On the Verge of Leaving the White House, President William H. Taft Praises His Attorney General For Achieving His Antitrust Successes, Which Were Taft’s Greatest Legacy

“You and the Court have worked out the trust question. And all quietly while demagogues and theorists were making the welkin [heavens] ring with fatuous proposals for change…No other record has been equal to yours in the Department of Justice.”.

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When Taft entered the White House, his broad intention of providing more efficient administration for existing reform policies was perfectly suited for the prosecution of antitrust violations. More trust prosecutions (99, in all) occurred under Taft than under Theodore Roosevelt, who was known as the “Great Trust-Buster.” The two most famous antitrust...

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On the Verge of Leaving the White House, President William H. Taft Praises His Attorney General For Achieving His Antitrust Successes, Which Were Taft’s Greatest Legacy

“You and the Court have worked out the trust question. And all quietly while demagogues and theorists were making the welkin [heavens] ring with fatuous proposals for change…No other record has been equal to yours in the Department of Justice.”.

When Taft entered the White House, his broad intention of providing more efficient administration for existing reform policies was perfectly suited for the prosecution of antitrust violations. More trust prosecutions (99, in all) occurred under Taft than under Theodore Roosevelt, who was known as the “Great Trust-Buster.” The two most famous antitrust cases under the Taft Administration, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the American Tobacco Company, were actually begun during the Roosevelt years. He also won a lawsuit against the American Sugar Refining Company to break up the “sugar trust” that rigged prices. His antitrust successes are generally considered Taft’s greatest accomplishment as President. By 1911, however, Taft began to back away from his antitrust efforts, stung by the criticism of his conservative business supporters and personal friends and unsure about the long-range effect of trust-busting on the national economy. This raised the ire of Theodore Roosevelt and had much to do with his deciding to mount a challenge to Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination for president.

President Taft appointed George Wickersham U.S. Attorney General in March 1909, and Wickersham remained in that post throughout Taft’s term of office. Wickersham helped draft the sixteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1913, that authorized Congress to levy an income tax. He concentrated his efforts on prosecuting monopolistic corporations for antitrust violations under the Sherman Act. In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, and other important antitrust cases, he personally participated in the oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. Wickersham also became the first attorney general to use consent decrees, which allow defendants to agree to negotiated settlements, without resort to court trials. Nineteen of forty-seven suits begun by Wickersham ended in such decrees. Charles Nagel, also mentioned in this letter, was Taft’s Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

Taft lost the 1912 election, and as 1913 dawned, he was preparing to leave office on March 4. His cabinet members were already giving him farewell gifts (such as the writings of Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton), and Taft was already retrospectively looking at his accomplishments and thanking the men who helped make them possible. Foremost among these was Wickersham, who had carried the ball in implementing Taft’s antitrust policies, and achieved the important antitrust successes which would be Taft’s foremost legacy.

Autograph letter signed as President, on White House letterhead, Washington, January 3, 1913, to Wickersham, whom he addresses as “My Dear George”, praising his work and saying he has been the country’s greatest attorney general. “I thank you sincerely for Lincoln’s works. I intend to read them in my coming leisure. Nagel gave me Hamilton’s so that my cabinet are preparing my political education. I shall greatly regret the ending of our close official relation. It is a peculiar pleasure for me to feel that you have gone on in your work in the face of the loudest denunciation and have wrung from your bitterest opponents either a sullen but significant silence or an open confession that no other record has been equal to yours in the Department of Justice. You and the Court have worked out the trust question. And all quietly while demagogues and theorists were making the welkin [heavens] ring with fatuous proposals for change. With warmest wishes for a happy journey around the world and a safe return.”

A very uncommon letter of a sitting president to a member of his cabinet, and dealing directly with his antitrust accomplishments, clearly the finest Taft presidential letter we can ever recall having seen.

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