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TLS as president, one page, 7.25 x 8.75, White House letterhead, August 5, 1907. Letter to Edwin W. Sims, a prominent prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice, in full: “Let me congratulate you upon the final outcome of the Standard Oil case. I feel that all good citizens are under great obligations to Judge Landis.” Roosevelt strikes through a section and adds four words in his own hand. In fine condition, with light creasing and several horizontal folds.
President Theodore Roosevelt, committed to curbing the power of monopolies during the Progressive Era, appointed Kenesaw Mountain Landis to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1905. Roosevelt’s administration was already targeting corporate abuses when an investigation by Commissioner of Corporations James R. Garfield uncovered that Standard Oil of Indiana had been receiving illegal railroad rebates in violation of the Elkins Act. In 1906, a grand jury indicted the company on 6,428 counts—later reduced to 1,903—and the case was assigned to Landis, one of Roosevelt’s trusted judicial appointees.
At trial in early 1907, Standard Oil did not dispute that rebates had occurred, but claimed it did not know that the rates were unlawful. Landis instructed the jury that the company had a duty to determine the lawful posted tariff, and the jury returned guilty on every count. Before sentencing, Landis famously subpoenaed John D. Rockefeller, producing national drama but little useful testimony. On August 3, 1907, Landis imposed the maximum fine—$29,240,000, the largest corporate penalty in U.S. history at the time. Although Landis's action was reversed on appeal, he was seen as a judge determined to rein in big business, and the entire episode was widely viewed as a bold extension of Roosevelt’s trust-busting campaign and a symbol of federal resolve to hold powerful corporations accountable.
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