Excerpt from the United States Supreme Court decision

1904

"The supremacy of the law is the foundation rock upon which our institutions rest."

In 1904 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to break up a corporation called the Northern Securities Company. The company had been organized in November 1901 by Wall Street banker J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) and railroad owner James J. Hill (1838–1916). The purpose of the new company was to acquire stock in two railroads, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern. Both ran trains across the northern part of the United States, from the Great Lakes in the East to Puget Sound (near Seattle) in the West.

The government of President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) filed suit to break up Northern Securities, on the grounds that such a company violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. The government...