this note in about an hour, and that same morning
he came over, acknowledged its receipt, and said that my answer was the
only proper answer that could have been made, having regard both to
the law and to the needs of the situation. He stated that the legal
situation had been in no way changed, and that no sufficient ground
existed for prosecution of the Steel Corporation. But I acted purely on
my own initiative, and the responsibility for the act was solely mine.

I was intimately acquainted with the situation in New York. The word
"panic" means fear, unreasoning fear; to stop a panic it is necessary
to restore confidence; and at the moment the so-called Morgan interests
were the only interests which retained a full hold on the confidence of
the people of New York--not only the business people, but the immense
mass of men and women who owned small investments or had small savings
in the banks and trust companies. Mr. Morgan and his associates were
of course fighting hard to prevent the loss of confidence and the panic
distrust from increasing to such a degree as to bring any other big
financial institutions down; for this would probably have been followed
by a general, and very likely a worldwide, crash. The Knickerbocker
Trust Company had already failed, and runs had begun on, or were
threatened as regards, two other big trust companies. These companies
were now on the fighting line, and it was to the interest of everybody
to strengthen them, in order that the situation might be saved. It was
a matter of general knowledge and belief that they, or the individuals
prominent in them, held the securities of the Tennessee Coal and Iron
Company, which securities had no market value, and were useless as a
source of strength in the emergency. The Steel Corporation securities,
on the contrary, were immediately marketable, their great value being
known and admitted all over the world--as the event showed. The proposal
of Messrs. Frick and Gary was that the Steel Corporation should at once
acquire the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, and thereby substitute,
among the assets of the threatened institutions (which, by the way,
they did not name to me), securities of great and immediate value for
securities which at the moment were of no value. It was necessary for
me to decide on the instant, before the Stock Exchange opened, for the
situation in New York was such that any hour might be vital, and failure
to act for even an hour mig