crisis confronted him. His decision was instantaneous. He assured
his callers that while, of course, he could not advise them to
take the action, proposed, he felt that he had no public duty to
interpose any objection.

This assurance was quite sufficient. The pure chase was made and
announced, the firm in question did not fail, and the panic was
arrested. The immediate reaction of practically the whole country
was one of relief. It was only later, when the danger was past,
that critics began to make themselves heard. Any one who had
taken the trouble to ascertain the facts would have known beyond
question that the acquisition of the Tennessee properties was not
sufficient to change the status of the Steel Corporation under
the anti-trust law. But the critics did not want to know the
facts. They wanted--most of them, at least--to have a stick with
which to beat Roosevelt. Besides, many of them did not hold
Roosevelt's views about the square deal. Their belief was that
whatever big business did was ipso facto evil and that it was the
duty of public officials to find out what big business wanted to
do and then prevent its accomplishment.

Under a later Administration, Roosevelt was invited to come
before a Congressional investigating committee to explain what he
did in this famous case. There he told the complete story of the
occurrence simply, frankly, and emphatically, and ended with this
statement: "If I were on a sailboat, I should not ordinarily
meddle with any of the gear; but if a sudden squall struck us,
and the main sheet jammed, so that the boat threatened to
capsize, I would unhesitatingly cut the main sheet, even though I
were sure that the owner, no matter how grateful to me at the