THE RIGHT OF CONGRESS TO CONTROL THE 



TRUSTS. 



BY PHILANDER C. KNOX. 



[Philander C. Knox, United States senator from Pennsylvania; born Brownsville, Pa., 

 May 4, 1853; graduated Mount Union college, O., 1872; three years later admitted 

 to bar, and in 1876 appointed United States district attorney for the western district 

 of Pennsylvania; since 1877 has practiced law with James H. Reed, under thefirm 

 name of Knox & Reed, devoting attention especially to corporation law; appointed 

 attorney general of United States April 9, 1901, by President McKinley; elected 

 senator from Pennsylvania, 1904.] 



The people by common consent have denominated the 

 great industrial and other corporations now controlling many 

 branches of commercial business, trusts. The technical accu- 

 racy of the term is unimportant, but indeed it is much more 

 apt than might be supposed, when it is recalled that the essen- 

 tial difference between the old industrial trusts and the 

 great corporations owning and controlling subsidiary ones is 

 that in respect to the former the shares of independent 

 corporations agreeing to act in harmony were lodged with a 

 trustee who received the separate earnings and distributed 

 them among the holders of trust certificates, while as to the 

 latter, a corporation is created to take over the title to the 

 stock or properties of the constituent companies and issue its 

 own shares as the evidence of interest in the combination. The 

 corporation owner of corporations invokes specific legal 

 authority from the legislature of the state under which it is 

 created. 



President Roosevelt, in his first message to congress, said : 

 There is a widespread, settled conviction in the minds of 

 the American people that these trusts are, in many of their 

 features and tendencies, hurtful to the general welfare. This 

 springs from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of 

 pride in the great industrial achievements that have placed 

 the country at the head of the nations struggling for commer- 

 cial supremacy. It does not rest upon a lack of intelligent 

 appreciation of the necessity of meeting changing and changed 



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