The trust creators extended their operations abroad. In 1901 J. Pierpont Morgan and associates acquired the Leyland line of Atlantic steamships. British nerves had not recovered tone when a steamship combination, embracing not only American and British but also German lines and ship-building firms at Belfast and on the Clyde was announced. Of the great Atlantic companies, only the Cunard line remained independent. Parliamentary and ministerial assurances of governmental attention only emphasized the strength of the association. [Illustration: Portrait.] Copyright, 1901. by Pach Bros., N. Y: J. Pierpont Morgan. One effect of this organization at home was to place the Ship Subsidy Bill, which passed the Senate in 1901, for the time, at least, on the table. The sentiment of the country, especially of the Middle West, would not permit the payment of public money to a concern commercially able to defy Britannia on the sea. The Yankee Peril confronted Londoners when they saw American capital securing control of their proposed underground transit system. At their tables they beheld the output of food trusts. One of these, the so-called Beef Trust, called down upon itself in 1902 domestic as well as foreign anathema. The failure of the corn crop in 1900, together with a scarcity of cattle, tended to raise the price of beef. In 1902 outcry became emphatic. Advance in meat values drew forcibly to view the control held by six slaughtering concerns acting in unison. The President ordered an investigation, and, as a result, proceedings under the Sherman Act to restrain the great packers from continuing their alleged combination. A temporary injunction was granted. The slow machinery of chancery bade fair to work out a decree, but long before it was on record, alert spirits among the packing firms evolved a new plan not obnoxious to decrees, but effective for union. If the public suffered from these phalanxed industries while they ran smoothly, it endured peculiar evils from the periodical conflicts between the capital and the labor engaged in them. The Steel Strike of 1901 was a conflict over the unionizing of certain hitherto non-union plants of the United States Steel Corporation. It resulted in defeat for the strikers and in the disunionizing of plants. [Illustration: Two officers standing in front of a rail car.] Col. Clements. Gen. Gobin, commanding troops sent to Shenandoah in the coal strike of 1902. This strike had no such consequences for the consuming public as attended the anthracite coal strike of 1902, which was more bitterly fought in that it was a conflict over wages. The standard of living had been lowered in one of the coal-fields by the introduction of cheap foreign labor. Now the same process threatened the other coal-field.