Followed the now famous visit to Washington. The deal, though practically completed on Sunday, was not formally closed. Gary insisted that the President of the United States should be consulted and that his attitude should be ascertained, and Frick demanded and received an assurance from Morgan that every assistance possible would be rendered other companies which were in difficulties before the purchase should be consummated.
At midnight Sunday a special train left Jersey City bearing the two Steel Corporation directors and they were delivered at the national capital shortly after daybreak Monday. Theodore Roosevelt, then President, was breakfasting when the two arrived at the White House, but he gave them immediate audience and to him the steel men explained the situation and asked whether the Government would be antagonistic to the absorption of the southern company. Gary, who was spokesman, told the President that he and his associates realized that the deal might be used as a handle to attack the Corporation for attempted monopoly--prophetic words--that they were only considering the purchase because of the strained financial situation which it would tend to alleviate, and finally that the taking over of the Tennessee properties would still leave the big company with less than a 60 per cent. control of the country’s steel trade. This percentage, Gary explained, was the limit which the Corporation had set for itself and was one, incidentally, from which it was gradually receding, its percentage of the steel production of the United States having shown an almost uninterrupted decrease from year to year.
With President Roosevelt at the interview were his private Secretary, William Loeb, afterward Collector of Customs of New York, and Elihu Root, Secretary of State. The President consulted with the head of the State Department and decided that it was not in his province to give formal approval to such a transaction. He nevertheless gave satisfactory assurance to Gary and Frick that the Federal Government would put no obstacle in the way of the completion of the transaction. These views Mr. Roosevelt later repeated in a letter to Attorney-General Bonaparte.
No sooner was Gary satisfied as to the President’s attitude than he informed Morgan by long distance--a ’phone having been kept open in readiness--of the course of the interview, and the banker announced to the financial interests of New York that the Steel Corporation had arranged to purchase control of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co.