aires in Wall Street, but among
the selected few were names to be conjured with, such as Andrew
Carnegie and Henry C. Frick. Whether President McKinley's interest
in Knox was spontaneous or prompted by Mr. Frick I do not know. Mr.
Knox likes to believe that Mr. Frick did not enter into the
equation. Mr. Knox declined, saying that he could not sacrifice his
lucrative practice but that in four years he would accept the
invitation if the President cared to renew it.

It was renewed. At the age of forty-six, Mr. Knox quit the bar for
politics, or, as he would say, statecraft. His appointment evoked a
storm of protest from such immaculate journals as the New York
World. They dubbed him, "Frick's man," and predicted that the
Department of Justice would be turned into a Wall Street anteroom
for the convenience of the capitalistic combinations then flouting
the Sherman anti-trust law. The charges, of course, were as wide of
the mark as most of the ebullitions of the yellow journals.

Mr. Knox began his public career by attacking the Northern
Securities merger, against the judgment of some of the highest-paid
lawyers of the country. The Supreme Court sustained him. It was the
greatest victory the government ever won under the Sherman law.
Thereafter Mr. Knox, who had been labeled a corporation lawyer, was
proclaimed a trust buster. By the time he was fifty he had become
the greatest Attorney General in a half century. Certainly the mark
he set has never been reached by any of his successors.

When Mr. Roosevelt came into the White House Mr. Knox was at the
pinnacle of his career and was as much admired by his new chief as
by his martyred predecessor. In ability Mr. Roosevelt considered
him next to Elihu Root, for which Mr. Root was never quite
forgiven. It is generally known that President Roosevelt believed
that Mr. Root was the best qualified man in the country to succeed
him, but at the same time, being an astute politician, he knew that
he could not be elected. His attitude to his Secretary of State was
the same as Senator Lodge's toward himself, when he said in 1920:
"I know that I would make an excellent President, but I realize
that I would make a poor candidate."

Root being out of it because of this obvious defect, President
Roosevelt proceeded to groom Mr. Knox for the nomination. Mr. Knox
at the President's suggestion, prepared and delivered several
speeches in the hope that he would awaken popular enthusiasm. Th