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