Reductions in
railroad dividends were symptomatic of that. To add to all this there
developed additional business unrest predicated in the general tariff
change favored by the House of Representatives in April.
The United States Supreme Court decision interpreting the Sherman
Anti-Trust Law of 1890 as affecting the Standard Oil Company case and
the American Tobacco Company case were delivered late in May and were
unexpectedly reassuring to business. This was another evidence that the
best thought of the Nation everywhere was seeking to rectify the
looseness of the past without killing business initiative and continued
endeavor. So matters see-sawed in the business world. It was indeed in a
state of unstable equilibrum. Stocks declined now abruptly; then, after
some slight recovery, gently; but the slant was decidedly downward.
The Government felt that its duty required it to push forward the
investigation of industrial corporations; and that the Nation so
demanded. And it was in October that the chief of such corporations--the
United States Steel Trust--had a Government suit for dissolution filed
against it. The sturdy bell-wether of the corporation flock was attacked
by the great United States Government.
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