After the Fostoria incident the people of Toledo had another illustration given them of how wisely they had builded. The gas supply of the people of Columbus, Ohio, was shut off arbitrarily and suddenly in midwinter—January, 1891—and they were informed that the company would supply them with no more gas unless the City Council would raise the price to 25 cents a thousand feet from 10 cents. The gas had not failed. The caverns that discharge gas at 25 cents a thousand will let it come just as freely at 10 cents. The council had fixed the price at 10 cents, and the company had accepted it. The demand for a higher price was close upon an increase in the capital stock of the Columbus company from $1,000,000 to $1,750,000. More stock called for more dividends, and this was one way to get it—to strike this sudden blow, and then to say, after the manner of Silas Wegg, "Undone for double the money!" It was for the power to do this at Toledo, to preserve the power of doing it everywhere else, that hell and earth were being moved in Toledoto prevent the people from serving themselves and setting an example to the rest of America. In the same way the gas was turned off at Sidney, Ohio, and not turned on again until, upon the application of the mayor, the company was ordered to do it by the courts. "There is a great deal of suffering here," the press reported, "and it is feared that several deaths will result from exposure."
The people did not fail to comprehend the significance of criticisms in the Toledo organ on the municipal water supply. Monopoly must go on conquering and to conquer, or be overborne by the ever-recuperating resentment which rises against it, freshened with each new day. Nature hates monopoly, says Emerson. The studied attack on the city water works was believed to be meant to prepare the people to intrust that as well as the gas supply to the trust's "sound business men" and "private enterprise."
Finding that the council would not bend to the demands as to rates, and that the people were too resolute to be in any way diverted from their pipe line, Toledo was given some such doses as could be ventured upon of the Fostoria and Columbus medicine. The company shut gas off from those who would not pay the increased rate. It deprived public institutions of their fuel. It refused to supply gas to a new public school whose building was planned for natural gas. As the city's pipe line was not completed, the children had to go cold. The winter of 1891-2 was the first winter the city's pipe line was in operation. With the first cold snap, at the end of November, great distress and danger were brought upon the people by a lawless act, done secretly by some unknown person to the city's pipe line. One of the main pipes in the gas-field, through which flowed the product of two of the largest gas wells, was disconnected, so that its gas could no longer reach Toledo. Who did this was never discovered.[552]
Defeat, final and irrevocable, crowned the unvarying series of defeat which the private companies had suffered everywhere and in everything—in public meetings, in the Legislature, in the gas-fields, at the polls, in the courts, in the sale of the bonds, and in the competition with the city. The City Council of Toledo, advised by its lawyers that it could recover damages from those responsible for the losses brought upon the city by the opposition to its pipe line, has had suit brought for that purpose. April 14, 1893, City Solicitor Read began proceedings to recover $1,000,000 damages from members of the oil combination and the various individuals who had been used as stalking-horses in the campaign. At the next meeting of the Common Council several citizens of the "influential" persuasion assisted the mayor in trying to coax and bully the council to abandon the suit, but without success. The council were threatened with a financial boycott to prevent the sale in future of any of the bonds of the city, but it refused to be terrorized.
April 8, 1893, the natural-gas trustees of Toledo had the happiness of being able to give formal notice to the city auditor that no taxes need be levied to pay the interest on the gas bonds, as it "can easily be met from the revenues derived from the sale of natural gas." The city pipe line was on a paying basis at last. Toledo had vindicated its claim to be a free city. The completion of the enterprise had been delayed three years. A loss of not less than two million dollars had been laid on the city, but its victory was worth many times that. Toledo's victory showed the country, in full and successful detail, a plan of campaign of which Columbus had merely given a hint. It was not a local affair, but one of even more than national importance, for the oil combination has invaded four continents. This struggle and its results of good omen will pass into duly recorded history as a warning and an encouragement to people everywhere who wish to lead the life of the commonwealth.
Note.—For the year ending December 31, 1893, the city trustees report that they sold gas to the amount of $139,066. The city owns 5433 acres of gas territory, and has 85 wells, 73 miles of pipe outside the city, and 91 miles in the city. Since the gas began to flow the sales have amounted to$388,540. Out of the receipts the debt has been reduced $60,000, besides refunding $67,000 to those who advanced the money for piping the streets. While doing this the plant has been considerably enlarged. The city accomplished this while charging the people but 15 cents a thousand, while the gas companies of the trust charged 25 cents a thousand. Had the city been permitted to act without obstruction, the cost of the gas plant would have been long since fully paid, and the price of gas made still lower.[553]
Note.—For the year ending December 31, 1893, the city trustees report that they sold gas to the amount of $139,066. The city owns 5433 acres of gas territory, and has 85 wells, 73 miles of pipe outside the city, and 91 miles in the city. Since the gas began to flow the sales have amounted to$388,540. Out of the receipts the debt has been reduced $60,000, besides refunding $67,000 to those who advanced the money for piping the streets. While doing this the plant has been considerably enlarged. The city accomplished this while charging the people but 15 cents a thousand, while the gas companies of the trust charged 25 cents a thousand. Had the city been permitted to act without obstruction, the cost of the gas plant would have been long since fully paid, and the price of gas made still lower.[553]
CHAPTER XXVII
"YOU ARE A—SENATOR"
Howto control the men who control the highways?
The railroads have become the main rivers of trade and travel, and to control them has become one of our hardest problems in the field where politics and industry meet. The Duke of Wellington exhorted Parliament "not to forget, in legislating upon this subject, the old idea of the King's Highway." But here, as well as there, the little respect paid by the Legislature at first to this idea soon vanished. In England, as well as in America, the State, in giving some citizens the right, for their private profit, to take the property of others by force, legally, for railways, began by limiting strictly the power so acquired. Then, passing under the control of that which it had created, the State abandoned its attempts to control. Now the State is retracing its way, and for many years has been struggling painfully to recover its lost authority. In the first English charters there were the minutest regulations as to freight and passenger charges, and the right of citizens generally to put their own cars on the tracks was sacredly guarded.
The railroads became too strong to submit to this, and the success with which the teachings of Adam Smith were applied to the abolition of the old-fashioned restraints on trade bred a furor against any social control of industry. These limitations were left out of new charters, and for fair play were revised out of the old charters. After a brief dream of thislaissez faire, England began, in 1844, investigating and legislating, and, after nearly thirty years of experiments and failures, established the railway commission in 1873. Thiswas a step forward, but has not proved the solvent it was expected to be. The expense of getting a decision from the commission and the courts to which the road can appeal from the commission has frightened people from making complaints. "A complainant," says Hadley, "is a marked man, and the commission cannot protect him against the vengeance of the railroads. A town fares no better ... even the [British] War Department is afraid. It has grievances, but it dares not make them public for fear of reprisals."[554]
The course of events in the United States was much the same. The first railroad powers were carefully limited. The early charters regulated the charges, limited the profits, gave citizens the right to put their private carriages on the road, and reserved to the State the right to take possession of the railroad upon proper payment. But as early as 1846 the railroads had grown strong enough—in the revision of the Constitution of New York, for example—to secure an almost complete surrender of these public safe-guards.[555]
But it was seen immediately in America, as in England, that the new institution could not be left in the uncontrolled hands of individuals. It created simultaneously two revolutions, each one of the most momentous in modern civilization. It made the steam-engine master in transportation, as it had already become in manufacturing. It made the public highways the private property of a few citizens. An agitation arose among the people—to-day stronger because more necessary than ever—and they began to seek what they have not yet found: means of regulating the relations between new rich and new poor, and protecting the private interests of all from the private interests of the few who had this double sovereignty. As early as 1857 New York established a commission for the regulation of the railways. But the railroads within a year procured a law abolishing it, bribing the leading commissioner to make no opposition in consideration ofreceiving from them $25,000, the whole amount of his salary for five years. "I was the attorney of the Erie Railway at that time; I specially used to attend to legislation that they desired to effect or oppose.... I remember the appointment of that commission.... We agreed that if they" (the leading railroad commissioner) "would not oppose the repeal of the law we would pay $25,000, and have done with the commission; it was embarrassing.... The law was repealed, and we paid the money, I think." "If the commission had been a useless one," said the counsel of the New York Chamber of Commerce before the Legislative Committee, "the railroads would not have parted with their money to get rid of it."[556]
Thirty of the States and Territories of the Union had established commissions or passed laws to regulate the railroads before Congress, in 1887, used its power under the Constitution to regulate commerce among the States, and passed the Interstate Commerce law, establishing the National Interstate Commerce Commission, in the hope that it might protect the people. Congress did not act until 1887, although for years different sections of the public, in their efforts to find a cure for the new evils which had come with the new good, had sought to set in action their representatives in Washington. The "Granger movement" of 1871, 1872, and 1873, with its "Granger legislation" by the States against the railroads, is one of the never-to-be-forgotten waves of public commotion over this problem which took on its acutest form in the oil regions. Illinois, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Iowa established railway commissions, or put stringent regulations on the statute-books at this time. Public opinion did not cease to demand action by the national government under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, and became clamorous. Petitions poured in by the hundreds, public meetings were held, chambers of commerce and boards of trade and anti-monopoly conventions passed resolutions of urgency.This was one of the main issues in the election of the 44th Congress.
Representative Hopkins, of Pennsylvania, rose in his place in the House of Representatives on May 16, 1876, and asked unanimous consent to offer a resolution for the appointment of a committee of five to investigate the charges that "many industries are crippled and threatened with extreme prostration" by the discrimination of the railroads, and to report a bill for the regulation of interstate commerce. This was the first move to reopen in Congress the great question, first on the order of the day both in England and in America, which had been smothered by the Committee of Commerce of 1872. It required unanimous consent to bring the resolution before the House.
"Instantly," said Representative Hopkins, in describing the occurrence afterwards,[557]"I heard the fatal words 'I object.' The objector was Mr. Henry B. Payne, of Cleveland." Other members appealed to Mr. Payne to withdraw his objection.
The Speaker of the House: "Does the gentleman from Ohio withdraw his objection?"
Mr. Payne: "I do not."
In a private conference which followed between Representative Payne and Representative Hopkins, the former said, as Mr. Hopkins relates: "What he objected to in my resolution was the creation of a special committee; but if I would again offer it and ask that it be referred to the Committee of Commerce he would not object. I thought perhaps there was something reasonable in his objection. A special committee would probably require a clerk, which would be an expense. He looked to me so like a frugal Democrat, who had great confidence in the regular order of established committees and did not want the country to be taxed for clerks attending to the business of special committees—I say that he so impressed me that, as the record will show, I adopted his suggestion."
When the Committee of Commerce to which the investigation was accordingly referred began its investigation, a member of the oil combination, not then, as later, a member of the Senate, took his seat by the ear of the chairman, who was from his State, "presiding," as the oil producers said in a public appeal, "behind the seat of the chairman."[558]The financial officer of the oil combination was called as a witness, but refused to answer the questions of the committee as to the operations of the company or its relations with the railroads. The vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad also refused to answer questions. On the plea of needing time to decide how to compel these witnesses to answer, the committee let the railroad vice-president go until he should be recalled. But the committee never decided, and the witnesses were never recalled. The committee never reported to Congress, made no complaint of the contempt of its witnesses, and the investigation of 1876, like that of 1872, came to a mute and inglorious end.
When Representative Hopkins applied to the clerk of the committee for the testimony, he was told, to his amazement, that it could not be found. "Judge Reagan," he relates,[559]"who was a stanch friend of the bill"—for the regulation of the railroads—"and very earnest for the investigation, and who at the time was a member of the committee, told me that it had been stolen."[560]
Eight years after "I object" the people of Ohio were a suppliant before the Senate of the United States. They believed that their dearest rights had been violated, and they prayed for redress to the only body which had power to give it. Officially by the voice of both Houses of the State Legislature and the governor, unofficially by the press, by the public appeals of leading men, by the petitions of citizens, press, leaders, and people, regardless of party, the commonwealth asserted that the greatest wrong possible in a republic had been done their members, and sued for restitution. They declared it tobe their belief that against their will, as the result of violation of the laws, a man had taken their seat in the Senate of the United States who was not their senator, that they had been denied representation by the senator of their choice; and they demanded that, in accordance with immemorial usage, the evidence they had to offer should be examined, and their right of representation in the Senate of the United States restored to them, if it should be found to have been taken from them. After the Legislature had examined sixty-four witnesses, the Ohio House of Representatives resolved that "ample testimony was adduced to warrant the belief that ... the seat of Henry B. Payne in the United States Senate was purchased by the corrupt use of money." The Ohio Senate charged that "the election of Henry B. Payne as Senator of the United States from Ohio ... was procured and brought about by the corrupt use of money, ... and by other corrupt means and practices."
Both Houses passed with these resolutions an urgent request for investigation by the Senate of the United States.[561]
Mr. Payne's election by the Legislature was a thunder-clap to the people of Ohio. They did not know he was a candidate. Who was to be United States Senator was of course one of the issues in the election of the Ohio Legislature of 1884, and the Democratic voters who elected the majority of that Legislature had sent them to the State Capitol to make George H. Pendleton or Durbin Ward senator. One of the leading newspaper men of the State testified: "I went over the entire State during the campaign.... Out of the eighty-eight counties I attended fifty-four Democratic conventions and wrote them up, giving the sentiment of the people as nearly as I could, and during that entire canvass I never heard a candidate for the Legislature say that he was for Henry B. Payne for United States Senator; but every man I ever talked with was either for George H. Pendleton or General Ward. I think out of the Democratic candidates throughout the StateI conversed with at least two-thirds of them."[562]As was afterwards stated before the Senate of the United States by the representatives of the people of Ohio, "He was in no wise publicly connected with the canvass for the Senate, nor had the most active, honorable, and best-posted politicians in the State heard his name in connection with the senatorial office until subsequent to the October election [of the Legislature]. He was absolutely without following."[563]
The Democratic constituencies sent their legislators to vote for Pendleton and Ward, but between the receipt and the execution of this trust from the people a secret charm was put to work of such a potency that the people woke up to find that the representative who had betrayed them in Congress in 1876 was their senator, instead of one of their real leaders. The people had been digging oil wells for twenty years that all the value might flow into the bank accounts of a few interceptors; they had been building railroads and pipe lines that their business and property might be transported into the same hands; they had organized agitation and conducted a national anti-monopoly campaign all over the country, only to see the men who were to have been investigated take command of the inquiry. The people had had enough such experience not to be surprised that when they started to make a beloved leader senator it was their enemy who came out of the voting mill with the senatorial toga upon his shoulders. But terrible was the moral storm that broke forth out of the hearts of the people of Ohio. The votes they had thrown, like roses to garland the head of a hero, had been transformed as they went, by a black magic, into missiles of destruction, and had fallen upon him like the stones that slew Stephen.
The press, without regard to party, gave voice to the popular wrath. Scores of the Democratic newspapers of Ohio went into mourning. One of them said: "The whole Democratic Legislature was made rotten by the money that wasused to buy and sell the members like so many sheep." Many representative Democrats of the State privately and publicly declared their belief in the charges of corruption. Allen G. Thurman, who had been a senator and representative at Washington, said: "There is something that shocks me in the idea of crushing men like Pendleton and Ward, who have devoted the best portion of their lives to the maintenance of Democracy, by a combination against them of personal hatred and overgrown wealth.... I want to see all the Democrats have a fair chance according to their merits, and do not want to see a political cutthroat bossism inaugurated for the benefit of a close party corporation or syndicate." Again he said: "Syndicates purchase the people's agents, and honest men stand aghast."[564]
It was the "irony of fate" that this Legislature, like the 44th Congress, had been specially elected to represent opposition to monopolies. Of course the Legislature that had done this thing was not to be persuaded, bullied, or shamed into any step towards exposure or reparation. But the people, usually so forgetful, nursed their wrath. They made the scandal the issue of the next State election, and put the Legislature into other hands. The new Legislature then forwarded formal charges to the Senate of the United States, and a demand for an investigation. The State of Ohio made its solemn accusation and prayer for an investigation through all the organs of utterance it had: the press of both parties; honored men, both Republican and Democratic; both Houses of the State Legislature and its senator whose seat was unchallenged—an aggregate representing a vast majority of the people of the State. The Hon. John Little and the Hon. Benjamin Butterworth, former Attorney-General of Ohio, both members of Congress, had been delegated to present the case of the State. They made formal charges, based on evidence given under oath or communicated in writing by reputable citizens, who were willing to testify under oath. None of thematter was presented on mere hearsay or rumor.[565]No charge was made to connect Senator Payne personally with the corruption. His denials and those of his friends of any participation by him were therefore mere evasions of the actual charge—that his election had been corruptly procured for him, not by him. The substance of their accusation, as contained in their statement and the papers forwarded by the Legislature, was as follows:[566]
That among the chief managers of Mr. Payne's canvass, and those who controlled its financial operations, were four of the principal members in Ohio of the oil trust: its treasurer, the vice-president of one of its most important subordinate companies, its Cincinnati representative, and another—all of whom were named.
That one of these four, naming him, who was given the financial management of the Payne campaign at Columbus, carried $65,000 with him, "next to his skin," to Columbus to use in the election, as he had stated to an intimate friend whose name would be given.
That the cashier of the bank in Cleveland, where the treasurer of the oil combination kept one of his bank accounts, would testify that this money was procured on a check given by this treasurer of the oil trust to another of its officials, and passed over by him to its Cincinnati agent, who drew out the cash.
That the back room used by the Payne manager at Columbus as his office displayed such large amounts of money in plain view that it looked like a bank, and that the employé who acted there as his clerk stated upon his return home that he had never seen so much money handled together in his life.
That a prominent gentleman, going to the room used by the Payne managers for a "converter," had said that he saw "canvas bags and coin bags and cases for greenbacks littered andscattered around the room and on the table and on the floor ... with something green sticking out," which he found to be money.
That members who had been earnest supporters of Pendleton were taken one by one by certain guides to this room which looked like a bank, and came out with an intense and suddenly developed dislike of civil-service reform (Mr. Pendleton's measure), and proceeded to vote for Mr. Payne; and that these conversions were uniformly attended with thrift, sudden, extensive, and so irreconcilable with their known means of making money as to be a matter of remark among their neighbors; and that "the reasons for the change (of vote) were kept mainly in this room, passed by delivery, and could be used to buy real estate."
That this use of money in large amounts to procure the sudden conversions of Pendleton legislators to Payne would be shown by numerous witnesses, generally Democrats, several of them lawyers of great distinction and high ability.
That the editor and proprietor of the principal Democratic journal in Ohio had stated, as was sworn to, that he had spent $100,000 to elect Payne, and that it cost a great deal of money to get those representatives and senators to vote for Payne, and they had to be bought. "It took money, and a good deal of it, to satisfy them," and he complained that the oil trust had not reciprocated in kind. This statement was made by one of his editorial writers, who after making it was discharged. The latter subsequently put it into the form of an affidavit.
That Senator Pendleton would testify that more than enough of the legislators to give him the election had been pledged to him.
That the number of members of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives who had been paid money to vote for Mr. Payne was so great that without their votes and influence his nomination would have been out of the question.
That a legislator who had been violently opposed to Payne, then changed and became violently rich, had acknowledgedthat the treasurer of the oil trust, out of gratitude for what he had done, had "loaned" him several thousand dollars—"a case," said the representative of Ohio before the United States Senate, "of a man becoming well-to-do by borrowing money."
That legislators who were so poor before the election that everything they had was mortgaged, and they had to beg or borrow funds for their election expenses, became so prosperous after their sudden conversion to Payne that they paid off their debts, rebuilt their houses, furnished them handsomely, deposited large amounts in the banks, or opened new bank accounts, bought more property, and that the reasons they gave for this new wealth were demonstrably untrue—or impossible.
That a member of the Legislature, a State senator, had himself stated that he had received $5000 to vote for Payne,[567]and had offered the same amount to an associate if he would do the same; and that after the election this member opened a new bank account, depositing $2500 in his wife's name, who immediately transferred it to him.
That another member of the Legislature, who changed suddenly after his election to the Legislature, and just before the caucus, from a warm advocacy of one of the recognized candidates to the support of Payne, when directly charged with having taken a bribe, did not deny it, but "became exceedingly sick, white as a sheet, and answered not. He went away and laid in bed two days."
That, contrary to all the precedents of Ohio politics, the caucus of the majority party was not held until the night before election, so as to leave no time between the caucus and the election.
That, also contrary to the precedents, the nomination was made, not, as usual, by open vote, but by secret ballot and without debate, on the demand of the Payne managers and contrary to the protests of the opponents, so that it could not be known to the public who the Payne men were.
That this knowledge was made sure to the Payne managers,who were to pay for the votes, by the ingenious device of requiring each purchased legislator to use a coupon ballot furnished by them, the corresponding stub of which they kept. These legislators were not paid for their votes unless the torn edges of the coupon ballot voted by them corresponded with the edge of the stub in the possession of the managers.
That responsible men would testify that they had received confessions from members of the Legislature that they had been bribed with money to vote for Mr. Payne.
That two members of the Legislature who had been elected as anti-monopolists became supporters of Mr. Payne, and were heard discussing together the amount of money they had received, and quarrelling because one had received more than the other.
That a member of the Legislature which was corrupted, standing on the floor of the Ohio House of Representatives, pointed out members who had been purchased to vote for Payne, saying: "These members were paid to vote in the senatorial fight," holding a little book in his hand in which he had the names and amounts; but although he made the charges openly and defiantly, and although the same charges were made in Republican and Democratic papers, no investigation was ordered. Three attempts to have an investigation made by the Legislature in which the bribery occurred failed.
That a correspondent of a leading Cincinnati daily, sitting on the floor of the House, daily charged that the election was procured by bribery, talked about it generally, and dared the House to investigate or the accused to sue for libel, and that no such step was taken by either.
That a memorandum of the names of the legislators who sold themselves, and the amounts they received, had been furnished from a responsible source.
That on the eve of the election money was sent by draft to twenty-four of the Democratic candidates for the Legislature, with the promise of more the next day, and with the statement that thanks for both remittances were due to one of the prominent members of the oil trust, who was named, and twoothers of Payne's managers, "they paying most of it themselves."
That before the election of the Legislature one of the Payne managers sent large sums of money amounting to $10,000, or $12,000, perhaps $13,500—the treasurer of the oil trust "and other wealthy Democrats contributed it— ... into different parts of the State."
That the managers of the election absented themselves from the State during the legislative investigation, and remained out of reach until it closed.
That during the two and a half years which had passed since these specific charges of bribery had been put into circulation, there had been no demand for investigation on the part of those whose reputation and honor were concerned, but there had been a manifest effort to prevent investigation.
That in addition to these offers of evidence the case against Mr. Payne would be greatly strengthened by new and additional testimony from responsible sources.
Testimony was taken by the Legislature that an ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, afterwards Consul-General of the United States at Frankfort, Germany, had been in the room of Payne's manager, had seen that he was using money to procure the election, and had so told Mr. Payne before the election, and that Mr. Payne's reply—"You don't suppose I would endorse anything of that kind, do you?"—showed that he had understood the use of money referred to to be an improper use, thereby fastening upon Mr. Payne, if true, the knowledge that his agents were corrupting the Legislature.
During this deluge of charges Mr. Payne made no denial.
After the investigation had been ordered by the State Legislature, Senator Payne made an offer to the committee to submit all his private papers and books of accounts to their examination—an empty offer, because it was not charged that the corruption had been done by him, but for him by others. These latter made no such offer, but fled from the jurisdiction of the Legislature. When the representatives of the people of Ohio appeared before the committee of the UnitedStates Senate on elections, with the offer to prove under oath the foregoing charges, he remained voiceless. He did not rise in his place in the Senate to deny these accusations, as every other senator since the Senate began had done. He did not go before the committee, nor send before them any witness, or make any explanation. When the Senate committee decided to recommend the Senate not to investigate, and the representatives of Ohio begged the committee to reconsider, Senator Sherman declared that he heartily agreed with every word of the appeal, but Senator Payne still kept silent. The records of Congress show that his sole utterance or appearance in this matter in Congress was to make the motion that the papers forwarded by the Ohio Legislature should be sent, as was the routine, to the Committee on Elections. In doing this he did more than abstain from the utterance of a word which could be in any way construed as a demand for investigation. He delivered what was, in effect, an appeal to his fellow-senators not to investigate. He attacked the Legislature for sending the report of its investigation to Congress, characterizing "this proceeding—the transmission of the testimony here—as an attempt to circulate and give currency to baseless gossip and scandal, after everything substantial in the way of a charge had been discredited and disproved." In conclusion he left the matter to the committee "for such disposition of it as they may find to be in accordance with dignity and justice."
The Legislature which made the investigation selected as the reason for ordering it the fact that a well-known citizen had just repeated in an open letter in the public prints the charges of bribery which had been made already hundreds of times. When this citizen was called upon to testify before the Legislature he stated that, as his information was derived from others, he had no personal proof to offer of his own knowledge that bribery had been committed. Referring to this, Mr. Payne said to his colleagues of the Senate:
"Thus fell all that the investigation was originally based upon."[568]
This was not true. The witness furnished the committee with the names of the men on whose authority he had spoken, and through whom evidence based on personal knowledge could be procured as to the truth of the charges.[569]Therefore the statement, "Thus fell all that the investigation was originally based upon," so far as it was believed by the senators, deceived them. The State Legislature could not compel the witnesses to testify. Only the United States Senate could do this, and it was deterred from doing so by this concealment of the fact that the investigation, instead of falling because of no basis, had struck firmer ground. The proffer of evidence was of such a character that, as has been well said, none of the lawyers of the Senate committee who voted against recommending investigation "would have failed to recommend thorough investigation of such an incident if it had been relevant to an alleged title set up against a private client."[570]But the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections—Senators Pugh, Saulsbury, Vance, and Eustis voting against Hoar and Frye—recommended the Senate not to investigate, and the Senate adopted this report.
No one had expected this. The unbroken precedents of the Senate had made it a matter of course in public expectation that the investigation would be made. A convention of Ohio editors, sending a memorial for a reconsideration, said: "No instance has yet arisen in the history of the Senate where specific and well-supported charges of bribery in a senatorial election, preferred by the Legislature of a State, have not been promptly investigated by the Senate. In fact, so jealous has the Senate been of its own integrity and honor that it has heretofore promptly ordered investigations upon the memorials of citizens, and in other cases upon the memorial of individual members of a Legislature charging fraud in senatorial elections." In so doing the Senate, to adopt the language used by the chairman of the Committee on Elections,Senator Hoar, declared that "it is indifferent to the question whether its seats are to be in the future the subject of bargain and sale, or may be presented by a few millionaires as a compliment to a friend."[571]"This matter never can be quieted," said Senator Sherman in the debate in the Senate. "There are six or seven men who are known—I could name them—who, if they were brought before this Committee on Privileges and Elections, would settle this matter forever one way or the other in my judgment."
The Senate decided that such a charge, accompanied by such offers of proof, did not deserve its attention. The trial of "even a criminal accusation," said the minority of the committee, "requires only the oath of the accuser who is justified if he have probable cause." The minority, Senators Hoar and Frye, further said: "It will not be questioned that in every one of these cases there is abundant probable cause which would justify a complaint, and compel a grand-jury or magistrate to issue process and make an investigation. Is the Senate to deny to the people of a great State, speaking through their Legislature and their representative citizens, the only opportunity for a hearing of this momentous case which can exist under the Constitution? The question now is not whether the case is proved—it is only whether it shall be inquired into. That has never yet been done. It cannot be done until the Senate issues its process. No unwilling witness has ever yet been compelled to testify; no process has gone out which should cross State lines. The Senate is now to determine, as the law of the present case, and as the precedent for all future cases, as to the great crime of bribery—a crime which poisons the waters of republican liberty in the fountain—that the circumstances which here appear are not enough to demand its attention. It will hardly be doubted that cases of purchase of seats in the Senate will multiply rapidly under the decision proposed by the majority of the committee."[572]
The debate upon the recommendation of the committee not to investigate was impassioned. Senator Hoar said: "The adoption of this majority report ... will be the most unfortunate fact in the history of the Senate." When the vote of the Senate not to investigate was announced, Senator Edmunds turned to his neighbor in the Senate and summed up the verdict of posterity in these words: "This is a day of infamy for the Senate of the United States."
The same Legislature which sent Senator Payne to the Senate defeated the bill to allow the Cleveland independent refiners to build a pipe line to furnish themselves with oil. The defeat of the bill was accomplished by a lobby whose work was so openly shameless that it was characterized by the Ohio press "as an indelible disgrace to the State." The bill was one of many attempts which have been made by the people of Ohio and Pennsylvania, without success, to get from their Legislature the right to build pipe lines. It has been tried to get laws to regulate the charges of the existing lines, but without success. The history of the pipe-line bills in these legislatures for the past ten years has been a monotonous record of an unavailing struggle of a majority of millions to apply legal and constitutional restraints to a minority of a few dozens. The means employed in the Ohio Legislature of 1885 to defeat a bill giving equality in pipe-line transportation to refiners in competition with the oil trust, which owned the existing pipe-lines, were of such a sort that that body has gone into the history of the State as the "Coal-oil Legislature." It is stated by Hudson, in hisRailways and the Republic, that the Democratic agent of the bribery openly threatened to publish the list he had of the members of the Legislature he had purchased, and that in consequence of this threat proceedings which had been begun against him for outraging the House by appearing on the floor in a state of gross intoxication were abandoned.[573]
In a debate about combinations in trade and industry—trusts—in the United States Senate in 1888, the sore scandal of this senatorial election of 1884 was disinterred.
"If there be such a trust," said Senator Hoar, referring to the oil trust, "is it represented in the cabinet at this moment? Is it represented in the Senate? I want to know the facts about these five or six great trusts which are sufficient in their power to overthrow any government in Europe, if they existed in those nations, that should set itself against them—the coal, the sugar, the whiskey, the cotton, the fruit, the railroad transportation of this country, controlled by these giant chieftains."
Senator Payne defended the oil trust and himself. "Even at this date," he said, "it seems that that company is represented as being guilty of all sorts of unlawful and improper things. Such allegations without proof to sustain them I regard as unworthy of an honorable man or an honorable senator.... The Standard Oil Company," he continued, "is a very remarkable and wonderful institution. It has accomplished within the last twenty years, as a commercial enterprise, what no other company or association of modern times has accomplished." He went on to declare that he "never had a dollar's interest in the company." But the charge which he and it would never allow to be investigated was that the company had a great many dollars' interest in him. "The majority of the stockholders are very liberal in their philanthropic contributions to charity and benevolent works," he pleaded; "but it contributed," he said, "not one dollar or one cent directly or indirectly to my election to this body." During the demand for investigation he uttered no such denial to be taken as a challenge.
The senator made what Senator Hoar properly called a "very remarkable admission" concerning the part taken in elections by the oil combination. "When a candidate for the other House in 1871," Senator Payne said, "no association, no combination in my district did more to bring about my defeat, and went to so large an expense in money to accomplish it, as the Standard Oil Company."
The oil trust, then, does take part in elections, and as acompany spends larger sums of money than any other "institution, association, combination ... to accomplish the defeat" of candidates for Congress!
Then Mr. Payne said: "There never has been a national election at which those two gentlemen—one of them was my own son—have not contributed very liberally." He named the two men who were, as Senator Hoar showed, among the most influential and important managers of his election to the Senate.
Senator Hoar closed the debate with these unanswered and unanswerable words: "A senator who, when the governor of his State, when both branches of the Legislature of his State, complained to us that a seat in the United States Senate had been bought; when the other senator from the State rose and told us that that was the belief of a very large majority of the people of Ohio, without distinction of party, failed to rise in his place and ask for the investigation which would have put an end to those charges, if they had been unfounded, sheltering himself behind the technicalities which were found by some gentlemen on both sides of this chamber, that the investigation ought not to be made, but who could have had it by the slightest request on his part, and then remained dumb, I think should forever after hold his peace."[574]
The election of this senator was meant to be only the prelude to his nomination and election as President of the United States. This was publicly and authoritatively declared by the men who were charged with having spent money to buy the Legislature for him. One of these was the proprietor of the most influential Democratic daily in Ohio, and that journal in a leading editorial, double leaded to make it more prominent, declared this to be the purpose of Payne's friends. The New YorkSunof May 27, 1884, followed, also in double-leaded editorials, under the caption in staring black type of the name of the Senator, and said: "Henry B. Payne is looming up grandly in the character of a possible and not altogether improbable successor to Mr. Tilden as the Democraticcandidate for the Presidency. The fact that the Ohio delegation at Chicago in July is sure to be solid for Payne is of peculiar importance and significancy. Everybody can see what it may amount to."
Concurrently with these formal announcements came the news from all parts of Ohio that the Payne party were hard at work to control the election of the delegates who were to represent Ohio in the National Democratic Convention at Chicago in July. But the managers of this Presidential campaign found that they had gone too far. The election for senator had excited so fierce an anger over the whole country that it had become perfectly plain that Senator Payne was not "available." The education of the American public was still incomplete. It could see senatorships bought and endure it, but the Presidency—"not yet."
The use this senator made of his seat throws light where none is needed. Again, in 1887, the great question of 1876 of the control of the highways came up before Congress. The agitation of nearly twenty years had come to a point. Thirty of the States and Territories of the Union had established commissions or passed laws to regulate the railroads. Congress had before it the Interstate Commerce bill forbidding discriminations, and creating the Interstate Commerce Commission as a special tribunal to prevent and punish the crime. There had been investigation, debates, amendments, meetings of conference committees of both Houses. It was proposed to "recommit" the bill to prevent its passage for an indefinite time. Mr. Payne voted "Yes." Then the question before the Senate is, Shall the bill become a law? Senator Payne's name is called. He votes:
"No."
It is the same question as in 1876, and the same vote. Against the investigation, first, and then the legislation, his word is:
"I object."
CHAPTER XXVIII
FOR "OLD GLORY" AND AN—APPROPRIATION
In1891 Congress passed the Postal Subsidy law for paying a higher than the market rate of compensation to capitalists who would carry the mails in vessels built in America, of American materials, and manned by Americans. No contracts were made by the Post-office Department under the law for the mails between Europe and America, for there were no such capitalists and no such boats in that quarter.
In May of the next year, 1892, a bill was whizzed through Congress almost without debate, in which the forms of the principal beneficiaries-to-be of the law of 1891 loomed into view. The subsidy law gave its bonus only to vessels that could fly the American flag because American built and manned. This new act exempted from these conditions the two principal steamers of the Inman, now the International, line—theCity of New Yorkand theCity of Paris—provided the company built two other steamers that fulfilled the requirements of the subsidy law. The sequel disclosed that their owners had a well-laid plan to build more than two other steamers to get the rich rewards of the subsidy law. The steamers and the company were not named. That was not needed. The bill was drawn with such limitations as to size, speed, ownership, etc., that these were the only two vessels which could come under its provisions. The bill was introduced in the House by a prominent Democrat, and in the Senate by a prominent Republican. It was passed by both Houses regardless of party distinctions. The Secretary of the Navy urged the bill upon the naval committees of Congress. He had begun to do so in his first report to Congress andsubsequent communications, in which he referred by name to the vessels which were masked in this legislation. The head of the line and other owners were members of the oil combination. The president of the steamship company has been the president of the pipe-line branch of the oil trust—its largest single interest—from the time of its organization in 1881.[575]This exemption from the law was engineered through the Senate by one who had hitherto always been conspicuously strenuous in refusing to abate his opposition to admitting to American registry any ship not built in America, of American materials, by American labor, but who now had suffered some sea change.
Ordinary citizens who want to get the profits of carrying the American mails must build their boats in American ship-yards; but the syndicate got members of Congress to grant them by law that which all others must earn.
The enactment of the Postal Subsidy law and the exemption of these steamers by special law were the first two parts of a progressive programme. The third step was the negotiation of contracts with the Postmaster-General for the prizes of subsidy. Immediately upon the passage of this special legislation the Postmaster-General went through the necessary but empty parade of advertising for bids for a service for which there could be only one possible bidder. The awarding of contracts to the steamship company so "fortunate in competing" was announced in the press in October, 1892.
The Postmaster-General dated the contracts 1895—three years ahead. They run for ten years from that time. An iron-clad, or, better than iron-clad, law-clad contract was thus secured, giving a complete monopoly of the mail business between America and Europe untilA.D.1905, five years into the twentieth century. The legislation of May contemplated the construction of two new boats. The contracts secured from the Postmaster-General showed that the line intended to build five, and obligated the government to pay subsidies to all ofthem, as well as to the two foreign-built steamers given by special legislation the right to fly the American flag. By these contracts the company, after the completion of its new steamers in about three years, will exclusively carry every bag of mail that leaves America for Europe. Meanwhile the mails are to be given to its two steamers now running, theParisand theNew York, whenever they are in port. This has been frequently done in the past on account of their speed, but the compensation for this, under the law and the new contracts, has been made much greater than the price hitherto paid. With but one or two exceptions the mails on all the routes where subsidy is given—to South America, Havana, China, Europe—were carried before the subsidy law on the same ships as now. Except a very trifling saving in time, the only change the law has made here is that the gains of the carriers have been swelled at the cost of the taxpayers. The American shippers carrying the mails at the regular weight rates were making a profit. The Post-office, under the new deal, gets only what it has been getting—the carriage of the mails; but the steamship company gets a great deal more. This is the "pleasure of making it cheap" applied to the postal service.
By this procession of moves the company secured profitable contracts ten years ahead on present ships, theParisand theNew York—although these had not yet done as much as fly the American flag in compliance with the special legislation in their behalf—and on future ships that were not yet built or contracted for. All was in the future—the American registry for theParisand theNew York, the building of the new steamers required by the special legislation. But one thing was got in hand, and was not in the future tense—the contract with the American Post-office, binding it to pay millions a year. The privileges conferred by this legislation were so valuable that, as Senator Frye stated in debate, its recipients to gain them were to forfeit $105,000 due them from the British Government.
The American registry would be a capital advertisement tocatch the American tourist. Travelling, says Emerson, is a fool's paradise, and the shifting population of that paradise would never stop to think out the fraud in the appeal to their patriotism. Much was made in the sentimental Senate of the privilege the law would give Americans of going abroad in their own ships under their own flag. The press was used shrewdly and widely to gain the favor of the public for these incursions into their Treasury. Pages of advertising, in the dress of news-matter, were put into prominent journals, telling in glowing phrases what a great thing Congress, the Postmaster-General, and the steamship company were doing for the people. The same editorial on the promised restoration of American maritime supremacy would appear as original in journals thousands of miles apart. As the panorama of journalism moved along with its daily shift any observer could see the methodical and business-like way in which the syndicate "inspired" the press. Articles about the "great steamship line" appeared on the same date in the papers of different cities, giving the same facts in the same order, and nearly the same words, following "copy" evidently supplied from a common source. One day these chimes all sing the immeasurable superiority of Southampton over Liverpool as a port for Americans; another day the unspeakable sagacity of the Postmaster-General in giving this company the mails is the tune; and again the ding-dong tells how, but for the syndicate and its subsidy, the American flag—"Old Glory"—would be seen no more on the seas. The average citizen who reads "his" paper is no doubt duly impressed.
"Old Glory on the seas!" cried the excitable metropolitan editors. "The dear old flag!" "America again Queen of the seas!" "A new era is about to dawn on our long-neglected commerce!" Our long-absent flag is about to reappear, but not, as in the old days, as the symbol of a people's commerce. It signalizes the commerce of syndicates. The democratic idea of a chance for all has been abandoned for the aristocratic idea of the favored few. "Poor indeed in spirit must be theAmerican," said the New YorkTribune, "who will not hail with satisfaction and pride the early prospect of the reappearance of the flag in English, French, and Belgian ports." Poor, fortunately, it was replied, are many Americans in the spirit which taxes all the people out of an industry in which they once led the world, and then taxes them to give that same industry as an exclusive privilege to a syndicate—and such a syndicate!
There was a rapturous chorus from the press because American materials and American labor are to be employed in the construction and use of the new vessels to be built for subsidies. When American labor was free to employ itself and American materials with no subsidies, American boats did absolutely the whole packet business between England and America.[576]
Now American seamanship must remain content to be employed to such an extent and on such terms as may suit the interests of a few men, under whose captainship the once glorious expansion of our commerce on the seas is replaced by a system limited on every side. Limited by the expensiveness of entering the occupation: a special bill has to be passed through Congress in each case to confer the right to fly the American flag on ships bought abroad, and for this the merely legitimate expenses are heavy—trips to Washington, appearances before committees and departments, with expert representatives. Limited by their small number: instead of thousands building and running new ships, a score. Limited by their capital: great, it is still much less than the aggregate, if all had a chance. Limited by the narrowness of view and enterprise inevitable with a few, however capable: everybody knows more than anybody. Limited by the lack of diversity in opinion and interests: with many men of many minds, of varying forecasts and moods and gaits, the currents of industry are kept fuller and steadier than is possible under a clique rule. Limited by selfishness: the few will inevitably come to regard the ocean-carrying business as "belonging tous," like oil, and with their crushing wealth will treat as "black-mailers" intruders with new ships and new methods. Limited by the impossibility the subsidy system imposes upon the average citizen of competing against the government—against himself multiplied by all his fellow-citizens. Limited by corruption: when this subsidy bill was under discussion, Representative Blount, of Georgia,[577]called attention to the methods by which previous legislation of the same sort, "to build up the American merchant marine and increase the commerce of the country," had been sought from Congress. Quoting from the report made to Congress in 1874-75 by Representative Kasson, of Iowa, he showed that the Pacific Mail Company, to get a subsidy, had disbursed $703,000 among the members and officers of Congress and other persons influential in legislation. "Yankee maritime enterprise," this is called. The great captains, Bursley, Anthony, Delano, Dumaresq, Comstock, Eldridge, Nye, Marshall, Holdredge, Morgan, and other sturdy Americans who led the nautical world wherever speed, safety, and courage were called for, outsailing competition even from the land where "Blake and mighty Nelson fell"[578]—they had a manlier idea of enterprise than being supported at the public expense in floating poor-houses miscalled floating hotels.
The few men who are the beneficiaries of taxes paid by the many will be powerful and shrewd enough to get other dispensations or benefits, post-office contracts, naval contracts, or modifications of the strict terms of their agreement, and with this help from the taxpayer they can do business at a figure which, though very remunerative to themselves, will drive the unaided citizen competitor out of the business. Honest citizens cannot ask for such favors. Poor men could not get them.
It was the old spirit of rebate which sought and gave the preference. Nothing could make such legislation respectable but the extension of its benefits to all Americans owning suchships. But no such extension was contemplated. The law gave a privilege not to the American flag, but to the owners of the American flags of these two steamers. "There is little probability," Senator Frye was reported as saying, December 22, 1892, in the New YorkTribune, friendly to him and to the policy of subsidy, "of the passage of any more laws giving the privilege of an American registry to vessels upon the building of which no American labor has been expended. The twin steamersCity of New YorkandCity of Parishave set a fashion of which they will be the only exponents."
There is a pool of the steamers between America and Europe called the North Atlantic Steamship Association. At its meeting in December, 1892, this association discussed plans for reducing the number of trips, increasing passenger rates, withdrawing excursion rates to the World's Fair, and discontinuing the steerage traffic. This was duly followed by the announcement in March, 1893, for which it was presumably a preparation, that steerage traffic was renewed, but at an increase of rates. Passenger rates of the higher class have also been raised. Agreements to restrict the number of ships; pools to put up rates; steamship wars to destroy competitors; the use of "pull" to procure from the admiralty, sanitary, naval, immigration, and other governmental bureaus, here and abroad, regulations ostensibly for public convenience, really to make business, as nearly as can be, impossible for others; lobbies to buy legislation for private interests—all these may be expected to replace the magnificent and manly rivalries of the days when the unbribed flag floated on its own breath in every sea.
Under the policy of subsidy—the policy of aristocracy, exclusion, scarcity, corruption, war, and loss of liberty—the contest for maritime and commercial supremacy becomes a contest between the subsidy lobbies in Washington and at Westminster, Paris, and Berlin. If the duke who is at the head of one of the great English steamship lines obtains an increase of subsidy, the maritime dukes in America will call on Congress not to shame itself by doing less for Americansthan Parliament has done for Englishmen. If all the English and American lines pass under one ducal yoke—following the internationalization of other syndicated businesses of Great Britain and America—one hidden hand will manage for one purse the make-believe duel between Parliament and Congress, while the uninitiated people glare across the ocean at each other, and each inspired press calls on its government not to allow its commercial supremacy to be destroyed by vulgar and unpatriotic economy. In advocacy of subsidy—breeder of sea-dogs, naval contractors, of war, and of treasury-suckled syndicates to fan its flames—the Secretary of the Navy wrote to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce in this case, "A fleet of such cruisers would sweep an enemy's commerce from the ocean." All through the press, from New York to Texas and the Pacific coast, every possible change of phrase is rung to fire the American heart with "jingo" exhortations to subsidize private steamers so as to increase our fighting kennel.
The "American idea" is that individuals as well as corporations, poor men as well as rich ones, small towns as well as large ones, one maritime State as well as another, should be encouraged to follow the sea. The old woman who thanked God, upon her first sight of the sea, that at last she had seen something there was enough of, lived before subsidies were invented and the sea shrank to be too small for all the people.
The contracts made with the International Company bind the government to pay it $4.00 a mile for fifty-two trips a year (3162 miles each) between New York and Southampton for the ten years (1895-1905)—$657,696 a year, and $6,576,960 for the ten years; and the same rate a mile for the same number of trips a year (of 3350 miles each) between New York and Antwerp for ten years—$696,800 a year, and $6,968,000 for the ten years. This makes an income from the mails alone of $1,354,496 a year on the not-to-exceed $10,000,000 which the company will have invested. At the end of the ten years it will have received from these government contracts alone its whole investment, and more than one-thirdin addition. The American taxpayer will receive for his share the profit and pleasure of being forbidden to send his letters to Europe by faster and cheaper boats, when these appear, as they have already begun to do. The trial trips of new steamers of other lines show them to be faster than the vessels we have bound ourselves to. "The American principle" used to be to send all mails by the fastest ships. Now, to develop the "American merchant marine," we relieve it from all necessity of competing in speed, or anything else, with the foreign marine.
With such legislation and contracts in hand, any syndicate could go to the banks and borrow at the lowest rates every cent of the millions it needed to carry out its plans. It need not invest a dollar of its own. Good enough "collateral" for borrowing would be this privilege—practically a capital of millions got from the government for nothing. Done for favored citizens, this is "the development of our national resources"; done for the whole people, it would be "socialism" or something more dreadful. Thus guaranteed dividends by the forced contributions of the American people, this company, if threatened with competition by other lines, old or new, can lower freights and fares to rates at which others cannot live. The subsidies are a reserve fund on which it can subsist while doing other business below cost. The vision of this will deter other capitalists from building vessels, as they have been frightened out of building tank-cars. The company can, by a war of rates, force the sale to it of such vessels as it wants out of the present Atlantic fleet. The scheme, which has progressed so smoothly through the various stages of the Postal Subsidy law—the exemption by special legislation of the two steamers from their foreign disabilities, the negotiation of the contracts for subsidies untilA.D.1905 for steamers yet unborn—is an entering wedge, the broad end of which may easily grow to be a monopoly of the transatlantic—and why not transpacific?—traffic and travel.
And in future legislation, tariffs, and contracts, what bulwark of the people would avail against the Washington lobbyof these combined syndicates of oil, natural gas, illuminating gas, coal, lead, linseed-oil, railroads, street-railroads, banks, ocean and lake steamships and whalebacks, iron and copper mines, steel mills, etc.? These beggars on horseback—the poor we will always have with us as long as we give such alms—are forever at the elbows of the secretaries, representatives, senators. The people who pay are at work in their fields, out of sight, scattered over thousands of miles.
Having evaded, by the complaisance of Congress, the requirements of the subsidy law in the case of its two non-American steamers, the company sought to be relieved by the Secretary of the Treasury from the necessity of manning its boats with Americans, as stipulated by the law. It was unwilling to sacrifice the foreign captains in its employ, as the despatches said, "for the untried men of American citizenship," regardless that one of the strongest promises of the subsidy givers and takers was to recall to the sea the American citizenship banished thence. The company had already driven its foreign-built boats through the law, why not its foreign captains? It applied to the Treasury Department for permission to retain them. To furnish a ground for such a ruling, the foreign captains had given notice of their "intention" to become citizens. They could not become citizens for five years, and the courts hold that such a declaration does not meet the requirements of the law that the officers of United States vessels shall be citizens of the United States. The ruling asked for was refused by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Nettleton. The question was not dropped. Some months later (December 2, 1892) the Washington despatches of the PhiladelphiaLedgerand the New YorkHeraldreported that "Secretary Foster of the Treasury is disposed to accede to the wishes of the company, if it can possibly be done within the law," and in the New YorkTribunewe read that "he is inclined to the view that an exception might safely be made in this case."
The raising of the American flag on these steamers—one at New York and the other at Southampton—in the spring of1893, was made a state ceremony in both countries. The President of the United States came on specially from the capital to honor the occasion, though this had never been done before when the American flag was raised on vessels admitted to foreign registry. The American minister left the embassy at London to officiate at Southampton. The vessels were announced to be under American captains transferred from other ships owned by the same men. But the Society of American Marine Engineers and the Brotherhood of Steamboat Pilots discovered that other officers—the foreign engineers of the vessels—had been retained, though they were foreigners. The former began an agitation for the protection of their legal rights. Remonstrances from every important branch of the two societies from San Francisco to New York were forwarded to the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury of the new administration which had just gone into office. Counsel were employed to present their case. It was found that one of the last official acts of the out-going Secretary of the Treasury had been the order authorizing the issue of licenses to foreign engineers. Attempts to procure a copy of this order from the department have failed. Engineers have always been considered to be officers. If they are such, this exemption was a violation of the statutes of the United States which require that officers shall be American. It reversed all the decisions which hold that declaration of an intention to become a citizen does not make one legally a citizen, for that would give foreigners, as in this case, the advantages of citizenship without its duties; and indefinitely, for the intention might never be executed. The order of the Secretary makes a precedent upon which foreign captains may be employed—the objection being the same in either case—and their reappearance may therefore be confidently looked for. The appropriation once got, "Old Glory" is hauled down.
An "American Seaman" wrote the New YorkWorldthat when he offered himself for employment on the boat which had just replaced with so much pomp the British flag withthe American he was almost laughed at, and was told there had been ninety men on board that morning on the same errand. All got the same answer, "We don't want you. We employ all our hands on the other side." The articles circulated throughout the country to create public opinion in favor of these subsidies dwell much on the "glory" and advantage of having Americans in command of these vessels with a full American force under them. But the subsidy secured, we see these American vessels, which may be called upon to take part in a war with Great Britain, are manned by British engineers and British seamen. The lower compensation they are accustomed to will help keep down the cost of manning the other vessels to be built for the line.