Smith May Quit Taft To Help Roosevelt.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 12, 1912:
Commissioner of Corporations Is Expected to Hand in His Resignation Soon.
COLONEL ADVISES CAUTION
Tells Him Not to Act Too Hastily— Piqued at President's Use of His Trust Report.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON. July 11.—It is generally believed here that Herbert Knox Smith, Commissioner of Corporations and a member of the tennis cabinet during the Roosevelt regime, will tender his resignation within a few days in order to satisfy his sense of consistency as a devoted follower of the political fortunes of the leader of the expected third party.
    Mr. Smith has figured prominently, according to records recently brought to light, as an advocate of the interests of the International Harvester Trust. In 1907, after the revelations of the Townsend report were made known to President Roosevelt, Mr. Smith went to the Department of Justice in company with George W. Perkins and Cyrus McCormick and requested Mr. Bonaparte, then Attorney General, to go with them to the White House to persuade the President to refrain from prosecuting the Harvester Trust.
    It was to Mr. Smith that Mr. Perkins said that if the Harvester Trust was to be prosecuted then, the "Morgan Interests were going to fight." And it was Smith who wrote the President "It is a very practical question whether it is well to throw away now the influence of the so-called Morgan interests."
    During his incumbency Mr. Smith has conducted an inquiry into the operations of the United States Steel Company, which Judge E. H. Gary, on the stand before the Stanley Committee, said had cost the Steel Company more than $100,000 by reason of the labor incident to copying records and reports and furnishing to the Bureau of Corporations the information required. In the pending prosecution of the Steel Trust little of this information has been found of avail, and the greater part of the accusations is based on charges derived through the Stanley Committee's investigation.
    Mr. Smith has for a long time been regarded as likely to find himself lonesome in his present environment. He has always been identified with the political interests of Col. Roosevelt, and his strong friendship with men prominent in the International Harvester and Steel Trusts, who are now enlisted in the furtherance of the Roosevelt party, has been expected to lead him into the new movement sooner or later.
    He is a native of Massachusetts, a graduate of Yale in 1891, and was practicing law in Hartford, Conn., when he was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Corporations in 1903, having served one term in the lower house of the Connecticut Legislature. He married a daughter of former Senator Dietrich of Nebraska.
    At no time during the Taft Administration have the friends of the President regarded Herbert Knox Smith as in any sense a supporter of the President. The Commissioner of Corporations has in fact taken little pains to disguise his sympathy with his old chief. President Taft has not busied himself with learning whether his numerous subordinates supported him or not, and has good-naturedly refrained from disturbing a considerable number of Roosevelt's appointees, among whom Smith has been one of the most prominent. It is understood that the Commissioner of Corporations intends to go into the active service of the Roosevelt campaign organization.

Special to The New York Times.
    HARTFORD, Conn., July 11.—Herbert Knox Smith, Commissioner of Corporations, left for Washington to-night after a prolonged conference with Senator Joseph W. Alsop, one of the signers for the Roosevelt party in this State, and his brother, Ernest Walker Smith, former Republican Town Committee Chairman, without answering definitely the question put to him whether he would join the third party.
    The Commissioner, while admitting the conference with the Roosevelt supporters, said it behooved him because of his dealing with the big corporations to refrain from talking politics. Beyond admitting a two-hour conference with Col. Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill on Wednesday, the Commissioner would not discuss the political outlook.
    The Commissioner's brother is preparing the machinery for launching the third party in Connecticut, and is quoted in the local papers with the prediction that Taft will be third and Roosevelt second. Commissioner Smith is the last of the tennis cabinet still retained by the Administration, and his Hartford friends with whom he talked while there to-day predict that he will resign before the Roosevelt convention at Chicago and will be prominent in the doings of that body.
    They assert that it was by direct advice the Colonel that the Commissioner did not resign and answer the President when he charged that Col. Roosevelt had let up on the prosecution of the Harvester Trust.