Roosevelt Leaves Office After 44 Antitrust Suits, Revealing Progressive Era Reform Limits

When Theodore Roosevelt left office on March 4, 1909, his administration had filed 44 antitrust lawsuits (18 civil and 26 criminal cases, resulting in 22 convictions and 22 acquittals) against major corporations including Northern Securities, Standard Oil, American Tobacco, the Beef Trust, and Du Pont. Roosevelt resurrected the nearly defunct Sherman Antitrust Act and established the precedent that even the most powerful corporate interests were subject to federal regulation, earning his reputation as a “trust buster.” He created the Bureau of Corporations (1903), signed the Elkins Act (1903) prohibiting railroad rebates, and championed the Hepburn Act (1906) creating the first true federal regulatory agency with rate-setting power. His intervention in the 1902 anthracite coal strike as a neutral arbitrator between labor and capital fundamentally redefined presidential power and the government’s role in the economy. However, Roosevelt’s successor William Howard Taft would file more than 70 antitrust suits in just four years, and many of Roosevelt’s most prominent cases—including Standard Oil and American Tobacco—were actually dissolved under Taft’s administration, revealing that Roosevelt’s trust-busting reputation exceeded his actual enforcement record. More fundamentally, Roosevelt’s philosophy distinguished between “good trusts” deserving cooperation and “bad trusts” requiring prosecution, seeking regulation rather than destruction of corporate concentration. He maintained “gentlemen’s agreements” with J.P. Morgan interests including U.S. Steel and International Harvester, allowing them to avoid prosecution by opening records to investigators with veto power over public disclosures. His November 1907 approval of U.S. Steel’s acquisition of Tennessee Coal & Iron during the Panic exposed how corporate elites could manipulate crisis conditions to extract regulatory concessions. Roosevelt expanded federal regulatory capacity and established crucial precedents, but his reforms ultimately preserved corporate consolidation while creating the appearance of accountability—a framework that allowed monopolistic power to reconsolidate through new organizational structures while regulatory agencies were gradually captured by the industries they were meant to oversee.