After a careful search made by the writer through all the evidence submitted by the Government to this end in its suit against the big company, he failed to find one iota of evidence which connected the Corporation with the panic or upheld the charge that it conspired to force the Tennessee stockholders to sell. A man who had been a member of the syndicate that controlled the fortunes of the Tennessee company before it was absorbed and who, if the allegations referred to are correct, was one of those who suffered at the Corporation’s hands, in reply to the question: “Did the Steel Corporation use its power to create the panic of 1907 so as to gain possession of the Tennessee stock?” replied: “Absurd. The charge is baseless--except in politics. The sale of the Tennessee company was an incident arising in the course of the panic, not a cause. The Corporation was offered a chance to get what I consider a valuable property and seized it. But let me tell you,” he added, “the Corporation did not get the property cheap.” And the Supreme Court, in its opinion, said on this subject: “There is, however, an important circumstance in connection with that of the Tennessee Company which is worthy to be noted. It was submitted to President Roosevelt and he gave it his approval. His approval, of course, did not make it legal, but it gives assurance of its legality, and we know from his earnestness in the public welfare he would have approved of nothing that had even a tendency to its detriment. And he testified he was not deceived and that he believed that ‘the Tennessee Coal and Iron people had a property which was almost worthless in their hands, nearly worthless to them, nearly worthless to the communities in which it was situated, and entirely worthless to any financial institution that had the securities the minute that any panic came, and that the only way to give value to it was to put it in the hands of people whose possession of it would be a guarantee that there was value to it.’ Such being the emergency it seems like an extreme accusation to say that the Corporation which relieved it, and, perhaps, rescued the company and the communities dependent upon it from disaster, was urged by unworthy motives.” [Illustration: Mine Stables]