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Theodore Roosevelt

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:800.00 - 1,000.00 USD
Theodore Roosevelt

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Auction Date:2017 Oct 11 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS as president, two pages, 8 x 10.5, White House letterhead, October 13, 1906. Letter to Judson C. Clements, acting chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission. In part: "I have just received your paper on the Union Pacific coal investigation. The following paragraphs seem to me to directly conflict with one another…You say in the first place: 'No limitation of the right to acquire these lands from the government can prevent their being ultimately monopolized, provided title is once fixed in a private individual with the unlimited right of conveyance. In view of this fact it is worthy of serious consideration whether the government ought to part with title to its coal lands. These lands are probably of more fundamental consequence to the whole people than any other public lands…Might it not be well for the government to retain title and to lease the right to mine upon such terms as would attract the investment of capital for this purpose?'

But you go on to say in speaking of the present situation, as follows: 'To-day, however, the only available coal lands are owned by these two companies. If therefore, the public coal lands in that region are permanently withdrawn from private entry the effect is to intensify and perpetuate the very monopoly which these railroads have created.' I am inclined cordially to agree with the first of these two statements; but the second seems to flatly contradict it…I will back you up to the limit in compelling the railroad companies to afford the independent producers proper track connections and proper transportation facilities as well as to carry the coal for reasonable charges. But I feel very strongly that your first position, which is that we should not part with any more coal lands, is correct, in which case your second position, that we should not withdraw public coal lands from private entry can not but be incorrect." In fine condition, with staple holes to the upper left, and light foxing to the first page. Accompanied by a TLS to Roosevelt by Collier's editor Mark Sullivan, pertaining to a conversation "about the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroads," a typed copy of a letter to the president from a commissioner in the investigation, and a typed copy of a letter outlining general concerns with the investigation.

In June of 1906, after a series of antitrust suits that successfully dissolved the railroad industry’s monopolizing Northern Securities Company, Roosevelt passed the Hepburn Act which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission great control over the nation’s railways: it made their orders binding, contestable only in federal court, and allowed them to set maximum rates for railways. In this letter to ICC Chairman Judson C. Clemens, Roosevelt stands behind this piece of legislation, writing, “I will back you up to the limit in compelling the railroad companies to afford the independent producers proper track connections and proper transportation facilities as well as to carry the coal for reasonable charges.” He also asserts the nation must maintain control of its coal lands, an increasingly valuable resource in the railway age. Decisive and clear, this letter is a wonderful example of the directness for which Roosevelt was known.