A conservative handling of National policies, or a radical one was the
question in each case. The November elections indicated a popular revolt
against the party in power--the Republican. Unshaken, President Taft
followed his convictions and in his Presidential message, of December,
1910, to Congress called for a halt in legislating to regulate
corporations, until the effect of the laws on the statute books could be
studied. The stock, money, and industrial markets were marking time. Not
to go forward in business or elsewhere is in itself to retrograde. Thus
opened the year 1911. Under the influence of easy money, better business
on some of the western railroads, better dividend declarations here and
there, a rosy "prediction as to the early future of the iron market, and
the belief that the Interstate Commerce Commission would grant better
rates to the railroads, general business felt encouraged and prices
advanced somewhat. But in February the Interstate Commerce Commission
forbade the railroads any increase whatever in rates. The roads were
obliged to institute many cramping economies which to them very often
meant the using up of their corpus and to the business world of the
United States a permeating retrogressive influence.
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