Yorkville Enquirer

Attorney General McReynolds has made public details of an agreement for reorganization of the American Telephone and Telegraph company—the "telephone trust"—which will prevent litigation to dissolve that corporation under the anti-trust act, and under which competitive conditions will be restored in the telephone service of the entire country and the combine will dispose of its holdings in the Western Union Telegraph company.

The re-organization plan originated many reports that a suit against it with the company although it followed might be filed. It is regarded by the department of justice officials as the most striking indication offered in a decade that "big business" has come to the conclusion that it is better to conform to the Sherman law than to fight it. The plan met not only the approval of the attorney general and his chief "trust buster," G. C. Todd, and officials of the subsidiaries of the combine, but was heartily approved by President Wilson. In a letter to Mr. McReynolds, the president expressed his admiration for the attitude of the telephone company and his conviction that such conduct on the part of the business men meant a building up of business on sound and permanent lines. Coming on the heels of the announcement that Postmaster General Burleson is seriously interested in government ownership of telephone lines, the action of the department of justice took on an added significance and some of the officials went so far as to express the opinion that it indicated that legislation to acquire the country's telephone business would not be pressed by the administration at the present session.