The cases were parallel.

It was necessary to reverse the Knight case in the interests of the people against monopoly and privilege just as it had been necessary to reverse the Dred Scott case in the interest of the people against slavery and privilege; just as later it became necessary to reverse the New York Bakeshop case in the interest of the people against that form of monopolistic privilege which put human rights below property rights where wage workers were concerned.
By a vote of five to four the Supreme Court reversed its decision in the Knight case, and in the Northern Securities case sustained the Government.

The power to deal with industrial monopoly and suppress it and to control and regulate combinations, of which the Knight case had deprived the Federal Government, was thus restored to it by the Northern Securities case.

After this later decision was rendered, suits were brought by my direction against the American Tobacco Company and the Standard Oil Company.

Both were adjudged criminal conspiracies, and their dissolution ordered.