He actually hated the nickname,
but didn't mind people using his initials, "TR."
March 14, 1904: The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its ruling in Northern Securities Company v. United States. It rules that the formation of the plaintiff was illegal.
The Northern Securities Company was a short-lived American railroad trust, formed in 1901 by E.H. Harriman of the Northern Pacific Railway, father of future Governor Averell Harriman of New York; James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway; and J.P. Morgan of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. It was capitalized at $400 million, and Hill served as president.
The U.S. Department of Justice, pushed by President Theodore Roosevelt, sued the company in 1902, under the Sherman Antitrust Act. It was one of the first antitrust cases filed against corporate interests instead of labor. The government won its case, and the company was dissolved, so that the three railroads again operated independently.
It was a close vote, 5-4. Justices John Marshall Harlan, David J. Brewer, Henry B. Brown, Joseph McKenna and William R. Day made the majority opinion. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Edward D. White each wrote a dissent, and were joined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Rufus Peckham.
Nevertheless, it was one of several actions that Roosevelt took that earned him the nickname "The Trust-Buster." In a 1905 speech in Memphis, he said, "This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country."
As it turned out, his successor, William Howard Taft, for all his conservatism -- and for all of TR's eventual criticism of him -- used the power of the federal government to break up more trusts in his 4 years in office than TR did in his 7.
Holmes was both the last serving Justice from the Northern Securities case, serving until 1932; and the last surviving Justice, living until 1935.
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March 14, 1904 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. Basketball barely existed. And the Ottawa Silver Seven had already defended the Stanley Cup. So there were no scores on this historic day.
