At home he recommended to Congress legislation which was directed toward a larger control of the railroads and to removing the privileges and curbing the power of great business combinations obtained through rebates and preferential freight rates. This legislation led to opposition in Congress and to much resistance by those affected. As we look back, this legislation, so much contested at the time, seems very moderate, but it was none the less momentous. President Roosevelt never believed in Government ownership, but he was thoroughly in favor of strong and effective Government supervision and regulation of what are now known generally as public utilities. He had a deep conviction that the political influence of financial and business interests and of great combinations of capital had become so great that the American people were beginning to distrust their own Government, than which there could be no greater peril to the Republic. By his measures, and by his general attitude toward capital and labor both, he sought to restore and maintain the confidence of the people in the Government they had themselves created. In the Panama Canal he left the most enduring, as it was the most visible, monument of his administration Much criticized at the moment for his action in regard to it, which time since then has justified and which history will praise, the great fact remains that the canal is there. He said himself that he made up his mind that it was his duty to establish the canal and have the debate about it afterwards, which seemed to him better than to begin with indefinite debate and have no canal at all. This is a view which posterity both at home and abroad will accept and approve. These, passing over as we must in silence many other beneficent acts, are only a few of the most salient features of his administration, stripped of all detail and all enlargement. Despite the conflict which some of his domestic policies had produce not only with his political opponents but within the Republican ranks, he was overwhelmingly reelected in 1904, and when the seven years had closed the country gave a like majority to his chosen successor, taken from his own Cabinet. On the 4th of March, 1909, he returned to private life at the age of fifty, having been the youngest President known to our history.