I saw I had ruined my reputation as the Joan of Arc of the oil industry, as some one had named me. But there were hard-headed independent legislators and business men in the state who consoled me, “You are right, we must learn to do business as well as they do.” One immediate national effect of the Kansas disturbance was to arouse the legislatures of other oil-producing states in the Southwest to enact laws not unlike those of Kansas, though I do not remember that a state refinery was sponsored anywhere else. There was a wide demand that Congress place the pipe-line system under the Interstate Commerce Commission, subject it to the same restrictions as interstate rails, but most important was the fine popular backing the row gave the trust-busting campaign of Theodore Roosevelt, now President of the United States. He had begun his attack on big business by putting an end to the first great holding company the country had seen—the Northern Securities Company. He had followed this by a bill establishing a department for which people had been asking for a decade or more, that of Commerce and Labor, including a Bureau of Corporations with power to examine books and question personnel. Congress at first shied at the measure, but Mr. Roosevelt thundered, “If you do not pass it this session I will call an extra session.” And they knew he would. Ironically enough it was the Standard itself that broke the reluctance of Congress. The proposal had shocked it out of its usual discretion. There never was an organization in the country which held secrecy more essential to doing business. Breaking down the walls behind which it operated was not to be tolerated. It seems to have been the peppery John Archbold who took charge of the fight against the bill, using all the political influence of the company, which was considerable at that moment. Roosevelt soon learned something of what was going on—it is not certain how much; and when he saw his measure in danger he gave out the statement that John D. Rockefeller had wired his friends in the Senate, “We are opposed to any antitrust legislation—it must be stopped.” The last thing in the world that John D. Rockefeller would have done was to send such a telegram to anybody. Probably Mr. Roosevelt knew that; but somebody in the Standard was passing on such a word, and Mr. Rockefeller was the responsible head of the organization. His name did the work. Congress passed the bill in a hurry. The Bureau of Corporations was speedily set up, an excellent man at its head—James Garfield. The first task assigned it by the President was an investigation of the petroleum industry.