As early as 1887 the Interstate Commerce Act was passed, the earliest considerable attempt to regulate rates and traffic. Then followed anti-trust laws which aimed at the suppression of "pools," in which many large producers or manufacturers combined to sell their staples at a uniform price, a practice which inevitably set up monopolies. The "Trusts" were to these what the elephant is to a colt. When the United States Steel Corporation was formed by uniting eleven large steel plants, with an aggregate capital of $11100,000,000, the American people had an inkling of the magnitude to which Trusts might swell. In like fashion when the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railroads found a legal impediment to their being run by one management, they got round the law by organizing the Northern Securities Company, which was to hold the stocks and bonds of both railroads. And so of many other important industrial and transportation mergers. The most powerful financial promoters of the country, led by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, were busy setting up these combinations on a large scale and the keenest corporation lawyers spent their energy and wits in framing charters which obeyed the letter of the laws, but wholly denied their spirit. President Roosevelt worked openly, with a definite purpose. First, he would enforce every law on the statute book, without exception in favor of any individual or company; next, he suggested to Congress the need of new legislation to resist further encroachments by capitalists in the fields where they had already been checked; finally, he pointed out that Congress must begin at once to protect the national resources which had been allowed to go to waste, or to be seized and exploited by private concerns. I do not intend to take up in chronological sequence, or in detail, Roosevelt's battles to secure proper legislation. To do so would require the discussion of legal and constitutional questions, which would scarcely fit a sketch like the present. The main things to know are the general nature of his reforms and his own attitude in conducting the fight. He aimed directly at stopping abuses which gave a privileged few undue advantage in amassing and distributing wealth. The practical result of the laws was to spread justice, and equality throughout the country and to restore thereby the true spirit of Democracy on which the Founders created the Republic. He fought fairly, but warily, never letting slip a point that would tell against his opponents, who, it must be said, did not always attack him honorably.