The Government felt that its duty required it to push forward the investigation of industrial corporations; and that the Nation so demanded. And it was in October that the chief of such corporations--the United States Steel Trust--had a Government suit for dissolution filed against it. The sturdy bell-wether of the corporation flock was attacked by the great United States Government. What would happen to the humbler members of the flock! Certain court decisions were reassuring to corporations in November and business brightened for the time being and during much of December in certain notable instances, for in that month the Interstate Commerce Commission report appeared and seemed less drastic in tone. The year 1912 opened with an additional influence promising increased alarm and marking of time. I mean that candidates for the Presidential nomination began their canvasses, which, of course, implied new plans for making new laws to govern business conditions. Former President Roosevelt announced his candidacy in February. President Taft was already constructively in the field. Governor Harmon of Ohio was mentioned in many quarters as a successful reformer who wished soundly to guide but not unwittingly injure business, while Underwood was similarly praised in addition to his record on the recasting of the tariff into a further revenue measure. Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was a popular candidate. And Woodrow Wilson loomed up as though forecast by destiny. At first and in many important sections of the country considerably more delegates to the Republican National Presidential Convention were chosen for Mr. Taft than for Mr. Roosevelt. This and brisker business served to hearten conservative interests, and the general market revived despite the decidedly downward influence in our country of the gigantic strike among English coal operators, who thereby spread trouble throughout the British Empire, and, through the solidarity of the financial world to-day, affected every financial centre. The remainder of the year was dominated by the Presidential canvass. Taft, called by many a "stand-patter"; Roosevelt, "the insurgent," who proposed to mend all the troubles of the political public by his usual brusque methods; and Woodrow Wilson, the "conservative with a move on," made their appeals for popular support. Until the verdict in November a see-saw market took place in the United States, while Europe and reflectedly the remainder of the world became alarmed lest the war declared in October by the Balkan States against Turkey should produce world-wide trouble.