An immensity from its conception, an undertaking so vast that its actions and policies, good or ill, reflected their results for the industrial weal or woe, not of a single community but of the whole American people; conceived and born, further, at a period when the thoughts of the nation were directed toward the menace that was believed to exist in trusts against the body politic and when politicians and economists were bending their energies toward a study of the question of big business, it was but natural that investigations of one kind or another, but all directed toward the one end of finding out whether the big company’s existence was a danger to the country or not, should have played an important part in the history of the United States Steel Corporation. While United States Steel, its actions and its policies, have earned the commendation of thoughtful students--perhaps even the majority of the public, and many public speakers and writers have expressed this, probably no other organization has enjoyed or been subjected to so much--and generally such unconsidered--criticism as has the Steel Corporation. Even the Standard Oil and the American Tobacco companies, big and prominent as they were and as much as they have been attacked for their methods of eliminating competition, have failed to strike the public imagination as forcibly as the so-called Steel Trust. There were two main reasons for this. To the mind of the student of economics the activities of the Steel Corporation bore more importance to the public welfare because of the part that steel plays in making or unmaking the prosperity of the country, the importance of iron as one of the resources of the nation. The steel trade is the industrial barometer of the country and this is because steel enters into almost every line of activity. So far as the public was concerned the very size of the Corporation constituted its weakness. Its billion-dollar capitalization captivated the imagination, compelled attention. What men do not understand they are apt to fear, and how many can understand the import of such a vast sum? As the majority opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court says:--“The Corporation undoubtedly is of impressive size and it takes an effort of resolution not to be affected by it or to exaggerate its influence.” And because it was so easy to inflame the public imagination with the very mention of the “Steel Trust,” the Corporation became a shining mark for the attacks of demagogues who recognized in it an excellent net for snaring votes.