The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-06-16

not ot-gospel orator in American poiiticfs who has done the corporation
 tithe of the injury Philander c. Knox has meted out to them.
 Next to a capable and an honest editor of newspaper, capable and an honest lawyer is the most valuable citizen of an American community MT. Knox was such a lawyer. He became the president of the Pennsylvania bar association. and that evidenced the esteem in which he was held by the bar of the State of Jeremiah s. Black, William B. Read, and the great Judge Gibson He was actively engaged in the practice when William Mckinley sought him out and brought him into the Cabinet as Attorney General of the United States in 1901. He continued
 In that office under President Roose-
 welt until Pennsylvania sent him to the Senate to fill the vacancy occasioned
 by the death of Matthew s. Quay
 And, as Attorney General Philander c. Knox gained the greatest triumph in the Supreme Court that ever came to any American lawyers. He busted the biggest trust ever organized to monopolize the business of transporta- ton in the United States or elsewhere. He met and overcame the strongest array of corporation lawyers ever brought together to plead a single cause. The issue was more momentious
 than that involved in the Dartmouth case, and, like that, the judgment long wavered in the balance. It was a divided court, and the judgment was for the government by a vote of five to four, and one of the majority, so report speaketh. intimated that he could not be depended on to do it again
 The day that Judgment was rendered in the Supreme Court dissolving the great mearger of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads. Philander C.. Knox became Presidential timber, and observing men have never left him out of the calculation when contemplating the Presidential succession of 1908. When John Sherman made the anti trust law he declared that it was all the Constitution would stand. At that time most Democrats thoubht 1t was more than the Constitu ion could stand. A quarter of century ago a search warrant would not have discovered single Democrat who would have pro- nounced the thing constitutional MT. Cleveland did not believe 1t constitu- tional The three Democratic Judges on the Supreme Bench decided against the contention of Knox when the judg- ment was made. It Is the most radical sort of government by construction, and If persisted in and carried to US logical conclusion 1t is but question of time when the reserved sovereignty of the States will be utterly an- initiated. But it is the only wear now, and the leaders of the two parties Roosevelt and Bryan-are convinced
 that 1t is not at all drastic enough.
 Be that as it may, history records
 that John Sherman and Philander C.
 Knox are our greatest trust busters Sherman made the gun Knox loaded and fired it and put J Pierpont Morgan and James J. Hill in his game bag Look at this partial list of MT. Knox's predecessors as the head of the law department of the Union: Edmund Randolph. Theophilus Parsons. John Breckinridge. William Pinkney, William Wirt, Roger B. Fancy. Felix Grundy, John J. Crittenden, Nathan Clifford, Reverdy Johnson, Caleb Cushing, Jeremiah S. Black. Edward Bates, Henry Stanberry, William M Evarts,
 Ebenezer R. Hoar Alphonso Taft,
 Wayne MacVeagh Benjamin H. Brew ster, Augustus H. Garland, Richard Olney, and Judson Harmon. Not one of these ever conducted so important a case as did Knox. and not one ever achieved so great legal triumph
 The decision in the merger case vital ized the antitrust law and augmented the power of the Federal establishment. MT Knox put the machinery in motion in numerious circuits, and the octopus was chased from Dan to Beersheba. Every conviction since the merger de- cision Is to the credit of Knox, who made the thing possible by his splendid mana agement of the Great Northern Securities case. When Matt Quay died, Pennsylvania hustled round for a real statesman to represent her in the Senate. and she chose Knox. who resigned from the Cabinet in 1904 to accept the Senatorship. He took his seat December of that year, and his term will expire in 1911.
 When Congress assembled in Decem
 Der, 1905, the President insisted on chase of the railroad octopus, and the rate bill was fetched into the House of Representatives and jammed through that body without anybody knowing or caring what 1t was. The Senate took it up and the country was in hot water for weeks Then 1t was that the Republicans separated into progress ives and mollycoddles. The Democrats, under the lead of Bailey and Tinman, went to the rescue of the President. Indeed. Tillman was in charge of the chase There was a great debate, the greatest the Senate had heard in years Perhaps Bailey's speech has not been equaled as constitutional argu- ment since Calhoun and Webster. Spooner was foeman worthy his steel and Foraker put the country in mind of the Senates of our golden age of forensic eloquence, and Daniel did as well.
 After months of debate it became apparent that no bill could pass that Senator Aldrish found fault with, Now it was that Knox took the floor and made speech that was only cumulative testimony of his great capacity as a constitutional lawyer; but he did more He saved the bill and refdered incalculable service to the Republican party
 Knox was the real author of the Allison paper that drought Roosevelt out of the Democratic camp and put him at the head of the Republican chasers Bailey and Tillman were erAaged. One would have thought that red-hot. jumping critters. diamond back rattlesnakes, brasshead snapping turtles. and sich had been turned loose on the Democratic side, while a chapter of the Knights of Ananias was has tilv Convoked at the White House and a bunch of new candidates invested with the badge of that order-all be-