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 precedent for numerous other like applications of the law.

The question of the governmental control of trusts and regulation of “big business” became a prominent issue in the Presidential campaign of 1904. The Democratic platform attempted to convict the Republican party of complicity with trusts and monopolies, and demanded that laws be made and enforced to prevent such combinations of capital from interfering with freedom of trade. The Republican platform, however, was able to point to the fact that a Republican government had enacted an effective law for that very purpose, that the Democratic administration had failed to enforce it efficiently and that the Republican administration had secured its very effective application. The Republican convention nominated for President Theodore Roosevelt, who was then serving out the unfinished term of President McKinley, and for Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana. The Democrats nominated Alton B. Parker of New York and Henry G. Davis of West Virginia for President and Vice-President, respectively. Tickets were placed in the field also by the People's or Populist party, the Prohibitionists, the Socialists and the Socialist-Labor party. The campaign resulted in an overwhelming Republican victory, the party getting 336 electoral and 7,620,337 popular votes; the Democrats 140 electoral and 5,079,041 popular votes; and the Socialists 402,159, the Prohibitionists 258,550, the Populists 113,259 and the Socialist Labor party 33,622 popular votes.

With this unmistakable vote of confidence from the nation, the Republican administration, backed by strong majorities in both Houses of Congress,