Philander Chase Knox Philander Chase Knox was an attorney general, U.S Senator and a secretary of state. Knox was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania and attended Mount Union College in Ohio and graduated with an A.B degree in 1872. After graduation Knox studied law in Pittsburgh and was admitted to the bar of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1875. Knox built a reputation as a corporation lawyer and was instrumental in the formation of the Carnegie Steel Company in 1900. The year before President McKinley asked Knox to become attorney general, as he declined but two years later McKinley asked again and he accepted. Theodore Roosevelt directed Knox to initiate a suit against the Northern Securities Company, a railroad holding company formed by James J. Hill, J.P. Morgan and others to control railroad lines in the Northwest, after the death of McKinley. Knox argued the case for the United States Supreme Court, which upheld the government in 1904. Knox was a close advisor to Roosevelt on the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 1903-1904, and he drafted legislation that led to the establishment of the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903. In June 1904 the governor of Pennsylvania appointed him to fill out the unexpired term of the late U.S Senator Matthew S. Quay, and the state legislature elected him to a full term in January 1905. Knox became less favorable to Roosevelt’s domestic policies, such as the Hepburn Act, to regulate the railroads. Knox had made an abortive campaign for the presidential nomination in 1908 as a conservative. William Taft was then elected president in 1908 and asked Knox to be his secretary of state and he accepted. Knox soon had a great deal of influence on the Taft administration and his ideas were valued more. Knox was primarily identified with the policy of “dollar diplomacy.” Knox believed that the borrower is the servant of the lender and that the nation with American investments on its territory
