Theodore Roosevelt’s Presidency

• Youngest man to be president (not yet 43 when he first entered office).
• -Historian Louis Gould: "Becoming the president in the first year of a new century... helped Roosevelt convey a symbolic sense of change.
• -Theodore claimed ''I don't believe that any president has ever had as thoroughly good a time as I have had, or has ever enjoyed himself so much." 
• The first president to be identified by his initials, TR.
• He once challenged army officers to ride ninety miles in 3 days and when they complained, he mounted a horse before dawn and rode the distance in a single day-the last 15 miles in pitch darkness + during a blizzard.
• In the course of his life he wrote thirty-eight books and 150,000 letters.
• Though the president was not the first to refer to the executive mansion as The White House' Roosevelt announced that would be the official designation.
• One historian claimed "you go to the white House, you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk - and then go home to wring the personality out of your clothes."
• First president to be treated as a media personality.
• On a hunting expedition in Mississippi, Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear, because it was tied to a tree. The media was harmed by this and all children hoped to find a ‘Teddy bear' under the tree on christmas morning.
• Roosevelt's first annual message to congress in December of 1901, allowed the financial world to breath a sign of relief.
• In 1902, Roosevelt shocked Wall Street by his response to a gargantuan merger.
• J.P Morgan, James J. Hill, E. H. Harrimen


  Businessmen who merged the Burlington, Great Northern and Northern pacific railroads
• The Northern securities company


  • Vast network that spanned over 32,000 miles and extended to China via Hills ships
  • Second largest network in size only to US Steel
• By forming The Northern securities company


  Morgan and his associates were defying the US government
• No president had strongly enforced the Sherman Antitrust Act Of 1890
• The Sherman Antitrust Act Of 1890 was undermined by supreme courts EC Knights case decision
• EC Knights case decision

  A sugar refining company (which controlled 98% of sugar refining in America) wasn't stopped despite the Sherman Act being used to prevent companies from controlling an entire industry
• It was argued this did not apply to manufacturing companies because they were seen as operating within a single state not across state lines- therefore, Sherman Act couldn't be used against monopolies
• On the 18th February 1902, under Roosevelt's orders, the attorney general stunned Financiers by launching an antitrust suit against Northern securities. 
• In 1904, the supreme court sustained the government by ordering the Northern securities dissolved.
• Theodore Roosevelt claimed that the Northern securities prosecution was 'one of the greatest achievements of my administration.’
• The demolition of Northern securities gave Roosevelt the nickname 'Trustbuster’.
• He Followed up the northern securities suit with 44 additional prosecutions- standard oil, Beef Trust, sugar Trust DuPont and New Haven railroad.
• This policy annoyed big businesses - because it forced them to reconsider their growth strategies, if they relied on mergers to eliminate competition and control markets they could face legal trouble.
• For smaller businesses this was successful - monopolies often used market dominance to charge higher prices, so smaller businesses faced lower transportation costs and competition among rail companies would decrease with the Sherman Act in place.