The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-04
''HOW ABOUT PANIC OF 1907,?" ASKS
 AMOS P|NCHOT
U. $. Steel and Tennessee
 Coal and Iron Cases Recalled.
(By Amos Pinchot.)

| Theodore Roosevelt attacks Presi- dent Wilson for the Eight Hour Day law that averted a nationwide tran sportation strike, branding it as a spineless surrender to the blackmail of organized labor.
 What then, of that early morning of November A., 1907, when H. C. Prick and E. H. Gary rushed in upon President Roosevelt, and under threat of panic, demanded that the United States Steel Corporation be given free hand to violate law and decency alike? Does MT. Roosevelt think that the people have forgotten the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company case? Or that he explained his action in letting the
 Steel Corporation crush and absorb the one competitor that menaced it's monopoly by claiming that he did it to avert a panic?
 As matter of fact, the panic was
 on and had been on for months, ruin ing thousands in it's terrible sweep from coast to coast. It was on Oc- | tober 24. 1907, to be exact, that Pres ident Roosevelt turned the United States Treasury over to J. P. Morgan,
 and his deal with Gary and Prick
 came eleven days later.
 Investigations have made the facts
 stand clear. The Tennessee Coal and
 Iron Company made rails twice as good as United States Steel rails, and
 was getting the business. A year and
 a half before the merger. Vice-Pres- ident Rope of the Carnegie Steel Company, the largest subsidiary of the
 Steel Corporation, informed his fellow diroctors ovoc,1fiuo SoSSion the
 minutes of which were subsequently,
 disclosed, that the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company was making an open hearth rail which was twice as good
 as the Bessemer rail and the Tennes-,
 see Coal and Iron Company was a
 dangerous rival. This expert opin- ion was borne out by Professor Burg
 land, who said in his monograph on
 the Steel Corporation that the acqui-
 sition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company was a matter of life and
 death to the trust. Also in June fol- lowing the merger, Frank Mupsey, in
 an article in Munseys Magazine,
 which was O'K'd by Judge Gary, esti-
 mated the mineral deposits alone of the T. c. & I. Company at $20O.0O0,- 900. The Steel Corporation having bought the whole property for $50, O0O,0O0.
 The panic of 1907, brought about a frenzied finance, gave the monop- oly it's opportunity. Even the sight of the country in ruin did not move the financiers from their purpose. At goven moment the United States Steel Corporation sprung it's trap, and captured the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company.
 But the law forbade the merger.
 There was the Department of Justice to fear. So Prick and Gary, flying to Washington by special train, won from President Roosevelt solemn
 proShise not to prosecute.
 Four years later, when Democratic House forced President Taft to order
 the prosecution of the Steel Trust, the, Government was compelled to al- lege that MT. Roosevelt had been de- ceived by Gary and Prick.
 There is no question as to the ex- tent of the disaster that President Wilson averted, for national trans portation strike would have destroyed industry. And he aXerted it by the enactment into law of a principle in which he believed and of which socie- ty approves.
 To "avert a panic that had already
 prostrated the nation, and to give the
 Steel Corporation it's opportunity,
 President Roosevelt set law aside, and
 gave full power of extortion to a great
 monopoly.
 Which was the ''spineless surrender
 to blackmail?" The Wilson law that
 gave justice to labor, or the Roose-
 welt lawlessness that turned people over to loot?