ven years. The two most famous trust cases, next to the
Northern Securities case and even surpassing it in popular interest,
because of the stupendous size of the corporations involved, were those
against the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company. These
companion cases were not finally decided in the Supreme Court until the
Administration of President Taft; but their prosecution was begun while
Roosevelt was in office and by his direction. They were therefore
a definite part of his campaign for the solution of the vexed trust
problem. Both cases were decided, by every court through which they
passed, in favor of the Government. The Supreme Court finally in 1911
decreed that both the Standard Oil and the Tobacco trusts were in
violation of the Sherman act and ordered their dissolution. There could
now no longer be any question that the Government could in fact exercise
its sovereign will over even the greatest and the most powerful of
modern business organizations.

The two cases had one other deep significance which at first blush
looked like a weakening of the force of the anti-trust law but which was
in reality a strengthening of it. There had been long and ardent debate
whether the Sherman act should be held to apply to all restraints of
trade or only to such as were unreasonable. It was held by some that it
applied to ALL restraints and therefore should be amended to cover only
unreasonable restraints. It was held by others that it applied to all
restraints and properly so. It was held by still others that it applied
only to unreasonable restraints. But the matter had never been decided
by competent authority. The decision of the Supreme Court in these two
outstanding cases, however, put an end to the previous uncertainty.
Chief Justice White, in his two opinions, laid it down with definiteness
that in construing and applying the law recourse must be had to the
"rule of reason." He made clear the conviction of the court that it was
"undue" restraints of trade which the law forbade and not incidental or
inconsiderable ones. This definitive interpretation of the law, while
it caused considerable criticism at the moment, in ultimate effect so
cleared the air about the Sherman act as effectually to dispose of
the demands for its amendment in the direction of greater leniency or
severity.

But the proving of the anti-trust law as an effective weapon against the
flagrantly offending trusts, according to R