suit against the company. When approached by J. P. Morgan to settle the issue in private, President Roosevelt refused; he later remarked, "Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator who either intended to ruin all his interests or could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none." Although Roosevelt still believed that trusts were not always bad for society, he could not bear to feel treated as just another rival operator. The suit continued. The Justice Department won the suit and the company was dissolved according to the 1904 Supreme Court ruling in Northern Securities Co. v. United States case, decided five to four. The companies were convicted under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In the following seven years, 44 other Federal antitrust cases turned out rulings similar to the Northern Securities case. Included in these break-ups were Harriman's own holdings of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads. The Northern Securities case was one of the earliest antitrust cases and provided important legal precedents for many later cases, including that against Major League Baseball. In 1955, the Northern Pacific and Great Northern renewed talks of merging. The Supreme Court approved the merger, and as a result, the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Chicago Burlington & Quincy, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway merged on March 2, 1970, to form the Burlington Northern Railroad. References Further reading Brown, R. Blake, and Bruce A. Kimball. "When Holmes Borrowed from Langdell: The" Ultra Legal" Formalism and Public Policy of Northern Securities (1904)." The American Journal of Legal History (2001): 278-321. in JSTOR Bryant, Keith L., Jr., Editor. Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, Railroads in the Twentieth Century. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Frey, Robert L., Editor. Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, Railroads in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Facts on File, 1988. Haeg, Larry. Harriman vs. Hill: Wall Street's Great Railroad War (2013) Hidy, Ralph W., et al. The Great Northern Railway, A History. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1988) Klein, Maury. The Life and Legend of E.H. Harriman. (U of North Carolina Press, 2000) online Martin, Albro. James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest. (Oxford University Press, 1976) Prager, Robin A. "The effects of horizontal mergers on competition: The case of the Northern Securities Company." The RAND Journal of Economics (1992): 123–133. Randolph, Carman F. "Considerations on the