some and regulating the output of others, were making every
effort to restrict production, control prices, and monopolize the
business." It was obviously necessary that the Sherman act,
unless it were to pass into innocuous desuetude, should have the
original vigor intended by Congress restored to it by a new
interpretation of the law on the part of the Supreme Court.
Fortunately an opportunity for such a change presented itself
with promptness. A small group of powerful financiers had
arranged to take control of practically the entire system of
railways in the Northwest, "possibly," Roosevelt has said, "as
the first step toward controlling the entire railway system of
the country." They had brought this about by organizing the
Northern Securities Company to hold the majority of the stock of
two competing railways, the Great Northern and the Northern
Pacific. At the direction of President Roosevelt, suit was
brought by the Government to prevent the merger. The defendants
relied for protection upon the immunity afforded by the decision
in the Knight case. But the Supreme Court now took more advanced
ground, decreed that the Northern Securities Company was an
illegal combination, and ordered its dissolution.

By the successful prosecution of this case the Sherman act was
made once more a potentially valuable instrument for the
prevention of the more flagrant evils that flow from
"combinations in restraint of trade." During the remaining years
of the Roosevelt Administrations, this legal instrument was used
with aggressive force for the purpose for which it was intended.
In seven years and a half, forty-four prosecutions were brought
under it by the Government, as compared with eighteen in the
preceding eleven years. The two most famous trust cases, next to