President Roosevelt has sent an important Message to Congress along
with Mr. Garfield's Report on the Standard Oil Company's methods. After referring to the enormous benefits derived by the Company from secret rates—most of them clearly unlawful, and corrected by the majority of railways on their discovery by the Commission of Corpora- tions—Mr. Roosevelt states that the Department of Justice will take up the question of instituting prosecutions in certain cases, and emphasises the necessity of passing the Bill intro- duced by Senator Knox correcting the interpretation of the immunity provision involved in Judge Humphry's decision in the Beef Trust cases. The President, continuing his summary of Mr. Garfield's Report, shows how the Standard Oil Company has profited not only by secret rates, but by discrimination in open rates arranged by the railways, and other evasions, which in his opinion constitute a powerful argument for conferring on some Governmental body the right of supervision and control over inter-State commerce. He holds that the approval of the Inter-State Commerce Commission should be a condition on which the railways should be empowered to unite for their protection, and that this Commission should be able to examine the affairs of rail- ways as bank examiners now examine those of banks.
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