[In the course of his editorial last week on "The Trusts, the People, and the Square Deal" Mr. Roosevelt wrote as follows:

Where, as in the case of the Standard Oil, and especially the Tobacco, trusts, the corporation has been guilty of immoral and anti-social practices, there is need for far more drastic and thoroughgoing action than any that has been taken, under the recent decree of the Supreme Court. In the case of the Tobacco Trust, for instance, the settlement in the Circuit Court, in which the representatives of the Government seem inclined to concur, practically leaves all of the companies still substantially under the control of the twenty-nine original defendants. Such a result is lamentable from the standpoint of justice. The decision of the Circuit Court, if allowed to stand, means that the Tobacco Trust has merely been obliged to change its clothes, that none of the real offenders have received any real punishment, while, as the New York "Times," a pro-trust paper, says, the tobacco concerns, in their new clothes, are in positions of "ease and luxury," and "immune from prosecution under the law."

Surely, miscarriage of justice is not too strong a term to apply to such a result when considered in connection with what the Supreme Court Isaid of this Trust.

In respect to this, a citizen of New York who, by training, ability, and position, is peculiarly competent to express his opinion on the matter, has written Mr. Roosevelt a letter. We here print this letter, with Mr. Roosevelt's comment upon it.—THE EDITORS.]

Dear Colonel Roosevelt:

I have seen the article in this week's Outlook entitled "The Trusts, the People, and the Square Deal," and it seems to me that the implication that the Circuit Court is responsible for the failure to break up the community of ownership feature in the new tobacco companies needs a little supplementing.

The decree of the Circuit Court in the Standard Oil Case distributed the stock of the constituent companies pro rata, so that they were owned in the same proportion as the original stock, and that decree the Supreme Court affirmed. It is true that the Government did not appeal in that case, but the Supreme Court evidently did not consider itself limited thereby, because in discussing the relief to be granted the Court said it was necessary to examine that afforded by the lower court "in order to fix how far it is necessary to take from or add to that relief to the end that the prohibitions of the statute may have complete and operative force." (Italics mine.) And thereupon the Supreme Court approved the decree which necessarily resulted in a community of ownership. So in the Northern Securities Case a pro rata distribution was approved by the Supreme Court, although the subject was not discussed at any length. And upon the Tobacco hearing the Attorney-General stated in open court that, in

view of these decisions, he felt that he could make no objection to the plan upon the ground of community of ownership, but desired the matter held open for five years.

The Standard Oil decision of the Supreme Court, together with the position of the AttorneyGeneral, concluded the Circuit Court in the Tobacco Case, except upon the proposal of the Attorney-General for a provision holding open the reorganization for five years. Upon that point the Court was not bound by the authority of the Supreme Court, but its decision cannot be said to have in any sense approved of the feature of community of ownership, except in so far as the individual opinions of the several judges may be thought so to indicate. Faithfully yours,

To my mind the vital point to be considered, from the standpoint of constructive treatment of the Trust problem, is not whether the Circuit Court might (or might not) possibly have made its treatment of the Tobacco Trust slightly more drastic, but the fact that it has now been proved beyond possibility of doubt that the Anti-Trust Law by itself does not give, and cannot be made to give, anything even approaching a fairly complete solution of the Trust question. To try to settle the problem merely by lawsuits, and to seek to impose on the courts utterly alien duties of an administrative character, is to insure failure.

A distinguished United States Judge, in writing to me on this same article, concludes with the following words:

The courts ought as far as possible to be relieved from the task of regulating the Trusts. It is not their business. They suffer in the process. It is of first importance that the courts shall be universally respected. So long as their work is confined to doing justice between man and man it is not difficult for them to retain the general respect of the community and to deserve it. Whenever they are called on to do other things they are likely to lose it, and to some extent deserve to lose it. They fail when they are called on to pass upon questions of governmental policy precisely as they have always failed when they have been given many offices to fill. They fail because they are merely ordinary men and they are put at work for which their judicial training probably makes them, if anything, a little less fit than the ordinary man.

What is needed is the creation of a Federal administrative body with full power to do for ordinary inter-State industrial business carried on on a large scale what the Inter-State Commerce Commission now does for inter-State transportation business.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.