Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/220

180 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS the credit of his predecessors since the enactment of the Sherman law. In 1911 the supreme court decided the final ap peals in the Standard Oil and Tobacco trust cases. The opinions rendered, and the dissolution plans adopted thereunder, were bitterly assailed by radical critics in congress and the press, because the court had given what it styled a "reasonable" meaning to the restraint of trade whose prevention was contemplated by the statute ; but the president took pains, wherever he discussed the trust ques tion, to uphold the court by explaining this phrase ology. He also rebuked every confusion of mere size with monopoly, insisting that the natural trend of trade was toward breadth of scale, and that this differed essentially from one concern s absorbing most of the machinery of production in a given line, driving competitors to the wall, and thus lay ing the whole consuming public under tribute. The purpose of congress to embarrass the presi dent was shown in other ways than tariff-baiting. Knowing his repugnance for legislation by indirec tion, it began to load the annual supply bills with obnoxious "riders," so as to compel him, if he would get rid of these, to veto all the appropria tions to which they were attached ; but he accepted every challenge. One such bill would have legis lated out of office the head of the army, and com pelled a reorganization of important branches of