Hearings before a Special Examiner were ordered and these began in New York early in 1912. Many months were consumed in the hearing of testimony on either side, and it was not until the spring of 1914 that the last of the witnesses was examined. Among those called to testify were former President Roosevelt; prominent steel men like John A. Topping, E. C. Felton, Joseph G. Butler, Willis L. King, Charles M. Schwab, James R. Bowron, Frank S. Witherbee, W. H. Donner, A. F. Huston, Edwin R. Crawford, A. W. Thompson, Karl G. Roebling, James A. Campbell, C. W. Bray, W. W. Lukens, John Stevenson, Jr., and a host of others; prominent economists like Professor Jeremiah Jenks and Dr. Francis Walker; financiers like Oakleigh Thorne, of the Trust Co. of America, George M. Reynolds, and others; directors of the Corporation including Judge Gary, James A. Farrell, J. H. Reed, Percival Roberts, Jr., Daniel Reid, and so on, not to mention a vast array of railroad purchasing agents, heads of large steel-consuming companies, and many others among whom may be mentioned James R. Garfield and Lewis Cass Ledyard. A large part of the testimony was devoted to events far preceding the organization of the Corporation, it being the intent of the government counsel to show that not only was the Corporation restraining trade but that the very elements of which it was composed, the companies absorbed by the great merger, were themselves organized in violation of the law. As the hearings progressed the conviction that the Corporation would emerge from the ordeal of prosecution successfully became more prevalent, the evidence, to the lay mind, all supporting its denial of any violation of the law. The witnesses called for the defence were unanimous in declaring that the big company, far from restraining competition, had fostered it, and this point, in effect, was the very nub of the matter. Even the witnesses for the prosecution, many of them, took the same attitude. It was in listening to this testimony, or the greater part of it, that the writer conceived the idea of recording the history of the great Corporation. Here was a mass of data, the sworn statements of prominent and reliable business men, a foundation that could not be excelled for a work of this character. From this mass of evidence, in large part, have been taken the facts stated in this history. The records in the dissolution suit, in fact, contain the whole story of the Corporation up to the year 1911. Hence it would be vain to review in detail all the testimony here.