reversal of the decision can be expected." 
 
 "There is not the slightest ground for doubt that some 
 of the defendants in that case have been plundering the 
 people of the United States at least ten million dollars 
 a year, for at least ten years ; and though I know of no 
 way by which that plunder can be practically recovered 
 by those who have paid it, I think I know a way by which 
 its continuance hereafter, can be materially reduced and 
 shortened. ' ' 
 
 On July 11, 1911, the receipt by the Department of 
 Justice of my foregoing letter of July 3, 1911, was ac- 
 knowledged by Mr. Fowler, who had succeeded Mr. Ken- 
 yon as assistant to the Attorney General. I afterward 
 conducted considerable further correspondence with Mr. 
 Fowler relevant to the subject. That correspondence in- 
 cluded a letter written by him to me on July 19, 1911, 
 and another written by him to me on August 18', 1911. 
 But not in either of those letters, nor in any other of the 
 many letters which I have received from the Department 
 
21 
 
 of Justice, was there any suggestion of any error in any 
 of my communications to that Department. I therefore 
 feel justified in assuming that my letter of July 3, 1911, 
 to Attorney General Wickersham, has not been found by 
 the Department of Justice to misstate or overstate the 
 subject which it sets forth. But the Taft administration, 
 has never done anything whatever, toward enforcing the 
 Sherman Law, against the combination which I have ex- 
 plained, of the eight anthracite coal carrying railroad 
 companies. 
 
 • Moreover, the Taft administration is not known and 
 is not believed to have done anything whatever toward 
 investigating those charges of having violated the Sher- 
 man Law, which I carefully formulated in my letter of 
 July 3, 1911, to Attorney General Wickersham, and 
 relevant to which I had given much preliminary infor- 
 mation in writing in the spring of 1910, to the Attorney 
 General and to President Taft himself, and also much 
 oral information to Mr. Kenyon when he called at my 
 office in May, 1910. 
 
 That omission to investigate my charges, can not be 
 accounted for on any theory that they were not taken 
 seriously by the President or by the Department of Jus- 
 tice. For on May 7, 1910, the secretary to the President 
 wrote me, that my elaborate communication of May 3 
 upon the subject, had -been received by him, and would 
 be called to the attention of the President; and though 
 the President never wrote me an autograph letter rel- 
 evant to anthracite coal, I have received many auto- 
 graph letters from him on other subjects, beginning as 
 early as 1898, and continuing as late as 1911. And 
 though Attorney General Wickersham never wrote me 
 an autograph letter relevant to anthracite coal, I have 
 received many such letters from him on other topics. 
 And I have received during the last three years many 
 letters, relevant to my charges against the anthracite 
 
22 
 
 coal roads, from his former assistant, Mr. William S. 
 Kenyon, and from his present assistant, Mr. James A. 
 Fowler. Several of the letters from Mr. Kenyon, and 
 several of those from Mr. Fowler, intimated that my 
 charges would be investigated by the Department of 
 Justice. But Mr. Kenyon was not able to execute his 
 plan in that behalf, during the short time that remained 
 of his connection with that Department; and Mr. Fow- 
 ler's last letters to me indicated that he had not yet done 
 anything about the subject, except to read my communi- 
 cations to the Department, and my History of the Sher- 
 man Law. 
 
 The fact that the eight anthracite coal railroad com- 
 panies have, for many years, been charging and receiv- 
 ing substantially identical rates for transporting coal 
 from the anthracite mines in Pennsylvania, to tide water 
 on New York harbor, is a matter of record, which is 
 well known to everybody acquainted with that subject. 
 The fact that those rates are more than double what 
 they ought to be, is a fact which I have ascertained by 
 careful investigation on three different lines, and which 
 anybody can verify who really desires to learn the 
 truth, and will work long enough to ascertain it, and 
 which the Department of Justice can abundantly prove, 
 by regularly taken evidence, without any real difficulty, 
 and without much expenditure of time. 
 
 And the fact that those uniform and excessive 
 charges have been made and collected by means of a 
 combination in restraint of commerce among the sev- 
 eral states, (which combination is composed of the 
 Philadelphia & Beading Bailway Company, the Lehigh 
 Valley Bailroad Company ; the Delaware, Lackawanna 
 & Western Bailroad Company; the Central Bailroad 
 Company of New Jersey; the Erie Bailroad Company; 
 the Delaware & Hudson Company; the Pennsylvania 
 Bailroad Company; and the New York, Ontario & West- 
 
23 
 
 em Eailway Company) is a fact which is logically es- 
 tablished by the long continued uniformity of those ex- 
 cessive charges, and which can be regularly proved by 
 technical evidence, whenever the Department of Justice 
 earnestly endeavors to accomplish that result. 
 
 I do not believe that the directors or the presidents 
 or other officers of the eight anthracite coal railroad 
 companies, have ever signed, sealed or otherwise exe- 
 cuted, a written contract or conspiracy to restrain com- 
 merce among the several states, in anthracite coal, by 
 means of their uniform and excessive charges for trans- 
 porting such coal from Pennsylvania to other states. 
 Such evidence of conspiracy to violate law, it would be 
 both useless and foolish for the directors or officers of 
 the eight railroad companies to create. Their combina- 
 tion was undoubtedly in the form of a so-called "gen- 
 tlemen's agreement", and there is much reason to be- 
 lieve that the name of the man who managed the mak- 
 ing of that agreement, and who has always seen to its 
 enforcement, can be ascertained and proved by the De- 
 partment of Justice, without any difficulty whatever. 
 
 Every direct or indirect purchaser of anthracite coal 
 for use anywhere in the United States, except Pennsyl- 
 vania, has been stealthily robbed of about eighty cents 
 on every ton of such coal, which he or she has purchased 
 at any time during the twentieth century; and that rob- 
 bery has been perpetrated upon him or her by one or 
 more of the combination of eight anthracite coal carry- 
 ing railroad companies. That robbery has amounted to 
 more than twenty million dollars each year, ever since 
 the beginning of the twentieth century; and has been 
 conducted in the form of a combination to extort exces- 
 sive rates for transporting anthracite coal, in flagrant 
 violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Law. 
 
24 
 
 Those extortions have enormously enriched four of 
 the eight extorting corporations, and have enabled them 
 to pay excessive dividends on their capital stocks, and 
 have thus resulted in enormously increasing the market 
 prices of those stocks. Thus the common stock of the 
 Reading Company (which owns all the stock of the Phila- 
 delphia & Reading Railway Company) has advanced on 
 the Stock Exchange, since the beginning of the twen- 
 tieth century, from 26 per cent of its par value to 172 
 per cent. And the common stock of the Lehigh Valley 
 Railroad Company has likewise advanced from 61 per 
 cent of its par value to 170 per cent. And the stock of 
 the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Com- 
 pany has likewise advanced from 195 per cent of its par 
 value to 550 per cent. And the stock of the Central 
 Railroad Company of New Jersey has likewise advanced 
 from 150 per cent of its par value to 373 per cent. The 
 other four of the eight extorting corporations, have been 
 less extensively enriched by their shares of the extorted 
 money ; because their shares of the anthracite coal trans- 
 portation have been much smaller than the shares of the 
 four railroad companies named in this paragraph. 
 
 I myself have no monetary interest whatever, rele- 
 vant to anthracite coal, or relevant to any of the eight 
 railroad companies which constitute the illegal combina- 
 tion which I have explained in this pamphlet, or relevant 
 to any of the dependent or independent coal companies 
 which I have mentioned therein. Without claiming to' 
 be more altruistic than every gentleman should be pre- 
 sumed to be; I do entertain an intense desire to be in- 
 strumental in putting a stop to the plunder of the people- 
 by the eight anthracite coal railroad companies. I am 
 one of the people myself, and though I have neither 
 bought nor had occasion to buy any coal in recent 
 years, arid do not expect to do so at any time hereafter ; 
 
25 
 
 I realize that coal is absolutely indispensable to many 
 millions of my fellow-citizens, including the poor people 
 in the great cities. Some persons may find it hard to 
 believe that the wealthy men who manage the anthracite 
 coal railroad combination, have really been extorting 
 millions of dollars, in violation of the Sherman Law, 
 from their fellow beings in more lowly life. But that is 
 the melancholy fact, and it will continue to be the mel- 
 ancholy fact until those corporations and their managers 
 are restrained from their wrongdoing by enforcement 
 of law. And some other persons may find it hard to be- 
 lieve that the administration of President Taft has neg- 
 lected to do anything whatever toward any enforcement 
 of the Sherman Law against that combination. But that 
 also is the melancholy fact, and it will probably con- 
 tinue to be the melancholy fact, until the people succeed 
 in electing and inaugurating another and a different 
 President. 
 
 Albert H. Walkeh. 
 Park Row Building, 
 Manhattan, New York, 
 September 21, 1912. 
 
"RECIPROCITY" 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM H. TAFT, 
 
 A HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT H. WALKER 
 AUTHOR 
 
 OF 
 
 THE HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SHERMAN LAW 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This pamphlet is Number 4 of a series of four his- 
 torical sketches of the administration of President Taft, 
 which I am writing and publishing. The first number of 
 the series was published August 20, 1912, and attended 
 to the three most noteworthy transactions of the Presi- 
 dent during the first ten months of his administration. 
 Those transactions were the selection of the Taft cab- 
 inet, and the Tariff Law of 1909, and the Glavis case. 
 The second number was published September 11, 1912, 
 and was devoted to what President Taft has done and 
 what he has omitted to do, relevant to enforcing the 
 Sherman Law against industrial combinations. The 
 third number was published September 21, 1912, and at- 
 tended to the actions and omissions of the President, in 
 respect of enforcing the Sherman Law against combina- 
 tions of interstate Eailroad Companies. This pamphlet 
 attends to the Taft bill of 1911, to regulate commerce 
 with Canada, and which bill was promoted by him under 
 the name of "reciprocity". 
 
 Many thousands of copies of the first three Numbers 
 of this series of historical sketches, have been distrib- 
 uted by me throughout the United States, among leading 
 men of all parties; the first copy of each, having been 
 mailed by me to President Taft. I have received many 
 letters and reviews relevant to those Numbers ; but only 
 one error in any of them has been pointed out to me ; 
 and that error affected only one corporation, and that 
 only on an immaterial point. This fourth Nunjber of the 
 series is the most surprising of all of them ; and it con- 
 tains so much heretofore unpublished matter, that no- 
 body who reads this preface, can afford to omit to read 
 this pamphlet. 
 
 Park Eow Building, A. H. W. 
 
 Manhattan, New York, 
 October 9, 1912. 
 
THE "BECIPEOCITY" OF PBESIDENT TAFT. 
 
 Its Ostensible Origin. 
 
 In his annual message of December 6, 1910, President 
 Taft informed Congress that, by his direction, the Sec- 
 retary of State had dispatched to Ottawa, Canada, two 
 representatives of the State Department, as special com- 
 missioners, to confer with representatives of the Gov- 
 ernment of Canada, relevant to international commerce 
 between that Dominion and the United States. The 
 President also stated that he had authorized those two 
 commissioners to negotiate a "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment ' ', between the United States and Canada ; and that 
 such negotiation was commenced in Ottawa in the early 
 part of November 1910, and then adjourned to be con- 
 tinued in "Washington in January 1911. 
 
 In a special message to Congress on January 26, 1911, 
 President Taft stated that two Canadian commissioners 
 had come to Washington on January 7, 1911, and had 
 continued the negotiation which had been begun in Ot- 
 tawa in November, and that the negotiation had resulted 
 on January 21, 1911, in a "reciprocal trade agreement" 
 between Canada and the United States, which agree- 
 ment President Taft transmitted to Congress with that 
 message. Congressional Record of January 26, 1911, 
 pp. 1515-1519. In that message President Taft also rec- 
 ommended Congress to pass a bill to make that agree- 
 ment binding upon the United States; and which bill 
 when passed and afterward approved by the President, 
 would constitute a statute. 
 
 On January 21, 1911, the two Canadian commission- 
 ers wrote a letter to Secretary of State Knox, wherein 
 they set forth, in regularly numbered paragraphs, their 
 
understanding of what was to be done with that "re- 
 ciprocal trade agreement" which they had executed on 
 behalf of Canada, and which Secretary Knox had exe- 
 cuted on behalf of the United States. The third of those 
 paragraphs was as follows: "It is agreed that the de- 
 sired tariff changes shall not take the form of a treaty; 
 but that the Governments of the two countries shall use 
 their utmost efforts to bring about such changes, by 
 concurrent legislation at Washington and at Ottawa." 
 And on the same day, Secretary Knox wrote an answer 
 to the two Canadian commissioners, the only important 
 sentence in which was the following: "I take pleasure 
 in replying, that your statement of the proposed ar- 
 rangement, is entirely in accordance with my under- 
 standing of it." Congressional Record of January 26, 
 1911, pp. 1516-1519. 
 
 The "reciprocal trade agreement" provided that the 
 United States would admit from Canada free from im- 
 port duties, more than a hundred specified kinds of com- 
 modities, which were dutiable under the then existing 
 Payne- Aldrich Tariff Law; and would also admit from 
 Canada more than a hundred other specified kinds of 
 commodities, at rates of duty much reduced from those 
 prescribed by the Payne- Aldrich Law. And the "recip- 
 rocal trade agreement" also provided that those 
 changes in the tariff laws of the United States were to 
 take effect, whenever the Dominion of Canada would 
 enact a statute to admit into Canada from the United 
 States the same hundreds of kinds of commodities on 
 the same terms, respectively. 
 
 The "reciprocal trade agreement" also provided 
 that eight other specified classes of commodities should 
 be importable into Canada from the United States at 
 certain specified rates of duty; and that ten other speci- 
 fied classes of commodities should be importable into 
 the United States, from Canada, at certain other speci- 
 
3 
 
 fied rates of duty, lower than those prescribed by the 
 Payne-Aldrich Law, for those ten classes of articles re- 
 spectively. According to the agreement, none of the 
 provisions stated in this paragraph were to go into 
 effect until all of them would do so. 
 
 The "reciprocal trade agreement" also provided 
 that the United States would admit from Canada, free 
 from import duties, all news print paper valued at not 
 more than eighty dollars a ton, which had been manu- 
 factured in Canada from pulp-wood or wood-pulp 
 which might have been exported from Canada to the 
 United States, and might have been thus exported with- 
 out the payment of any export duty or other export 
 charge, and which print paper would also be exempt 
 from all export charges in Canada. This peculiar pro- 
 vision was due to the fact that Canadian forests which 
 contain trees suitable for paper making, are of two 
 kinds, in respect of ownership. Many of those forests 
 are owned by private parties, who may freely cut down 
 their trees, and export the resulting pulp-wood to the 
 United States. But more of those forests stand on 
 "Crown lands", which are owned by the various prov- 
 inces in which those forests stand, and which provinces 
 have made and are enforcing provincial prohibitions 
 against exporting to any country, any pulp-wood which 
 may be cut from those "Crown lands" by those private 
 parties to whom they are leased from year to year, by 
 the provincial authorities. 
 
 The foregoing provisions of the "reciprocal trade 
 agreement" relevant to print paper, were, according to 
 that agreement, to go into effect as soon as the United 
 States would enact its proposed statute, and were to con- 
 tinue in effect permanently, whether Canada would enact 
 its proposed statute or not. If Canada would enact its 
 proposed statute after the United States had enacted its 
 proposed statute, this print paper provision could possi- 
 
bly be said to be "reciprocal" in its nature; on the 
 ground that it constituted a part of the consideration 
 moving Canada to make those tariff concessions to th<? 
 United States, relevant to other commodities, which the 
 proposed Canadian statute would make. But if Canada 
 would not thus enact its proposed statute, this print 
 paper provision could not be said to be "reciprocal"; 
 for in that event, Canada would not be giving any con- 
 sideration for the admission into the United States, free 
 from all tariff duties, of all print paper valued at not 
 more than eighty dollars per ton, which had been manu- 
 factured in Canada, from pulp wood cut from lands 
 owned by private parties. 
 
 Moreover, it should have been foreseen that the prac- 
 tical operation of this print paper provision, would be 
 to admit into the United States, free from all tariff 
 duties, great quantities of print paper, manufactured in 
 Canada from pulp wood cut from "Crown lands", and 
 therefore non-exportable as pulp wood. For the Cus- 
 toms officers of the United States would have no means 
 of knowing whether a particular train load or car load of 
 print paper had been manufactured in Canada from pulp 
 wood cut from the lands of private parties, or from 
 "Crown lands". It would indeed be a fraud on the part 
 of any corporation owning a Canadian paper mill, to ex- 
 port to the United States, without payment of duty to 
 the United States, any print paper which had been manu- 
 factured from non-exportable pulp wood. But the "re- 
 ciprocal trade agreement" contained no provision to 
 prevent such frauds ; and corporations being seldom gov- 
 erned by ethical motives, should have been expected to 
 occasionally perpetrate such frauds from selfish motives. 
 
 The Dingley Tariff Law of July 24, 1897, like all its 
 predecessors for many years, included pulp wood on its 
 free list, and was followed in that respect by the Payne- 
 Aldrich Tariff Law of August 5, 1909. But the Ding- 
 
ley Law prescribed a protective tariff of six dollars per 
 ton on ordinary print paper, which duty then amounted 
 to from fifteen to twenty per cent of its value. The 
 Payne-Aldrich Tariff Law reduced the tariff on ordin- 
 ary print paper to three dollars and seventy-five cents 
 per ton, which was then from eight to ten per cent of 
 its value. But the Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" 
 operated to repeal even the reduced duty of the Payne- 
 Aldrich Law, in respect of all print paper made in Can- 
 ada from exportable pulp wood ; and also from all print 
 paper made in Canada from non-exportable pulp wood, 
 where it could be palmed off on our Custom House offi- 
 cers as having been made from exportable pulp wood. 
 And inasmuch as Canada is almost the only country 
 which can spare any great amount of print paper to the 
 United States, the Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" 
 practically operated to subject the manufacturers of 
 print paper in the United States, to free trade compe- 
 tition with nearly all the potentially competitive world. 
 
 Its More Probable Origin. 
 
 The American Newspaper Publishers' Association is 
 a voluntary combination of the publishers of hundreds of 
 American newspapers, which was made years ago, and 
 has ever since been maintained for the purpose of de- 
 pressing the prices of print paper, thousands of tons of 
 which are required and used every day by those news- 
 papers. The president of that association has long been 
 Herman Bidder, the publisher of the New York Staats 
 Zeitung, and a distinguished member of the Democratic 
 Party. The chairman of the Committee on Paper of 
 that association has long been John Norris, who also has 
 charge of the office of the association in the World 
 Building in the city of New York. In 1908 the associa- 
 tion, acting through Mr. Bidder and Mr. Norris, induced 
 
the House of Representatives of the Sixtieth Congress, 
 to appoint a select committee to make investigations 
 concerning pulp wood, wood pulp and paper. Congress- 
 man Mann of Illinois was the chairman of that commit- 
 tee, and that committee conducted elaborate investiga- 
 tions during many months and rendered to the House 
 an elaborate report of the facts ascertained, and of the 
 opinions of the committee relevant thereto. That re- 
 port recommended that the existing tariff duty on ordin- 
 ary print paper of six dollars per ton, should be re- 
 duced to two dollars per ton, but not removed altogether. 
 On that point the committee stated that the retention of 
 that reduced duty was justified, both on the principles 
 of a tariff for revenue and a tariff for protection ; and 
 that it was not desirable to strike down or injure the 
 present paper mills in the United States ; and that ' ' The 
 duty proposed is about equal to the additional cost of 
 labor in the United States, and the additional cost of 
 materials used by the paper mills, caused by other tarif 
 provisions ' '. 
 
 But Congress was convinced that the tariff on or- 
 dinary print paper ought not to be reduced so far ; be- 
 cause the wood to make a ton of paper costs American 
 manufacturers several dollars more than it costs Cana- 
 dian manufacturers; and therefore the Payne- Aldrich 
 Tariff Law of August 5, 1909, enacted a duty of three 
 dollars and three quarters per ton on such paper. 
 
 On or about July 20, 1911, I was told by an eminent 
 Republican United States Senator, that though he was 
 in accord with President Taft relevant to most of his 
 measures, he was opposed to the bill which had passed 
 the House of Representatives and was then pending in 
 the Senate, and the purport and purpose of which was to 
 enact into law the "reciprocal trade agreement" which 
 had been made by the President with the two Canadian 
 commissioners in January 1911. This Senator told me 
 
on that occasion, that in his opinion no such agreement 
 would ever have been heard of, except as the result of 
 a strong desire to remove the duty from print paper im- 
 ported from Canada. This opinion of the Senator ap- 
 peared to me to be probably true, because I knew that 
 Mr. Bidder and Mr. Norris had for years been planning 
 and striving to remove altogether, or at least to reduce 
 extensively, the tariff on print paper. And I afterward 
 learned of the existence and of the character of a num- 
 ber of letters which had been written by Mr. Bidder, and 
 at least one letter which had been written by Mr. Norris 
 during the first three months of 1911, and which ap- 
 peared to me to constitute circumstantial evidence that 
 it was those gentlemen who had implanted and fostered 
 in the bosom of President Taft, a strong desire to re- 
 move the duty from print paper imported from Canada, 
 within a few months after the President had approved 
 the Payne- Aldrich Bill, and had thus given his sanction 
 to fixing the duty on common print paper at three dol- 
 lars and three-quarters per ton. Those letters were as 
 follows, respectively: 
 
 Washington, D. C, January 16, 1911. 
 
 Hon. Philander C. Knox, 
 Secretary of State. 
 Dear Sir: — 
 
 In the matter of print paper and wood pulp, may I 
 urge upon you the importance of an insistence upon free 
 pulp wood from Canada, in exchange for free print 
 paper and wood pulp? In making this request, I act 
 in behalf of the American Newspaper Publishers' As- 
 sociation as its authorized representative, and upon the 
 expressed authorization, given today and covering this 
 particular matter, of Mr. Herman Bidder, president, and 
 Mr. Don C. Seitz, constituting the association's commit- 
 
8 
 
 tee on paper, and of Mr. E. H. Baker, secretary. I am 
 authorized to supplement this request with the individual 
 approval of the above view, by each of the gentlemen who 
 participated in today's conference with you upon this 
 subject, viz: Mr. E. H. Butler, Buffalo News; Mr. E. 
 H. Baker, Cleveland Plain Dealer; Mr. Frank B. Noyes, 
 Washington Star; Mr. P. C. Boyle, Oil City Derrick; 
 Mr. Thompson, New Orleans Item. 
 
 "With grateful acknowledgment of the consideration 
 shown by you to us, believe me, 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 John Norms, 
 Chairman Committee on Paper, 
 American Newspaper Publishers' Association. 
 
 (Sent to Newspaper Publishers' Association members.) 
 
 New York, January 24, 1911. 
 
 For your confidential information, I take pleasure 
 in advising you, that the negotiations of the United 
 States Government with Canada, provide for the admis- 
 sion of print paper and wood pulp free of duty, when 
 made from wood cut on private lands, or free from re- 
 strictions of exportation. 
 
 If ratified by Congress, this arrangement will im- 
 mediately and automatically insure a full supply of 
 print paper free of duty, and will exert a pressure upon 
 the provincial authorities, which will ultimately force 
 them to remove their restrictions on exportation of pulp 
 wood. The advance thus far made is a matter for mu- 
 tual congratulation among members of the association. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 Herman Bidder, President. 
 
9 
 
 (Copy of instructions to editors sent by Herman Bid- 
 der, president American Newspaper Publishers' Asso- 
 ciation.) 
 
 New York, February 17, 1911. 
 By request private to editors. It is of vital import- 
 ance to the newspapers that their Washington corres- 
 pondents be instructed to treat favorably the Canadian 
 reciprocity agreement; because print paper and wood 
 pulp are made free of duty by this agreement. 
 
 Herman Bidder, 
 President, American Newspaper Publishers' 
 Association. 
 
 The fact that, somebody, prior to the writing of any 
 of the above letters, implanted in the mind of Presi- 
 dent Taft a desire to remove the duty from print paper 
 imported from Canada, is proved by the letter which 
 Mr. Taft himself wrote to Hon. Theodore Boosevelt on 
 January 10, 1911, and which the President himself pub- 
 lished, by reading it in his Boston speech of April 25, 
 1912, That letter was written three days after the 
 Canadian commissioners reached Washington to carry 
 forward the negotiation for the "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment", and eleven days before that agreement was made. 
 At that time, according to that letter, the list of com- 
 modities to be included in the agreement had been set- 
 tled in respect of only a few items, but those tew in- 
 cluded wood pulp and paper. Belevant to the inclu- 
 sion of those commodities in the proposed agreement, 
 Mr. Taft wrote to Col. Boosevelt that "as it includes 
 free paper and free wood pulp, we may count on the 
 fairly good support of the press". 
 
 That letter of Taft to Boosevelt does not contain 
 anything to indicate that the writer expected that the 
 newspapers would support the proposed "reciprocal 
 
10 
 
 trade agreement" for any other reason, than that the 
 agreement would promote their selfish interests, by en- 
 tirely abolishing the tariff on print paper and wood pulp, 
 which he himself had approved, but seventeen months be- 
 fore. But that letter does contain something to indicate 
 that President Taft expected that the proposed benefit to 
 the newspapers, would not only secure their support for 
 the proposed "reciprocal trade agreement", but also 
 would tend to secure their support for himself in other 
 matters. Accordingly, when President Taft was strenu- 
 ously striving, during the first six months of 1912, to 
 get nominated by the Eepublican party for re-election 
 to the Presidency, nearly all the Eepublican, and almost 
 or quite all of the Democratic newspapers in the United 
 States, did their utmost to promote that striving, as 
 against every other candidate for the Eepublican nomi- 
 nation. 
 
 Strong desire of President Taft to repeal the duty on 
 print paper, can not be accounted for on any other ground 
 than his strong desire to please the newspapers. For 
 that repeal was totally inconsistent with every one of 
 the messages which he has ever sent to Congress vetoing 
 bills to reduce the tariff on other articles than print 
 paper. In all of those messages, he has taken the 
 ground that the tariff ought not to be reduced on any- 
 thing; except in accordance with scientifically ascertain- 
 ed facts, relevant to the respective costs of production 
 in the United States and in foreign countries. In doing 
 his utmost to induce Congress to repeal the duty on print 
 paper, coming from Canada, he was utterly stultifying 
 himself on this point ; for the Mann committee, after long 
 investigation, had reported that the cost of producing 
 print paper in the United States, was about two dollars 
 a ton more than the cost of producing it in Canada ; and 
 he himself had approved the Payne-Aldrich Bill, which 
 
11 
 
 placed a duty of three dollars and seventy-five cents per 
 ton on such print paper. 
 
 For these reasons, there appears to be no escape from 
 the conclusion that President Taft initiated and secured 
 the repeal of the duty on print paper coming from 
 Canada, in order to thereby secure the support of the 
 newspapers in the United States ; and that the support he 
 expected to get and did get thereby, was that support for 
 the Republican renomination by means of which he 
 obtained it; and without which he could not possibly 
 have grasped it. 
 
 The Drafting of the "Reciprocal Trade Agreement". 
 
 In his special message to Congress, of January 26, 
 1911, President Taft did not state the names of the two 
 Canadian commissioners, nor the names of the two rep- 
 resentatives of the State Department, who conducted the 
 negotiations which resulted in the "reciprocal trade 
 agreement" of January 21, 1911. But I have ascertain- 
 ed that the names of the Canadian commissioners were 
 Fielding and Paterson, and that the names of the State 
 Department representatives, were Pepper and Davis. I 
 have not been able to ascertain who Davis was or is ; but 
 I believe he was a clerk in the State Department, and that 
 whatever he did in the negotiation, was subordinate to 
 Mr. Pepper. This Mr. Pepper, was Charles M. Pepper, 
 a newspaper man, who for many years was a Washing- 
 ton correspondent of one or another of several news- 
 papers published In other cities. On September 1, 1909, 
 he became "commercial adviser" of the State Depart- 
 ment; which functionary is not mentioned in any statute, 
 and which title is probably a colloquial one, courteously 
 used to designate Mr. Pepper, during the time he was 
 employed to help negotiate and frame the Taft "reci- 
 procal trade agreement" of January 21, 1911. 
 
12 
 
 That "reciprocal trade agreement" proposed to radi- 
 cally revise the tariff. laws of the United States in re- 
 spect of more than two hundred kinds of commodities, 
 many of which are among the most important commodi- 
 ties known to mankind. And Mr. Pepper, a newspaper 
 correspondent with more or less assistance from Mr. 
 Davis, a still more obscure man, did all that revising work 
 during a few days in Ottawa, Canada, in the early part of 
 November, 1910, followed by only two weeks in Washing- 
 ton ending January 21, 1911. Nobody has ever claimed, 
 and it is not believed that either President Taft or Secre- 
 tary Knox did anything or was competent to do very 
 much toward framing that "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment"; except to give general directions to Mr. Pepper 
 relevant thereto. And the same United States Senator 
 who told me that, in his opinion, no such agreement 
 would ever have been heard of, except as the result of a 
 strong desire to remove the duty from print paper im- 
 ported from Canada, also assured me that no member 
 of either House of Congress was consulted by anybody, 
 relevant to the terms of that agreement, or took any 
 part whatever in framing it. 
 
 An astonishing state of facts is thus presented to 
 contemporary criticism, and to the consideration of fu- 
 ture historians. That state of facts includes the fol- 
 lowing points: 
 
 Although paragraph 1, of Section 7, of Article I of 
 the Constitution of the United States provides that "All 
 bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of 
 Eepresentatives ", President Taft caused such a bill, 
 relevant to revenues on more than two hundred im- 
 portant commodities, to be originated by agreement 
 between a couple of Canadians named Fielding and 
 Paterson, and a couple of Department clerks named Pep- 
 per and Davis; and President Taft thereupon sent that 
 
13 
 
 bill to Congress with his recommendation that it should 
 be enacted into a statute. 
 
 Although President Taft has written and said hun- 
 dreds of times, and everybody knows, that the tariff du- 
 ties on numerous important commodities can not be 
 wisely changed without great special knowledge and care- 
 ful deliberation, he urgently recommended Congress to 
 pass a statute to accomplish that result, in exact accord- 
 ance with a bill which he had caused to be prepared in 
 two or three weeks, by two Canadians representing in- 
 terests antagonistic to the United States, and two clerks 
 having no special knowledge of the subject, and not 
 granting hearings to anybody who was competent to fur- 
 nish such knowledge. 
 
 The "Reciprocal Trade Agreement" and the Farmers. 
 
 The kinds of commodities which when imported from 
 Canada, the Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" proposed 
 to exempt from all import duties, include almost every- 
 thing which any of the farmers of the northern half of 
 the United States produce, or can ever produce. Those 
 commodities comprise live animals of all kinds, and hay 
 and straw for fodder; all poultry, living or dead; all 
 wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, and buckwheat, and all 
 dried beans and dried peas. They also include both kinds 
 of potatoes, and all other vegetables, and all dried fruits ; 
 and all fresh fruits, (except oranges, lemons and other 
 citrus fruits grown in the southern half of the United 
 States,) and also honey and all seeds ; and all milk, cream, 
 butter and cheese, and all eggs. 
 
 On the other hand, the kinds of commodities which, 
 when imported into Canada from the United States, the 
 Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" proposed to exempt 
 from import duties in Canada, or at least to reduce the 
 Canadian duties theretofore levied thereon, do not in- 
 
14 
 
 elude any articles which farmers in the United States 
 had ever any occasion to sell, either directly or indi- 
 rectly to any Canadian consumers. 
 
 For these reasons, it is undeniable that the proposed 
 "reciprocal trade agreement" was adapted to sacrifice 
 the just interests of the farmers of the northern half of 
 the United States, for the benefit of those who consume 
 what those farmers so laboriously produce. Through- 
 out its history, the Republican party has sought to recon- 
 cile the American farmers to protective tariffs on manu- 
 factured commodities, and to the high prices consequent 
 on those protective tariffs ; by claiming and arguing that 
 the farmers can afford to pay those high prices, because 
 the same protective tariffs operated to produce corres- 
 pondingly high prices for whatever the farmers raised 
 and sold. The Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" in 
 sweeping away all tariff protection , from American 
 farmers, as against Canadian farmers, swept away all 
 such tariff protection whatever; because Canada is the 
 only foreign country so situated as to be able to spare 
 and send to the United States, in any event, any consider- 
 able amount of farm products. And in sweeping away 
 all tariff protection from American farmers, while leav- 
 ing them to pay the high prices on manufactured articles, 
 which resulted from retaining the protective duties on 
 those articles; the Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" 
 provided only one half of any process of reciprocity. 
 It provided that the farmers should give, but should 
 not take. 
 
 Mr. Taft clearly appears to understand that his pro- 
 posed reciprocal trade agreement was going to reduce the 
 income of American farmers, for the benefit of the busi- 
 ness men of the cities of Chicago and New York, and also 
 for the benefit of American manufacturers. For he wrote, 
 in his letter of January 10, 1911, to Hon. Theodore 
 
15 
 
 Roosevelt, the following statement ; when telling how his 
 proposed "reciprocal trade agreement" would operate. 
 
 "The amount of Canadian products we would take, 
 would produce a current of business between western 
 Canada and the United States, that would make Canada 
 only an adjunct of the United States. It would transfer 
 all their important business to Chicago and New York, 
 with their bank credits and everything else, and it would 
 increase greatly the demand of Canada for our manu- 
 factures". 
 
 In short, the proposed "reciprocity" of President 
 Taft, was adapted and was intended to "reciprocate" 
 money into the banks of New York and Chicago, in the 
 form of Canadian deposits; and to "reciprocate" other 
 money into the treasuries of the American manufactur- 
 ing corporations, in the form of profits on their exports 
 into Canada; and also to "reciprocate" money out of the 
 pockets of American farmers, for the benefit of consu- 
 mers of their products; and likewise to "reciprocate" 
 money out of the small profits of American manufac- 
 turers of print paper, in order to swell the already enor- 
 mous profits of the great American newspapers. But 
 that proposed "reciprocity" was not intended or adapted 
 to "reciprocate" anything into the bank accounts of 
 American paper mills, nor into the pockets of American 
 farmers. 
 
 The "Reciprocal Trade Agreement" and the 
 Fishermen. 
 
 The kinds of commodities which, when imported from 
 Canada, the Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" proposed 
 to exempt from all import duties, include all fresh fish 
 taken from fresh waters or salt waters ; and all preserved 
 fish, except those packed in oil. The tariff protection 
 which the proposed reciprocal trade agreement would 
 
16 
 
 sweep away from those thousands of hardy fishermen who 
 give their labors and risk their lives to bring food to man- 
 kind from the deep, ranged from one-fourth of one 
 cent per pound on fresh water fish, to one cent per pound 
 on mackerel, halibut or salmon, either fresh, pickled or 
 salted. 
 
 President Taft in his letter of January 10, 1911 to 
 Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, did not inform the Colonel 
 that fish was going to be included in the proposed "re- 
 ciprocal trade agreement"; and I have never read or 
 heard any argument from him or from anybody in sup- 
 port of that inclusion. But I have been informed by still 
 another regular Eepublican United States Senator, than 
 any heretofore alluded to in this pamphlet, that Senator 
 Lodge of Massachusetts, in recognition of the just in- 
 terests of the heroic fishermen of Gloucester, did 
 privately denounce as an "outrage" President Taft's 
 proposition to sweep away all tariff protection from 
 those fishermen. It is true that Senator Lodge voted 
 for the bill to produce that result, but he did so with 
 the utmost reluctance, and only to avoid a rupture with 
 the President. His private denunciation of the measure 
 was much to his credit; but, gentleman and scholar that 
 he is, he is not a hero who would resist the official leader 
 of his party. 
 
 Unconstitutionality of the "Reciprocal Trade Agree- 
 ment". 
 
 It is my carefully studied opinion as a constitutional 
 lawyer, that the Taft "reciprocal trade agreement" as 
 it was embodied in all the papers which on January 21, 
 1911, were signed by the two Canadian commissioners, 
 Fielding and Paterson, and by the American Secretary 
 of State, was violative of the Constitution of the United 
 States in two respects. 
 
17 
 
 The first of those respects consisted in the fact that 
 the American Secretary of State, in speaking for Presi- 
 dent Taft, made a contract with the two Canadian com- 
 missioners, that the "Governments" of the United 
 States and of the Dominion of Canada, would ' ' use their 
 utmost efforts" to cause the national legislatures of the 
 two countries, respectively, to enact into statutory law, 
 those changes in the tariff laws of the two countries, 
 which were specified in the "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment". The word "Governments" used in this written 
 contract, plainly signifies the executive Governments of 
 Canada and of the United States, respectively. Now I 
 take the ground that the executive Government of the 
 United States has no power to make any contract with 
 any foreign Government, except by and with the advice 
 and consent of the Senate of the United States. The 
 only thing in the United States Constitution which con- 
 fers any power upon the President to make any con- 
 tract with any foreign government, is the first clause, 
 of the first sentence, of paragraph 2, of Section 2, of 
 Article PI. That clause in speaking of the President, 
 says that "He shall have power, by and with the advice 
 and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided 
 two-thirds of the Senators present concur." The 
 treaty making power of the United States Government 
 was the subject of an essay published by Alexander 
 Hamilton in New York, on March 28, 1788, and which 
 for nearly a century has been celebrated as Number 
 LXXV of the Federalist. One of Hamilton's paragraphs 
 in that essay is exactly in point in this discussion. It 
 reads as follows: 
 
 "However proper or safe it may be in governments, 
 where the executive magistrate is an hereditary monarch, 
 to commit to him the entire power of making treaties ; it 
 would be utterly unsafe and improper to intrust that 
 power to an elective magistrate of four years duration. 
 
18 
 
 It has been remarked, upon another occasion, and the 
 remark is unquestionably just, that an hereditary 
 monarch, though often the oppressor of his people, has 
 personally too much at stake in the government, to be 
 in any material danger of being corrupted by foreign 
 powers: But that a man raised from the station of a 
 private citizen to the rank of chief magistrate, possess- 
 ed of but a moderate or slender fortune, and looking 
 forward to a period not very remote, when he may 
 probably be obliged to return to the station from which 
 he was taken, might sometimes be under temptation to 
 sacrifice duty to interest, which it would require super- 
 lative virtue to withstand. An avaricious man might 
 be tempted to betray the interests of the State for the 
 acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make 
 his own aggrandisement, by the aid of a foreign power, 
 the price of his treachery to his constituents. The 
 history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted 
 opinion of human virtue, which would make it wise in 
 a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momen- 
 tous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with 
 the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate 
 created and circumstanced as would be a president of 
 the United States." 
 
 When President Taft, through Secretary Knox, made 
 his contract with the Dominion of Canada, to use his 
 utmost efforts to cause Congress to enact, into statutory 
 law, those changes in the tariff laws of the United States, 
 which were specified in the "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment"; he did not make that contract in his personal 
 capacity as an influential citizen of the United States, 
 nor even in his official capacity as President of the United 
 States, authorized by the first sentence of paragraph 1 
 of Section 3 of Article II of the Constitution, to recom- 
 mend to the consideration of Congress such measures 
 as he should judge necessary and expedient Quite 
 
19 
 
 otherwise than this, that contract was made by him in 
 his capacity as the executive Government of the United 
 States, in terms as strong as he could have used if he 
 had been making a treaty, by and with the advice and 
 consent of the Senate. 
 
 And there is a fact within my personal knowledge 
 which indicates that President Taft himself regarded 
 that contract with the Dominion of Canada, as a solemn 
 obligation assumed by the executive Government of the 
 United States. The fact to which I refer is a statement 
 which was made to me while the bill for the proposed 
 enactment was pending in the United States Senate. 
 That statement was made by a distinguished Republican 
 Senator whom I have known for many years, and who 
 except as to the "reciprocal trade agreement" has al- 
 ways been and still is a strong and faithful supporter 
 of the administration of President Taft. That Senator 
 told me that he had always regarded the proposed ' ' reci- 
 procal trade agreement" as a very unwise proposition, 
 and that "time and time again" he had urged President 
 Taft to abandon it altogether, and had presented what 
 he thought to be very strong arguments in support of 
 that advice. Thereupon I asked the Senator what reply 
 President Taft had made to those arguments. The 
 Senator answered me by saying that : ' ' He never makes 
 any reply, except that he has solemnly promised Canada 
 that the Government of the United States will use its 
 utmost efforts to induce Congress to enact the proposed 
 legislation." 
 
 At this writing, on October 5, 1912, the civilized world 
 is anxiously witnessing the first recurrence, during the 
 present generation, of an impending European Avar, 
 which if it occurs, may involve the conquest of Constan- 
 tinople. For several centuries, Russia has been hoping 
 to acquire that most important strategic position, which 
 Napoleon pronounced the key of the eastern world. In 
 
20 
 
 1877, Russia waged an awful war against Turkey, in 
 order to accomplish that object; and Russia would have 
 accomplished that end as a result of that war, if Great 
 Britain, France, Germany and Austria had not intervened, 
 and told the Czar that he must leave Constantinople in 
 the possession of the Turks. 
 
 Now let us suppose that Russia will take advantage 
 of the present war spirit of Bulgaria, Servia, Montene- 
 gro and Greece, and support those warlike nations in 
 military operations against Turkey; and let us suppose 
 that those allies will vigorously wage their war from the 
 north. In this event, let us suppose that President Taft 
 were to make a written contract with the Government of 
 Russia to use his "utmost efforts" to induce Congress 
 to declare war against Turkey, and authorize him to send 
 the Navy of the United States to the Sea of Marmora 
 and thence to the Bosporus, there to bombard Constan- 
 tinople from the south. If President Taft were to make 
 such a contract as that, he would be doing, in principle, 
 precisely what he did do in making his contract with 
 Canada, to use his "utmost efforts" to induce Congress 
 to enact his proposed "agreement" with that country. 
 But if President Taft were to make such a contract with 
 Russia as I have specified, the Emperor of Germany and 
 the king of Great Britain, having power under their con- 
 stitutions, to declare war without the consent of any 
 legislative body, would not wait to see whether Congress 
 would yield to the "utmost efforts" of President Taft, 
 and declare war against Turkey. Quite otherwise than 
 this, Germany and Great Britain would send their navies 
 at once across the Atlantic, to intercept and fight the 
 American Navy, as the only means of safeguarding Con- 
 stantinople against conquest by Russia. This example 
 makes it perfectly plain, that the people of the United 
 States can not safely acquiesce in the conduct of Presi- 
 dent Taft, in making a written contract with a foreign 
 
21 
 
 nation, to use his "utmost efforts" to induce Congress to 
 enact a statute, which that foreign country desires to 
 nave enacted. For such acquiesence, might lead some 
 future president to make a written contract with the 
 (Government of some great nation, which would operate 
 "to plunge the United States, at once into a foreign war. 
 And it was to withhold from the President, all such 
 power, that the Constitution of the United States made 
 the advice and consent of the Senate, indispensable to 
 all contracts with foreign Governments ; as Hamilton so 
 clearly explained in the Federalist. 
 
 • The second respect in which the Taft "reciprocal 
 trade agreement" is unconstitutional consists in the fact 
 that it is a treaty, which is not valid, because it was not 
 made by and with the consent of two-thirds of the Senate, 
 as, according to paragraph 2, of Section 2, of Article II 
 of the Constitution all treaties must be made. This is 
 the view of the document which was originally taken by 
 the Vice President and by the Senate itself, and which is 
 the only frank view thereof. 
 
 But President Taft always claimed that the proposed 
 "reciprocal trade agreement", and the other papers 
 which had been executed on behalf of the Dominion of 
 Canada by the two Canadian commissioners, and on be- 
 half of the executive Government of the United States, 
 by Secretary Knox, did not constitute a treaty between 
 the two countries, but constituted only a contract be- 
 tween the executive Governments of the two countries to 
 use their utmost efforts to induce the legislative author- 
 ities of the two countries to enact a particular tariff law, 
 in each of those countries. 
 
 The reason why President Taft took this ingenious 
 ground was plainly stated by him in his letter of Janu- 
 ary 10, 1911, to Hon. Theodore Boosevelt, in the fol- 
 
lowing language: "The proposition is to make an 
 arrangement by which we shall present to both Houses 
 of Congress an identical bill, and pass it as an agree- 
 ment for joint legislation. In this way we would avoid 
 the necessity for two-thirds in the Senate, and would 
 secure at once the consent of the House". 
 
 When President Taft wrote that letter, he believed 
 and had reason to believe that the House of Eepresen- 
 tatives would promptly pass his proposed "reciprocal 
 trade agreement". But he also feared and had reason 
 to fear, and was right in fearing, that two-thirds of the 
 Senators' would not vote for that measure; though lie 
 hoped that he could induce a majority of them to do so. 
 This hope turned out to be unfounded in respect of the 
 Senate of the Sixty-first Congress, and that Senate ad- 
 journed with that Congress on March 4, 1911, without 
 passing that bill to enact the proposed agreement, which 
 the House did promptly pass in February 1911, and send 
 to the Senate. 
 
 The "Beciprocal Trade Agreement" in the Sixty- 
 Second Congress. 
 
 In March 1911, President Taft called an extra session 
 of the Sixty-second Congress, for the express and only 
 purpose of considering his proposed "reciprocal trade 
 agreement" with Canada. That session began on April 
 4, 1911, and continued many months, at great direct and 
 indirect expense to the country. The House of Eepre- 
 sentatives was Democratic by a majority of sixty-six, 
 and as was to be expected, that House promptly passed 
 the proposed legislation, and sent it to the Senate for 
 consideration there. The Senate referred the bill to its 
 Committee on Finance, and that committee sat for some 
 weeks to hear statements and arguments for and against 
 the proposed "reciprocal trade agreement". Most of 
 
23 
 
 the persons who presented those statements and argu- 
 ments to the committee, did so in opposition to the meas- 
 ure, and many of those persons, presented their facts 
 and reasoning with great power. I was present at some 
 of those hearings, though I took no part in any of them. 
 It was however, impossible for me to avoid noticing that 
 only two members of the committee appeared to take 
 any real interest in what was being presented by the 
 citizens who were speaking. Afterward, one of the 
 other members of the committee explained this to me, by 
 saying that all the members of the committee, except 
 the two of which I have just spoken, were already op- 
 posed to the bill, though most of them were going to 
 vote for it, contrary to their own convictions; while the 
 two who were interested in the hearing were already in 
 favor of the bill, and were going to vote for it in ac- 
 cordance with the interests of their particular constit- 
 uents. 
 
 While the bill was being debated in the Senate, and 
 on or about July 20, 1911, I was told by one leading Re- 
 publican Senator, that he knew the real opinion of every 
 Senator upon the question of the propriety of the pro- 
 posed "reciprocal trade agreement", and that a large 
 majority of them were strongly opposed to the bill at 
 heart ; though he prophesied that it would pass the Sen- 
 ate by a large majority, within a few days thereafter. 
 In accordance with that prophecy, the bill which had 
 been passed by the House several months before, to en- 
 act into a law, the "reciprocal trade agreement", which 
 bad been negotiated with Canada on behalf of the 
 United States by the two clerks, Pepper and Davis, in 
 January 1911, was passed by the United States Senate 
 by a large majority, but by less than a two-thirds vote. 
 
2-i 
 "Utmost Efforts" of President Taft. 
 
 One paragraph of one of the papers which consti- 
 tuted the 'reciprocal trade agreement," which was exe- 
 cuted on January 21, 1911, by Secretary of State Knox 
 on behalf of the "Government" of the United States 
 and by Commissioners Fielding and Paterson, on behalf 
 of the Dominion of Canada, was as follows: "It is 
 agreed that the desired tariff changes shall not take the 
 form of a treaty; but that the 'Governments of the two 
 countries shall use their utmost efforts to bring about 
 such changes, by concurrent legislation at Washington 
 and at Ottawa." 
 
 The last above section of this pamphlet showed that 
 the "Government" of the United States performed its 
 share of this contract by inducing Congress to pass on 
 July 22, 1911, a statute to bring about exactly those tariff 
 changes which were specified in the "reciprocal trade 
 agreement" of January 21, 1911. 
 
 It now becomes proper to state in this pamphlet 
 what were those "utmost efforts" which the "Govern- 
 ment" of the United States used to induce the Congress 
 of the United States to pass at Washington, the proposed 
 "concurrent legislation." Preliminary to making the 
 statement, I will mention that my personal acquaint- 
 ance with the Congress of the United States ante- 
 dates the service of every Senator and every Rep- 
 resentative, except Senator Cullom and Representa- 
 tive Cannon; and that I am personally acquainted 
 with nearly half of the present Senators, and with 
 a large number of the present Representatives. In 
 what I am about to write in this section of this 
 pamphlet, I shall not betray any confidence; for I 
 shall not state the name of any of my informants, and 
 also the information which they gave me was not 
 imparted with any express or any implied request to re- 
 
9fi 
 
 f rain from publishing it. This pamphlet is being written 
 and published for the information of those who believe 
 in my knowledge and in my candor; and none of those 
 persons will ask me to produce evidence to corroborate 
 any of my statements. If a copy of the pamphlet should 
 happen to be read by some person who does not feel will- 
 ing to believe what I write, unless it is corroborated ; he 
 will incur the misfortune of non-acquirement of import- 
 ant information, and my only regret will be that that 
 particular copy fell into the hands of a man who was not 
 able to derive therefrom, the information which I think 
 it my duty to impart. 
 
 The "utmost efforts" which the "Government" of 
 the United States, in the person of President Taft, used 
 to induce Congress to enact his "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment," were as follows, so far as they were exercised 
 upon Eepublican Congressmen, and Republican Sena- 
 tors. 
 
 First. — President Taft personally urged unwilling 
 Representatives and Senators to vote for his "recipro- 
 cal trade agreement ' ' on the ground that it was an ' ' ad- 
 ministration ' ' measure, which could not be defeated with- 
 out discrediting the administration and thus discrediting 
 the Republican party, and thus endangering the hoped- 
 for election of a Republican president, for the next presi- 
 dential term. 
 
 This was the argument which President Taft used 
 to secure the support of Senator Root of New York. In 
 Mr. Taft's letter of January 10, 1911, to Col. Roosevelt, 
 relevant to his proposed "reciprocal trade agreement" 
 -with Canada, he said ; ' 'T think it may break the Repub- 
 lican party for a while. As Elihu Root said when I 
 talked with him yesterday, it may be an entering wedge 
 against protection." Inasmuch as Senator Root has 
 always been a strong protectionist; this statement 
 
26 
 
 of President Taft indicates that, on January 9, 1911, 
 Senator Boot warned President Taft that his pro- 
 posed "reciprocal trade agreement" was a bad 
 measure, which might, at least temporarily "break 
 the Eepublican party." But I was afterward 
 told by a regular Eepublican United States Sen- 
 ator, that President Taft succeeded in inducing 
 Senator Boot to promise to vote for the proposed "recip- 
 rocal trade agreement" with Canada, as a matter of 
 loyal devotion to the Taft administration. But my in- 
 formant also told me that afterward, Senator Boot went 
 to President Taft and asked a release from that promise ; 
 and that Senator Boot supported that request by telling 
 the President that the "reciprocity" scheme was so con- 
 trary to the judgment and the interests of his farmer con- 
 stituents, in northern New York, that his Sena- 
 torial vote to enact it would certainly operate to end 
 his political life with the end of his present Senatorial 
 term; and that President Taft positively refused to re- 
 lease Senator Boot from that promise ; and that Senator 
 Boot was expected by his colleagues to bravely keep his 
 promise, and potentially end his political life, by voting 
 for the "reciprocity" bill. It was within a week after 
 I received this information, that the "reciprocity" Bill 
 was put upon its passage in the Senate ; and true to his 
 promise, and true to his loyalty to the President, Senator 
 Boot did most reluctantly give the affirmative vote, which 
 he then foresaw would operate to end his political career. 
 The sacrifice which is disclosed in the last paragraph, 
 of the political future of Elihu Boot, to the selfish ob- 
 stinacy of William H. Taft, should always be a source 
 of sorrow to every well informed and patriotic American. 
 For Elihu Boot is a man of extraordinary intellect and 
 knowledge, whose services cannot be spared from the 
 United States Senate without almost irreparable loss ; but 
 whose services must be spared from all public life on 
 
27 
 
 March 4, 1915, without any hope of being regained, at 
 any time during his remaining years. 
 
 Second. President Taft gave unwilling Republi- 
 can Eepresentatives and Senators to understand that if 
 they dared to vote against his proposed "reciprocal 
 trade agreement" with Canada, they would thereby so 
 far weaken their influence with him, that whatever 
 recommendations they might make for appointments to 
 Federal offices, would be disregarded by him. Or, where 
 he did not make that statement in plain terms, or even 
 make it at all, in particular cases ; Senators and Eepre- 
 sentatives feared, and had many strong reasons to fear, 
 that such losses of "patronage" would promptly follow 
 their votes against the "reciprocal trade agreement," 
 as certainly as the night follows the day when the sun 
 has withdrawn. 
 
 This was the argument which prevailed with some 
 of the Republican Senators ; but they were less numerous 
 than those Republican Senators who resisted it and voted 
 against the "reciprocity" Bill in spite of the "utmost 
 efforts" of President Taft. Those manly men were the 
 following: Senator Burnham of New Hampshire; Sen- 
 ator Page of Vermont ; Senator Lippitt of Rhode Island ; 
 Senator Oliver of Pennsylvania ; Senator Lorimer of Illi- 
 nois; Senator Smith of Michigan; Senator La Follette 
 of Wisconsin ; Senators Cummins and Kenyon of Iowa ; 
 Senators Nelson and Clapp of Minnesota; Senators Cur- 
 tis and Bristow of Kansas ; Senators Gamble and Craw- 
 ford of South Dakota; Senators McCumber and Grronna 
 of North Dakota ; Senators Clark and Warren of Wyo- 
 ming; Senators Heyburn and Borah of Idaho; Senator 
 Dixon of Montana ; Senator Smoot of Utah, and Senator 
 Bourne of Oregon. 
 
 The Republican Senators who voted for the Taft 
 "reciprocity" Bill were much fewer than the twenty-four 
 
28 
 
 Senators above named who voted against it. A few of 
 those affirmative Senators believed that the bill was not 
 on the whole a bad one; and they voted for it because 
 they really favored it. I know the names of those Sena- 
 tors; but I am not going to publish them, because that 
 publication would enable the readers of this pamphlet, 
 by a process of exclusion, to learn which Republican Sen- 
 ators voted for the bill contrary to their own judgment, 
 and only because their loyalty to the Republican party 
 or to the President, or their fear of losing presidential 
 "patronage" impelled them to do so. Those Senators- 
 fell below their duty to their country; but I know how 
 beset they were, by presidential temptation, and I cannot 
 bear to present their names to public view. 
 
 Third. — Another element in the "utmost efforts "" 
 which, in pursuance of his written contract with Canada, 
 President Taft exerted to induce Congress to enact a 
 bill to execute his "reciprocal trade agreement", con- 
 sisted in the employment by him of the ancient device of 
 "entertainment". For example, at one time in July, 
 1911, when the Senate was devoting itself exclusively to- 
 the consideration of the Taft "reciprocity" Bill, Presi- 
 dent Taft invited and took a large group of Republican 
 Senators with him, away from Washington and down the 
 Potomac to the ocean, on the Mayflower, which is one of 
 the naval vessels of the United States. He was gone 
 away with them several days on that extremely pleasant 
 cruise. A few days later, most of those Republican Sena- 
 tors voted for the "reciprocal trade agreement" which 
 President Taft had contracted with Canada to use his 
 "utmost efforts" to pass through Congress; though not 
 one of them believed that that agreement when enacted, 
 would be beneficial to his particular constituents, or to- 
 the United States. I do not know the character or even 
 the subject of President Taft's conversation with those 
 
29 
 
 Senators on that occasion. But I surmise that on that 
 delightful voyage, he was trying to persuade them to 
 sweep away from the farmers of the United States all 
 tariff protection upon their products, and that he was 
 doing this" while sitting serenely under the awnings of 
 the ship, and while those farmers were laboring under 
 blazing suns, from one ocean to the other, to cultivate or 
 to harvest the crops from which he was planning to re- 
 move all tariff protection. 
 
 "Utmost Efforts" of Mr. Latjrier. 
 
 The ' ' reciprocal trade agreement ' ' having been forced 
 through Congress by President Taft; Mr. Laurier, the 
 Prime Minister of Canada, attempted to carry it 
 through the Canadian Parliament, and failed. There- 
 upon he caused that Parliament to be dissolved by the 
 Governor General, in order to try to secure the election 
 of a new Parliament which could be induced to pass the 
 measure. A new Parliament was elected in the Fall of 
 1911, but a majority of its members were pledged to 
 vote against the proposed legislation, and therefore Mr. 
 Laurier promptly resigned from the Ministry, and gave 
 up the control of the Government of the Dominion, to 
 those who were opposed to the "reciprocal trade agree- 
 ment" which he had made with the executive Govern- 
 ment of the United States. Nevertheless, that part of 
 the measure which relates to print paper, and to the ma- 
 terials from which it is made, was unaffected by the re- 
 fusal of Canada to ratify the other parts of the ' ' agree- 
 ment", and has been in force, ever since President Taft 
 signed the "reciprocity bill" on July 26, 1911. 
 
30 
 
 The Present Situation op the "Reciprocity 
 
 Agreement. ' ' 
 
 In July 1912, The United States Senate twice voted 
 to repeal the "reciprocity" statute of July 26, 1911. 
 On the last of those occasions, the vote was 40 Yeas to 
 26 Nays. But that proposition to repeal was defeated 
 in the House, and would doubtless have been vetoed by 
 the President if it had been passed by the Representa- 
 tives. No time limit was ever set upon its adoption 
 by Canada; and therefore it is still optional with that 
 Dominion, to pass the proposed legislation whenever 
 it pleases, and thus bind the United States to all the' 
 absurd and injurious amendments to our tariff laws, 
 which were drawn up by the two Canadians Fielding 
 and Paterson, and the two Americans Pepper and 
 Davis; and then forced through an unwilling Con- 
 gress, by the "utmost efforts" of the executive "Gov- 
 ernment" of the United States, in the person of Presi- 
 dent Taft. 
 
 Physical and Psychological. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States confers upon 
 the President of the United States more power over 
 the monetary affairs of mankind than is possessed by 
 any other human being. By enforcing or not enforc- 
 ing the Sherman Law, and other Federal laws relevant 
 to commerce, and also by signing or vetoing bills 
 amending the tariff laws; the President has power to 
 enable wealth to undeservedly accumulate at the ex- 
 pense of work, or to enable work to itself receive the 
 proper rewards which are its ethical due. No man is 
 fit to exercise those tremendous powers, unless he pos- 
 sesses a sound mind in a sound body. President Taft, 
 in personally and persistently urging the people of the 
 
United States to reelect him for a second term, has 
 challenged criticism on every point which relates to his 
 fitness to wisely wield the powers of the presidency. 
 For these reasons, I am justified in presenting the fol- 
 lowing facts to the consideration of my fellow citizens. 
 
 The human intellect can never understand its own 
 operations. But we do know that the health of those 
 operations depends upon the health of the brain; and 
 we also know that the health of the brain, when it is 
 otherwise normal, mainly depends upon the character 
 of the blood which passes through it, and upon the 
 freedom or the difficulty with which the heart forces 
 the blood through the arteries and through the capil- 
 laries, into the veins and draws it back to the heart 
 again. A sufficient supply of healthy arterial blood 
 to the brain, and a constant removal of venous blood 
 therefrom, are essential to proper cerebral activity. 
 
 Elaborate scientific experiments have lately been 
 made in Europe, for the purpose of definitely ascer- 
 taining the effects of different kinds and quantities of 
 food upon the fluidity of the blood, and thus ascertain- 
 ing what regimen is most promotive of healthy mental 
 activity. For it has long been known that a brain is 
 better fed by healthy blood, sufficiently fluid to pass 
 freely from its arteries through its capillaries to its 
 veins, than it can be by blood which is loaded with too 
 much solid matter; because such excess of solid matter 
 must render the blood too viscous to make that passage, 
 without dangerous back pressure on the arteries, and 
 also too viscous to absorb and carry away the gray 
 matter which has been vitiated by cerebral work. 
 Those experiments were conducted by first drawing a 
 few ounces of blood from the veins of a perfectly 
 healthy young man ; who had for years been a scientific 
 eater, on his own theory that meat is a food which is 
 
32 
 
 much less beneficial than fish and eggs, as a contributor 
 of the nitrogenous element to diet. The blood thus 
 drawn, was tested in point of fluidity, by timing its 
 passage through a small hole in the bottom of an in- 
 strument containing it, after having been first im- 
 pregnated with lymph taken from a bloodsucker, for the 
 purpose of preventing its coagulation while in the in- 
 strument. Thereupon, the young man, for the next 
 three days, ate a heavy meat diet, which probably 
 amounted to gluttony, and he thus grossly overworked 
 his liver, his kidneys and all his organs of digestion. 
 After three days of that diet, the same number of ounces 
 of blood were drawn from his veins, and put through 
 the same instrument in the same way, with the result of 
 proving that the viscousity of his blood at the end of 
 those days of over-eating, was twenty per cent greater 
 than before. During the next week, the young man ab- 
 stained entirely from meat, and returned to his ordinary 
 diet. At the end of that time, the same amount of blood 
 as before was drawn from his veins, and was tested as 
 before, with the result of showing that it had been freed 
 from its extra twenty per cent of viscousity, and had 
 returned to its former degree of fluidity. 
 
 Any man whose blood is abnormally viscous, incurs 
 thereby a present evil and a future danger. That evil 
 consists in a decided loss of strength and accuracy of 
 mentality ; and that danger consists in special liability 
 to apoplexy, resulting from the bursting of an artery 
 in the brain, on account of extra back pressure, due to 
 the extra difficulty which the heart meets in forcing the 
 viscous blbod through the capillaries into the veins. 
 This is why so many luxurious men have fallen away 
 in mental ability, and why so many of them have sud- 
 denly died. 
 
33 
 
 When the foregoing physiological facts are applied 
 to the case of President Taft, they will indicate much, 
 to those who have witnessed the great change which 
 has taken place in his physical personality during the 
 last four years. During that time, he has lived a very 
 luxurious life, and has taken on so much additional fat, 
 that he now weighs more than three hundred pounds, 
 and probably near four hundred. If he were a private 
 citizen, these facts would not be a proper subject of 
 public comment; but now, when he is urging the people 
 of the United States to trust to him for another four 
 years, the tremendous powers and responsibilities of 
 the presidency, those people are entitled to be told 
 what is his present physical condition, and they are 
 also entitled to be informed why and how that condi- 
 tion must make it dangerous to commit the presidency 
 to him for another term. 
 
 Moreover, the seriousness of this subject is ren- 
 dered still more acute, by the fact that the physicians 
 of Vice-President Sherman have published, within the 
 last few days, a frank account of the fact that he is af- 
 flicted with carditis; which is a rheumatic or gouty dis- 
 ease of the heart, and which is apt to cause certain 
 lesions of the valves of the heart, and thereby put a 
 permanent end to its beating. 
 
 Vice-President Sherman has performed the duties 
 of his office with excellent ability, and without any 
 fault whatever, so far as I could ever see or hear. But 
 there appears to be no reason to hope that he will be 
 able to perform any of those duties during the months 
 which remain of his present term, and no ground to ex- 
 pect that he would ever be able to perform any official 
 work, if he were to be elected for another term, 
 coupled with the duty of succeeding to the presidency, 
 in case it should become vacant durng those four years. 
 
34 
 
 I have been critically reading the writings of Mr. 
 Taft as they have been published from time to time, 
 ever since he became United States Circuit Judge for 
 the Sixth Circuit, twenty years ago. And I believe that 
 the intellectual power of Mr. Taft is far less strong now, 
 than it was before he became President. I have care- 
 fully read an elaborate statement which he gave out to 
 the press on October 6, 1912, relevant to the present 
 presidential campaign. That statement, like his speech 
 of April 25, 1912, in Boston, and like his speech of Au- 
 gust 1, 1912, accepting his renomination for the presi- 
 dency, and like the numerous stump speeches which he 
 made in April and May, 1912, advocating that renomina- 
 tion, is so defective, that it can not endure critical analy- 
 sis. It is evident to me, that his brain has already lost 
 much of its former strength, and that it can not be relied 
 upon to safely guide the multifarious and momentous 
 movements of the presidency, during another term of 
 that magnificent office. 
 
 Park Row Building, Albert H. Walker. 
 
 Manhattan, New York, 
 October 9, 1912.