But the Supreme Court in its decree
dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the
severest language for moral turpitude; and an even severer need of
condemnation should be visited on the Sugar Trust.
However, all the trusts and big corporations against which we
proceeded--which included in their directorates practically all the
biggest financiers in the country--joined in making the bitterest
assaults on me and on my Administration. Of their actions I wrote as
follows to Attorney-General Bonaparte, who had been a peculiarly close
friend and adviser through the period covered by my public life in high
office and who, together with Attorney-General Moody, possessed the same
understanding sympathy with my social and industrial program that
was possessed by such officials as Straus, Garfield, H. K. Smith, and
Pinchot. The letter runs:
January 2, 1908.
My dear Bonaparte:
I must congratulate you on your admirable speech at Chicago. You said
the very things it was good to say at this time. What you said bore
especial weight because it represented what you had done. You have shown
by what you have actually accomplished that the law is enforced against
the wealthiest corporation, and the richest and most powerful manager
or manipulator of that corporation, just as resolutely and fearlessly as
against the humblest citizen.
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