"Then the compensation you got was $300 and the pleasure of selling out your friends?" Albert was asked by one of the great lawyers.[474]Albert did not smile, but "they seemed to enjoy hugely," reported the press, "the idea that men could be bought so cheap." The eminent counsel of the prisoners took the cue from their clients, and treated the proceedings as a farce. When the State's Attorney was questioning his witnesses, they objected to his questions with laughs and sneers until he became indignant, and asked, with considerable emphasis, to have the joke explained to him—a need the jury also felt, as their verdict showed. When the Boston agent of the trust told that his instructions from headquarters were that if there was to be any selling at a loss to let the new competitor have the loss,[475]they all laughed again.
So all the morning there had been fine sport in the court-room, and the good-humor had risen higher with every fresh incident in the entertainment until Albert's wife took her place in the witness-box. She, too, raised a laugh, but it was not she who laughed. Serious enough she was when taking her place on the witness-stand. She had to face these gentlemen, before whose hundreds of millions her husband's little venture had withered, but, as she herself afterwards said: "I wasn't afraid of them, but I was nervous. But as soon as I got talking I didn't care anything for them, although they all sat there in front, in a row, looking straight at me."
The wife's story to the jury showed how such an adventureappeared when looked at and experienced from the woman's stand-point—the home-maker's and the home-keeper's—which the smiling row before her were as little able to grasp as the participants in a pigeon-shooting match to look upon that vision of flames, demons, and death-dealing thunder from the point of view of the hapless birds. A bright-faced, brown-eyed, pleasant-looking woman, as she took the stand she looked what she was—an artisan's honest wife. "My husband," she said, "had been employed in the Vacuum oil works at Rochester thirteen or fourteen years, and we had accumulated some property—mortgages and money and real estate. We moved to Buffalo, April 5, 1881, where he was superintending the building of the Buffalo works."[476]After Albert had yielded to the threats and the temptation, and had fixed the stills and the fires for an explosion, he fled without a word to his wife or his associates, hid, under an assumed name, in Boston, and then travelled over the continent for a year—from Buffalo to Boston, to Rochester, to San Francisco.
"When you left Buffalo did you leave any word with Matthews where you were going?"
"No, sir."
"Or your wife?"
"No, sir."
While the wife was in Buffalo wondering what had become of her husband, he was in New York with his venerable ex-employer, getting lessons like the following in the secrets of building up a great commercial enterprise:
"The best thing you can do, Albert," said the latter, "is to go and write a telegram, and tell your wife to go back to Rochester."
"You'd better write it; I am a poor writer," said Albert.
"No," he said; "I do not want to appear in this case at all. Write it so," he continued, "that she can move on the Fourth of July, and they can't attach her things."[477]
The first word she got from her husband was this telegramto move between two days, and back to Rochester the dutiful woman packed herself and her things.
"It was two or three weeks before I heard from him direct or knew just where he was," she said.
"I asked Charles"—one of the two managers—"how Al was, and he said Al was all right."
"Would he tell you where he was?" the State's Attorney asked.
"No, sir; when I wrote to my husband I left the direction blank, and gave the letter to Charley. I got an answer through Charley."[478]
For three weeks they would not let her know where her husband was. "Think of that," said the District Attorney. "She had to go and take her poor little letter to her husband, thinking, perhaps, if he was away from her tender care he might get to drinking, because he does drink some; but when with his wife they lived year in and year out without his tasting a drop; ... afraid that he might get to drinking, and that she could not watch over him.... It was a cruel thing to do."
"C. told me to go to the real-estate agents," Albert's wife continued, "and try to sell our property and get it into money. He made out a list of real-estate agents from the city directory. I guess that is all he did about assisting me in the sale of the property."
"I asked C. if my husband could not come home from Boston. I was sick. He said 'Yes.' Al came home and stayed a week or two. Then he went back to Boston. C. told me they did not want the Buffalo company to know where Al was."[479]
Albert was a man infirm under temptation. The employer knew, by fourteen years' acquaintance, the weakness this man had acquired in his service in the army. He gave him idleness, money, temptation, and an assumed name to go to the devil with, if that agent of the trust was to be found in Boston.
"You want to take good care of Al," said the good old manto his clerk in Boston, "and not let him get homesick. If he wants any money, let him have it." Albert travelled the broad way made smooth for him.
"Of course I never went around with him," said the clerk, in a deposition; "a porter that I had was the party that went around with him in the evening. I would hear what was going on, and I could judge about the size of Al's head when he came around in the morning."
With all Albert's faults he kept one dignity to the end which makes him tower above his seducers—the dignity of the laborer. A life's discipline in daily toil had made his whole fibre too honest to enjoy idleness, even at the rate of $1500 a year. He was free to come and go amid the gaudy joys of a great city, as irresponsible under the assumed name given him as if he wore the ring of Gyges. He had money for the asking, and boon companions. But the habit of a lifetime of honest, hard manual work was too deeply ingrained into the very substance of his nature for him to become a cheap American Faust, revelling in a pinchbeck paradise. This simple son of poverty had all his life handled only real things, and had at every point had the mind's native wantonness and riot checked by the hard surface which had calloused his hands, and the outer air which had cooled him as he worked. His were dreams of honest rest earned by honest work, and of family joys. The self-indulgence that was revealed by the "size of his head in the morning" was an animal exuberance that, as the result showed, did but stain the "rose-mesh of his flesh," and went no deeper. Albert could not stand the idleness of his Boston life. He went back to Rochester.
"I want something to do."
"What brings you here?" said his employer. "Go back."
After hanging around the office in Boston a few weeks longer, the workman's nature reasserted itself again. He went back again to Rochester. "I want something to do." "We have not got anything for you to do just now," he was told. "You are all right."[480]
Months of idleness were interrupted only by odd jobs, like superintending the digging of a ditch or the sinking of a salt-well. Time and again, though he was drawing his pay of $125 a month, he went, as he told the story in court, to repeat the plea for "something to do." Finally, the elder of the managers, who was in California, sent for him. He was to be made "an independent man," the new promise ran, but really, as the sequel showed, was, if possible, to be kept out of the way of too inquisitive juries and prosecuting attorneys. The wife, treated as a mere pawn in the game, protested vehemently. "I went down to the Vacuum Oil Company's office, and asked C. to give Al something else to do. I didn't want him to go to California. He said that there was not anything that he knew that he could do."
"I don't want Al to go. I won't go. Give him something else to do."
"I have nothing else."[481]
She had to yield, and her husband left her to go to California. His employer persuaded Albert to buy a piece of land in California. "He seemed to be very anxious to locate me there."[482]Albert sent to his wife for the money, but the shrewd little woman sent only half. "I thought I would let him pay it out of his pay." With the same good sense the wife had not sold all the property when sent out alone among the real-estate men. "I did not sell the real estate," she said; "I thought there was too much expense."[483]She was not with her husband when the rupture came in California. The first news the anxious wife had of a change in her husband's affairs was when "Charley" came to her, as she was sitting one summer evening on the porch of a neighbor's house, and told her "Al" had quit them. "I do not know what to make of it," he continued: "I think he must be crazy or something."[484]
It was not until his return that she learned the details of the painful experience he had been through. When it washeard that Albert, upon his return from California, had made restitution as far as he was able, by telling what he knew to the authorities, to aid them in bringing the principals in the crime to justice, there was consternation in the trust. One of its detectives had been captain of the company Albert was in during the Civil War. The captain now presented himself before Albert as he went to his work in Corry, Pennsylvania, where he had gone after his return from California, and became sociable rapidly. He had great plans for Albert, and came to the house to discuss them confidentially. Albert and his wife had been simple folks to start with, but they had learned a thing or two by this time. The captain's desire for confidential talk with his old comrade was so intense that it would have been rude in Albert's wife to thwart it. She packed off her daughter on an errand, and announced that she had a call up the street, and would leave them to themselves; but she did not add, as she might have done, that during her absence she would be represented by the Chief of Police, whose appetite for confidential communications was as keen as the captain's, but whose retiring disposition kept him in the dark seclusion of an adjoining room, with his ear to the crack of the door.
"Wouldn't Albert like to go to Russia?" the captain asked his dear friend the private, whose existence he had never personally recognized when they were so close together during the Civil War. "If the Court will allow me to show by this witness," said the prosecuting attorney, "that the captain came there as a detective for the oil trust, and made a proposition, after the indictments were found, to Albert to flee the country, and go with him to Russia." One of the army of trust lawyers was instantly on his feet with "I object." The judge sustained him, and the testimony was shut out.
Albert's wife kept close to his side, and held him steady. No, Albert did not care to go to Russia. Advertisements of an alum-mine in Corry then began to appear in newspapers where Albert's attention could be called to them. By a lucky chance the captain happened to know the capitalists whoseboundless powers of enterprise could find full outlet only by developing the hitherto unsuspected resources of Corry for supplying the nations of the earth with alum. By a joyful coincidence, these capitalists wanted for superintendent of their bottomless alum-mines just such a man as the captain knew his dear Albert to be. Would Albert like to go to Italy to learn the true science of alum manufacture, and to show the effete monarchies how an American could disembowel the earth of its alum? Salary, $5000 and expenses. No, Albert had no unslaked ambition to go to Italy as superintendent of mines of alum, or green cheese, or any other lunar commodity.
At least, Albert would take a drink? That poor Albert would do; and when he failed to come home at night his wife went up and down the streets seeking him. "A persistent effort had been made" by the trust, Mr. Matthews testified, "to get Albert out of the country. I was afraid they would get him away, as he might not be used in this case. Men had been sent there to get him drunk, and had debauched him."[485]Money was potent enough to persuade lawyers to make it a part of their professional duty to help in this. One of the trust's lawyers sat with Albert and its detective in the stall of a cheap saloon, and plied him with liquor to get from him some letters of Matthews' they wanted. "There they sat," said the keeper of the saloon; " ... they got what they called for, probably.... I couldn't tell how many drinks they got into Albert on that occasion; I think they drank there."[486]
While this courtship was in progress with Albert in Pennsylvania, wires were being pulled to get him indicted in New York. The grand-jury of Rochester was asked to indict him for receiving stolen property in a watch trade he had made seven years before. This would have ruined him as a witness in the forthcoming criminal case against the members of the oil trust, but the grand-jury decided that there was no evidence on which to indict. When Adam Cleber, a stolid-looking German laborer, who worked in the same place with Albert in Corry, took the stand for the State at the close, an eager excitement filled the court-room. The State's Attorney was known to have his darkest sensation still in reserve. What it was he would not, of course, disclose in advance, but those hardly less familiar than he with the evidence hinted that the fertile genius of the captain, having exhausted itself in the ideas of the trips to Russia and Italy, had fallen back upon the genius of his superiors, and had arranged to have Albert go a-hunting, and get a "bust-up" as much as possible like the one he had been induced to attempt upon his employers and partners.
"Did the captain tell you what he wanted you to do to Albert?" Cleber was asked.
"Yes—" That was as far as Cleber got.
"I object!" screamed one of the lawyers.
"I propose to show that the captain made a request of this witness in regard to what he should do to Albert, and what he should come and swear to about Albert, there being no truth in the matter he wanted Cleber to swear to," the State's Attorney urged to the Court. The judge took the matter home for consideration over-night, and announced in the morning that he would not admit the evidence. It was acknowledged by one of the lawyers for the members of the trust on trial that he had employed the captain to get evidence for them; but the judge, instead of admitting Cleber's testimony, and leaving the question of its value to be settled by the jury, excluded it.
In his closing speech District Attorney Quinby said: "Why, in Heaven's name, my friends, didn't you place the captain on this witness-stand? He would have been a feast for you and a feast for me. His ways have been curious and sinuous, his methods have been peculiar and corrupting, and they did not dare to put him on the stand because if they did he would have left it to go to prison. That is the reason. They know it."
The brave and steadfast woman told her part of this story on the witness-stand. Her home had been broken up again and again. As she herself said afterwards: "I had to live with my carpets packed, and moved around like a gypsy." Her husband had been tempted to commit a crime which compelled him to lead the life of a fugitive. He had been spirited away and secreted; she had not been allowed to know where he was, and could communicate with him only through a third person; they had moved around, in her expressive phrase, until they had moved into two rooms; the savings of fifteen years' hard work were all gone, and the independent business, in which her husband had just got his footing, swept away. He and she faced the world with no other assets than their child and the palms of their hard-working hands.
"Well, it's taken all we had," she says; "we've lost it all, but I'd rather it would be so than to have the money they have, and go about hiding and sneaking. I'd like money, but not so well as that. When I said to 'Charley,' 'I shall have to sell all my furniture'—'Oh, that's nothing.' And when I told him it had cost us $100 to pay the expenses of selling real estate—'That isn't much.' It wasn't much to them, but it was to us, who had made every dollar by hard work. Well, we'll have to do without the money, and just live along by honest work. We can live that way. We have had all this trouble and lost our money, and haven't made money enough to buy a calico dress."
All the good that had come of this loss of savings and home and honor had gone to those at the bar of justice and their associates sitting in the tickled row before her. On the cross-examination, which was to crush the witness and her damaging testimony, the distinguished counsel, not content with all the suffering and loss already inflicted on this wife, tried to humiliate her still further, but the woman's wit of truth was too much for the lawyer's wit of wile.
"Don't you recollect," the lawyer asked, "that you went to the house of the manager of the Vacuum, and that yousaw him in the parlor, and that you asked him to take your husband back?"
"I never asked him to take my husband back."
"Then you did not ask him at the time and place I spoke of?"
"I never asked him anywhere to take him back."
"Don't you recollect upon that occasion being considerably affected, and asking him to take your husband back, and his speaking of the way in which he had left the company, which he characterized as shameful, and that you cried—shed tears?"
"I never asked him to take him back. I recollect going there. I recollect I felt bad, because I was talked to so much about it. I had reason to feel bad. I am trying to tell the truth as near as I can."
"Then what was the occasion of your bad feeling?"
"It was because I thought we were going to lose everything, and would not have nothing left. That is what I felt bad for—was shedding tears for, if I did. I don't know as I did."[487]
Then came the laugh. From millionaire to lesser millionaire went the enlarging laugh. The mighty cortege of the retained ex-judges, famous constitutional and criminal lawyers, detectives, camp-followers laughed. It was the laugh of hundreds of millions, and it clinked and tinkled and rang. As if every mouth were a bagful of gold, and as if every bag had burst, the golden notes of mirth filled the air, and struck the ceiling, and rolled over the floor, rebounded and fell and rose in mellow chimes of sound, and the golden rain dripped everywhere. Millions on millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of the coin of the republic, and in every coin a cackle.
"Yes, they all laughed at me," the little woman told her friends; "it looked like such a great joke to them. Perhaps I did not tell it very well, but I told the truth."
In closing the case the State's Attorney said to the jury:"A sorrow was placed on that woman's heart that can never be removed. One of the pathetic things in this case was that when this woman was on the stand, telling her little story, how they were afraid they might lose the few thousand dollars they had saved, the $6000 or $7000 they had been struggling for for fifteen years, these New York gentlemen with their millions laughed in her face at the idea of her being sorry to lose the pittance of $6000 or $7000. It was the only time in the case, really, I felt that these gentlemen were outraging common decency."[488]
Some time after the trial was over, and sentence passed and satisfied, these men sent for Albert to come to Rochester. He went with witnesses. There in the office of a leading lawyer he was tempted with desperate propositions to do something or say something that would break the force with which these disclosures must act on public opinion. "They need not think," he replied, "that they can get me to make a false oath to let them out of a hole. I would not do it for all the combined wealth of the trust. When my wife was on the stand they laughed her in the face when she told about losing all we had. Do you suppose any man with a particle of American blood could have any love for them? I think as much of my wife and daughter as any of them of theirs, and I will do nothing to disgrace them." This hard-working and hard-living laborer and his wife had, by thirteen or fourteen years of toil and stinting, saved $6000. The laughers had in the same time saved about $300,000,000, and somebody else had done all the work. The poor man and his wife had been afraid that the $300,000,000 would devour the $6000. It said it would, and it had. Shall not they laugh who win?
CHAPTER XX
TAKEN FROM THE JURY BY THE JUDGE
TheDistrict Attorney put the president of the light of the world on the stand. His evidence showed that the purchase of the three-quarter's interest in the Vacuum Company, sold because "there were restrictions in the shipments," was made by the three New York men on trial. "They are share-holders in the trust," he said. When they bought the stock they transferred it to the oil trust. He had known of the contemplated purchase. Having thus proved that the three indicted directors from New York on trial were members of the oil trust, and were managing the Vacuum for it, the District Attorney proceeded, in pursuance of a logical plan of inquiry, to bring before the jury what the trust was, and its relations to the companies it covered.
"What is it ... if you know?" the District Attorney asked. The president, through his counsel, objected to the question.
"What is the object of this?" the judge asked the District Attorney.
The trust, the District Attorney explained, owns a majority of the stock of this Vacuum Company and others, and controls the manufacture in this country of substantially all the lubricating and illuminating oils. These defendants belonging to the trust, and "one of these being chairman of a committee of the trust, it was the desire and motive of the three to do away with competition, to destroy and ruin the competitive works in Buffalo."
The Court asked the president of the trust if it was a manufacturing company.
"It is not, your honor."
The Court ruled out the question "What is it?" although in doing so he used language apparently contradicting his ruling, saying, in effect, that it was "quite immaterial what the objects or purposes of the oil trust are, unless these defendants are in some way interested so as to create a motive to do what it is claimed they did do." Again, when the District Attorney sought to ascertain in what other corporations engaged in the manufacture of oil in 1879, 1880, and 1881 the trustees on trial owned stock, it was objected to and the objection sustained, although the Court but a few moments before had said, "I will allow you to show everything these defendants have done upon the question of motive, ... to show what their business is, the companies they have stock in, whether it is an oil company or some other company—that is, any company engaged in the manufacture of oil that would come in competition with the Buffalo company...."
The judge, declaring that he would admit such evidence, refused to admit it. What the District Attorney would have been able to uncover as to the responsibility of the "trustees" for what was done by the subordinate companies, the reader, freer than the jury in this case, can find out for himself.
The nine trustees, of whom three were on trial, owned as their individual property more than half of this as of every establishment in the trust. They decided who were to be elected directors and officers of each company. They exercised full control over these officers when elected. They declared the dividends. The profits of all these shares are put into one purse, and distributed in quarterly dividends among the trustees in proportion to their interest in the trust—the purse-holder.[489]In the case of the Vacuum Company, accordingly, we find that the minutes of stockholders' meetings record the presence of members of the oil trust, in person and by proxy, representing a majority of the stock, electing the officers and directors, and declaring the dividends. Howthorough and minute is the supervision over the vassal companies an employé, who had been in the service of the combination for several years in a confidential way, and "had access to every book and paper and their cipher arrangement," has told.[490]They "control every movement of every branch of their business." The subordinate companies "make a report every day of all their business.... They have blanks there on which they make a report of all their shipments, where shipped, and who shipped to, and all their purchases; and they report every month the exact percentage they have made out of their crude oil, of all the different products they get out of it. They report everything in detail."
This was in 1879. Ten years later, in 1888, the testimony of the president shows that the system is the same. "They know the cost at every refinery. They get such reports once in thirty days; each report shows just what it has cost for everything.... Made out on regular blanks."[491]
But when put on the stand in this case, in Buffalo, he had professed himself altogether ignorant of any such reports.[492]Asked if the Vacuum Company had made them, he replied:
"I can't recall any such reports."
Asked if it was obligatory upon the Vacuum Oil Company to make reports, he said:
"I can't state."
But the manager's testimony in the same case shows that the system of reports which his superior "could not recall" was in regular operation.
"There are reports of sales of the Vacuum Oil Company made to certain parties in New York."[493]
The three trustees who bought the control of the Vacuum stock did not keep it for themselves. They transferred it to the trust, and received for it shares in the trust. They werenot stockholders in the Vacuum, but stockholders in the trust. It was the trust which was the real stockholder in the Vacuum. The profits on this Vacuum stock, therefore, went into the common fund in which the trust accumulated the profits of all its controlling ownerships in companies all over the country—all over the world. Every trustee shared in the profits of every company so controlled, whether in the United States or Europe or Asia. The president of the trust, now on the witness-stand, was a large participator in the profits of the Vacuum, because he was a large owner in the trust which possessed three-quarters of it. Similarly as to the three trustees indicted and on trial, and every other trustee.[494]The case was interwoven, notwithstanding the exclusion of this by the judge, with evidence that the three members of the trust on trial were the managers of the company for the trust, and were consulted habitually about the current details by the salaried agents.
"After this purchase was made did you continue to represent the purchasers in the management of the affairs of the Vacuum Oil Company?" one of the three was asked.
"I did."
After the purchase of the Vacuum by the trust, Mr. Matthews, before he left to go into business on his own account, had to go to its office in New York half a dozen times, to see the New York directors when he wanted instructions. His testimony on this point covers thirty pages of the official testimony, and shows repeated interviews between him and the members of the trust about every kind of detail of the business of the Vacuum. When Matthews asked the manager of the Vacuum to give him more pay, the latter had told him to speak to one of the trustees—one of the three now on trial. "It will be as he says about it." Again, as to another matter, he said to Matthews: "I cannot tell you. There is no use for me to pretend that we run our business, for we do not."[495]
This evidence must be sought in the original records of thecase at Buffalo, as it is left out in the transcript furnished by the trust to the committee of Congress, which represents the case against the two local managers only. The Rochester manager, after the explosion, and at the time of sending for Albert to come to New York, telegraphed to his son: "Our views with regard to Albert confirmed." By whom? as Matthews' lawyer asked. The manager saw one of the three accused trustees in New York after he returned from the trip to Boston to hide Albert. "I told him that I had hired him," he testified.
The trustee denied this, as the president denied the monthly reports. But he has himself furnished the evidence that his employé told the truth. In their answer in court to the allegations of the suit against them for damages, he and the other two trustees concerned in the Vacuum direction testified that they advised the Rochester managers "to endeavor to retain the said" Albert, ... "and after" he "had left the employment of the Vacuum Oil Company ... they further advised that he should be re-employed if it could be done by reasonable increase of his wages. They were afterwards informed that he had been re-employed." This shows they knew about the negotiations before, during, and after. They knew the man was to have more wages, though the increase was only $300 a year, and their income was millions yearly. When he had been gotten away they were informed of that too. The District Attorney knew all about this answer in the civil case, but under the statutes of New York it could not be used in a criminal prosecution against those who had made it. He put the trustee on the stand, and did his best to get him to tell the same story, but in vain.
The body-guard of lawyers surrounding the great men who made the court-room a veritable curiosity-shop for the people of Buffalo, did a deal of acting throughout the trial to impress on the jury that the whole proceeding was a farce. They laughed and yawned and pooh-poohed, and sneered at the District Attorney's questions and points, and went through all kinds of dumb-shows of indignation and ennui that theirclients should be so needlessly called on to waste priceless time. But this could not prevent their faces from lengthening as the story was told by witness after witness, as more than one observant reporter saw and noted. When the evidence was all in, and District Attorney Quinby had closed his case, the situation was desperate. There was no doubt about that. The great men of the trust on trial had been proved to be the actual directors of the Vacuum at every turn of its daily affairs. Before any evidence was introduced for the defence, one of the distinguished lawyers arose and moved the discharge of the three members of the trust, who were a majority of the Board of Directors of the Vacuum Company, and managed it for the trust. The prosecution were not taken unawares by the motion. The District Attorney's able assistant, William L. Marcy, had gathered all the precedents and equipped himself to resist the discharge. He and the District Attorney fought hard to have the principals in the company go to the jury with their agents, but in vain. Mr. Marcy pointed out that, as shown in the case of The Peoplevs.Mather, "to charge partners as conspirators it is not necessary even to show that they were the original conspirators. It is sufficient if at a subsequent time they become party to it by accepting the benefits derived from the conspiracy. The case lays that down in exact terms."
The Judge: "Must there not be an adoption?"
Mr. Marcy: "That is an adoption—accepting the benefits."
The Judge: "They may accept the benefits without knowing."
Mr. Marcy: "Then the jury may infer that knowledge from all the circumstances. The jury are the tribunal to determine whether or not the parties had the knowledge." Mr. Marcy pointed out that there was everything to lead the jury to infer that these men were parties to the plan. "Where did the meetings of the Board of Directors take place? At Rochester, where the works are? No; at New York, where these men carried on their other business. The Rochester representatives dance in attendance wherever these New York partiesdesire them to go." He pointed out to the judge that the trustee whom Albert met in New York after the explosion knew of the plan to take him to Boston. He showed that the same trustee, when remonstrated with by Matthews for bringing patent suits without foundation, said that he intended to carry them on, and if he was beaten in one court, he would carry them to a higher court. Just in the same way the Rochester representative of the trust had said: "I will bring lawsuits against you. I will get an injunction against you." "When the Rochester manager," said Mr. Marcy, "hired Albert, he did not pretend to be able to make a bargain until he had been to New York and consulted about it. He was in New York before he telegraphed to him to come to New York. This significant fact points home the conspiracy upon the gentlemen who reside in New York."
But the judge, and not the jury, rendered the verdict as to the three members of the trust on trial. He failed to remember or observe the law that leaves it to the jury to render the verdict. He announced that he had decided to grant the motion for their discharge. There was silence in the court-room for a moment. Then: "Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict as advised by the Court," came in sonorous tones from the clerk; "you find the defendants"—naming the three members of the oil trust at the bar—"not guilty of the crime, as charged in the indictment, so say you all."
The jury looked scared at being addressed so peremptorily, but said nothing.
"The New York men looked happy," said one of the observers, "but their Rochester associates and codefendants did not smile." Upon the discharge of the trustees, one of the Buffalo dailies said that whether there was any conspiracy at all is an undecided question, but it should be remembered that the oil trust and the Vacuum Oil Company "have been honorably acquitted of the charge of having anything to do with the matter. As the case now stands, it is simply The People against"—the two Rochester managers.
Poor men! It was for this that they succumbed to theattacks of the oil trustees upon their business, sold them for $200,000 three-quarters of a concern which produced $300,000 in dividends in one year for the lucky conquerors, became vassals instead of masters in their own refinery. It was for $10,000 a year, divided into $6500 for one and $3500 for the other, that they undertook to fetch and carry for their suzerains, even to the gates of the penitentiary; and when discovery and conviction came, to bear in silence upon their own shoulders the guilt and shame from which others got only "more."
The trial of the two remaining defendants proceeded. Neither of them took the stand. In a deposition the elder said it was Albert who had spoken about misplacing the pipes; but when asked what he said in reply to a suggestion, which no one better than he knew the significance of, he replied: "I made no reply to it, but I thought it would be a very scandalous proceeding."[496]Albert had told how, in conversation in California, his employer had described his plans with regard to Matthews.
"We would have just got them fellows in a boat, right in the middle of the stream, and we would have tipped them two over, and drowned them, and you would have been all right."[497]"If I ever made such a remark," this defendant deposed, "it was in a playful humor. I am in the habit of making playful remarks."
Witness after witness had to confess, under cross-examination, that his testimony had been written and rewritten by himself or the lawyer for the defence, and carefully conned before coming on the stand. The District Attorney asked one of these tutored witnesses why he had read over the written preparation of his testimony in the rotunda of the court-house just before going on the stand.
"I read it over," he replied, lucidly, "for the simple reason of reading it over."
"Just to practise in reading?"
"Well, perhaps we might call it practice in reading."[498]
"This preparation of the testimony," said the District Attorney to the jury, "which I stigmatize as infamous, this going to a witness and writing him down, and having him fix it, and write it over again, and keeping it in his mind, and reading it over, and so going on the stand, is not the way to try a lawsuit, in my mind. I write nothing down. I coach no witnesses. I want a witness to tell me his story. I put him on the stand and he tells me his story; but no writing down, no reading over. It is not right, and it is very liable to be very wrong."
Several witnesses were introduced to prove that Matthews had offered to settle the criminal prosecution. He could not have done so had he wished to. The criminal case was in the hands of the State. Of the witnesses who made this charge against Matthews, one was a stockholder in the trust, another had been a stockholder in one of its pipe lines, and both had to admit on cross-examination that the occasion of his alleged agreeing to settle the case had been that they had gone to him for their friends, unsolicited by him and unexpected, to find out at what price he would sell his works to the combination." I was anxious to settle the criminal prosecution," said one of these ambassadors.
"Anxious for whom?" asked the ever-ready District Attorney.
"I should say—nobody," replied the witness, in confusion.
"Mr. Matthews told him," said Mr. Hiram Benedict, one of the best-known citizens of Lockport, who was present, "that if they bought the capital stock of the company they could do what they chose with the civil suits, but with the criminal suit he had nothing to do; the people had that in charge."[499]
The lawyers tried to make a jest of the whole proceeding, and affected to look upon the incidents of this rivalry with their powerful client as something too trivial to be noticed. "Is it a trivial matter," asked District Attorney Quinby, "thatit shall be decided, once for all, in a court of justice, that in an alleged republic you and I shall not start a business which is a rival to some one else? That is the issue here, and yet the lawyers for the accused tell us it is trivial. It is the most important question that was ever left to a jury of twelve men in this or any country in this age of monopoly." The jury thought so too. The meaning of the policy of suppressing competition was skilfully described by Judge Edward Hatch, Mr. Matthews' counsel in the civil suit for damages, and here again the jury, representing the people, thought so too. "When a man or a corporation is in a position to control the market as to a given article, then everybody is within their power, and it rests with their conscience to determine what shall be the price. Every time you farmers at home, or your wives or daughters, take your oil-can, turn it up, fill your lamp, and then sit down to read by it, you can understand what is meant by this proposition to crush these men out.... It was a matter that not only these three men were interested in, but every person that lived in the community. Competition would run along to a point where you could get the oils that you use in your families, to grease your wagons, and to burn in your houses, or for any other purpose, at a price that should give the manufacturer a fair profit, and at the lowest possible price. On the other hand, if you leave that open to these parties to regulate as they saw fit, having a monopoly of the market, then you rest upon the conscience of a corporation and put your faith in a soulless individual."
It is one of the few bright lines in this picture that whenever the people got a chance to make themselves heard, their utterance was always right and true. The four juries which passed upon the facts understood them, and had the moral standard by which to judge them aright.
One of the trust's employés was put on the stand to break the effect of the evidence that the competition of the new works had put down the price of oil. "In the early part of 1881—the winter of 1881"—he said, "common oil was 5½ cents a gallon"—this to prove that the reduction had preceded the appearance of the new refinery. He was confronted by the District Attorney with one of his own bills of oil sold in February, 1881. "That would seem to be a sale of 120 degrees oil at 12 cents a gallon," he confessed, and added, awkwardly, "I was asked as to the winter of 1881. That is not the winter of 1881 as I understand. I meant to speak from July, 1881, and so on."[500]
The great lawyers held up to the ridicule of the jury the idea that the gases of distilling petroleum were dangerous. Matthews stated on the stand that he had seen this gas burn up derricks, property, and several men. The lawyers could not let anything so absurd go unchallenged.
"Did it explode?" he was asked smartly.
"Yes, sir."
"And how did the 'explosion' burn up the men and property?" with a knowing look to the jury.
"The gases crept quietly to the boilers, unobserved," said the witness, "and all at once the whole atmosphere was ablaze."
The witnesses who tried to prove that no harm could have resulted from the tampering with the still broke down. One of them was the inspector of oils at the combination's refinery at Cleveland. He, too, had once been an independent refiner, but had passed under the yoke. He declared with every possible variation of phrase that there could not have been an explosion at the Buffalo works; but the District Attorney got out of him piecemeal admissions that the "escaping petroleum gases would be inflammable"; that "in a damp day you would expect them to settle close to the still"; that then, if they came in contact with fire, "you would have a large flash, and consume those vapors; if a person was in the vicinity he would burn."
"I ask you if it would be a safe thing to fill a still with 175 barrels of petroleum, put under it an extremely hot fire, so that the front portion of the still is a cherry red, and a weighted safety-valve is blown off—would you consider that a safe thing to do?"
"I would not."
Still another of these witnesses ended, like Balaam, by saying just the opposite of what had been wanted of him. He testified that the escape of gases from the stills, and even their ignition, was a matter of no consequence—"it may occur at any time"—until he was cross-examined. It turned out then that his own works had been burned three times by the gases from distillation taking fire. "These gases," he had to admit, "took fire and burned the receiving-house. A man got burned up with it."
"Are you willing," the District Attorney asked, sarcastically, "to go down to the Buffalo works and have them run some vapor, on a quiet day, on the ground, and let you stand in the middle of it and touch it off?"
"I am not anxious to do that."[501]
Every one looked to see Matthews crushed by the cross-examination, in accordance with the widely advertised promises of the counsel on the other side.
"As he stood up to take the oath," said the New YorkWorld, "and confronted the men with whom he had been at sword's-point for six years, men of unlimited wealth and almost unlimited influence, and controlling the most gigantic monopoly of any age or any country, Charles B. Matthews looked, as a good observer said, what he proved himself to be, a fighter, who will never know when he is whipped. Hard knocks and a struggle of years against an all-powerful enemy have whitened his hair, and set firm, hard lines about his face. His eyes are deep-set under a protruding forehead and black, bushy lashes, and are dark, firm, and searching. His jet-black beard is luxuriant but coarse, his whole head and face bespeak the dogged persistence in following a foe that is characteristic of the man. He is tall, well built, and with those whom he knows to be friends he is kindly and almost jovial in his manner." He told his story, and the jury believed it. One of the most damaging portions of his testimony was thatgiven to connect the New York members of the trust with the conspiracy by showing that they had the actual, practical, continuous management of the Vacuum in matters small as well as large. Matthews, when in their employ, was kept running to New York continually to see one or the other of them about some detail of the business. Seeking to break down the force of this testimony, the big gun of the legal battery opened on him.
"But you did not see the name" of the oil combination "up over the office that you went into (in New York)?"
"I do not think I ever saw the name over the office that I went into. I think that name is not often in view over where they do business."
"What makes you think so?"
"My experience and observation."
"What experience and observation have you had?"
"Do you want I should tell it all?"
"No, you need not tell it all. We will let that go now." Matthews had been in their employ. He knew about the staff of lobbyists they keep to go from capital to capital as needed.
For lack of evidence the jury was offered abuse of Matthews, spoken by the brilliant attorney on a shout which enabled the populace outside the court-house to hear his speech, and, as the verdict proved, deafened the jury to his eloquence. The jury preferred the view given by the District Attorney. "When I look upon the troubled face of Matthews," said District Attorney Quinby in his closing of the case, "I know what is coming upon his head. When I know the struggle he has gone through, the integrity that is in his heart, I would say to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant, you have withstood the powerful arm of this insatiable corporation. You stand to-day honored from one end of this land to the other.' ... I am proud that in the county of Erie has been born a gentleman who has had the bravery and fortitude he has shown."
CHAPTER XXI
CRIME CHEAPER THAN COMPETITION
Thejury was composed of nine farmers, one tailor, one store-keeper, and one railroad foreman. "So intelligent a jury," said the BuffaloExpress, "is proof perfect that the verdict it returns is the only one warranted by the law and evidence." The jury found all the defendants guilty whom the court allowed them to try. The verdict, "Guilty as charged in the indictment," was given May 18, 1887. Every possibility of appeal and reversal was resorted to. The judge granted a stay, and this left the defendants unsentenced. A motion for a new trial postponed the day of fate until December 24, 1887.
When the judge decided against the new trial an appeal was taken, and was carried through every court except the highest. Legal procedure in New York makes the courts a hunting preserve for those who can afford the luxuries of litigation. The law was changed by the Field code so that demurrers and counter-appeals, proceedings and ancillary proceedings, on technical points can be carried, one after another, from court to court, while the real point at issue has to wait untried below for the results of this interminable contest. By grace of this power to carry preliminary and technical questions from court to court, at the pleasure of quibbling and appealing lawyers and procrastinating judges, from courts of Oyer and Terminer to the Supreme Court at General Term, to the Court of Appeals, rich corporations and individuals are able to tire out altogether all ordinary opponents. It was only by help of very able and highly paid lawyers, officers of the courts and of justice, that the law of New Yorkwas "reformed," so that the technical parts of a case could be to such an extent disengaged from the main body, and sent forward and backward, up and down, through the whole series of appeals, consuming endless time and money, while poor men seeking justice kick their heels in the lowest courts.
As the time for pronouncing sentence came on, petitions for mercy were circulated in Buffalo and Rochester. The members of the jury which had found the accused guilty were labored with separately to sign a recantation. Only six succumbed and signed a statement that the prisoners were found guilty, not because they had conspired to blow up their rival's refinery, but because they had enticed away Albert. This recantation was in the face of the judge's charge, which had made the plot to blow up the Buffalo works the chief and the important inquiry in this case, and the verdict had been given under the influence of this view of the case. Six of the jury saw the impropriety of making this statement after they had disbanded and passed from under the legal and moral restraints they felt when sitting under their oath of office, and refused to sign it.
When the paper from the complaisant six jurors was handed in, the District Attorney said in court: "These jurors received money for making these affidavits. If required to do so I will prove the statement." He was not called upon to do so. "These affidavits," he said afterwards, "were procured for the purpose of influencing the Court to administer the lighter punishment, since they tended to show that the verdict was directed against the lighter offence. One of the jurors told me he had been offered money to sign one of these affidavits, and he knew of one juror who had received $10 for signing one."
When the last possibility in the way of proceedings for a stay or for a new trial had been exhausted, except argument of an appeal in the Court of Appeals, which was known to be useless, sentence was pronounced. The penalty provided in the statutes was imprisonment for one year in the penitentiary, or a fine of $250, or both. The lawyers pleaded that the elder of the convicted men was old, that the younger had just returned from a wedding tour in Europe, that some of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens of Rochester had petitioned for mercy, and that six of the jury had done likewise. Each was sentenced to pay a fine of $250. Notice of appeal was given by the convicted, and a year was consumed on both sides in preparations to fight the case to a bitter finish. But the appeal was abandoned. A new trial and new sentence might have ended worse. The fine was paid, and these employés of the trust, upon whose record as reputable and inoffensive citizens for all the years of their business career no shadow had fallen till they entered its employ, took thereby the place assigned them by the jury—that of convicts guilty of crime.
Crime, it seems, may in this country be cheaper than competition. They who received the larger part of the benefit of the enticement of Albert, of the harassing litigation, of the damage done by the explosion, and of the bankruptcy which was finally produced by these means, went free of all punishment; and the employés found their crime but little less than a pastime. After his conviction, and before his sentence, one of the two married. His wedding was attended by many of the great men of the trust—magnates in the New York world of affairs and its affiliated interests. It glittered with gold and silver and precious stones which they sent to signify to the world that they stood sponsor for him.
The case of some humble boycotters was then fresh in the public mind. Certain working-men, on strike, handed around printed circulars in the streets of New York, requesting people not to buy beer sold by their employer. In a few weeks from the time they dropped those circulars in the streets they were in the penitentiary at Sing Sing. It was shown on their trial that they were entirely ignorant of the fact that they were violating any of the laws of the State in what they did. It was shown on the trial of the oil men that they did know that the course they had in view was criminal,and were warned by a lawyer it might land them in prison. "It was very fortunate," said the New YorkWorld, "that they were not poor men convicted of stealing a ham."
One of the reasons given by the judge for his leniency was that prominent citizens of Buffalo and Rochester had begged for mercy. "With the very highest respect for the judge," said the BuffaloExpress, "as theExpresshas often demonstrated, we must say that this is a mighty queer excuse. Three-fourths of those citizens are in one way or another identified in interest with the oil trust, as the judge could readily have ascertained, and their names on that petition were entitled to no more moral weight in the consideration of this case than the names of the two guilty men should have had if they had seen fit to sign it."
The sentence raised a whirlwind of indignation. "As ridiculous as anything that could be imagined," said the PhiladelphiaLedger. "It is high time," said the New YorkWorld, "that the lines were drawn between competition and conspiracy, between business and brigandage." Referring to the golden harvest of $300,000 dividends in one year on a capital of $100,000, representing an original investment of only $13,500, theWorldsaid: "The monopoly of this sort of business is a very seductive thing. It is calculated to make men of more boldness than morals blow up factories, or do almost anything else to control the field." "It can afford to blow up a rival refinery every day in the year at that price," said the ErieDispatch. "There have been conspiracies," said the Oil CityBlizzard(Pa.), "to injure the business of opposition concerns right here in Oil City, and the conspirators have never been punished." "It is—a light sentence," was the comment of the BuffaloCommercial. "Poor criminals," the BuffaloExpressdeclared, "may well wonder why rich ones are let off so easily. It is equivalent to deciding that wealth may securely indulge in that inexpensive sort of amusement as a mere pastime. Who's afraid?" it asked. "What conspirator 'in restraint' of trade is afraid of a $250 fine?" "Certain it is that no wealthy criminals convicted of such acrime ever before received from a court such a mockery of justice," was the verdict of the Springfield (Mass.)Republican.
The facts of this case have not been carelessly examined or decided. Two grand-juries in succession passed upon the evidence and found it good enough for indictments. Two petit juries heard the evidence, both for and against, in the civil and criminal suits, and found it good enough—one jury for $20,000 damages, another for a verdict of criminally guilty. Seventy picked citizens have unanimously concurred in the decision "Guilty." And this scarlet letter the monopoly will always have to carry.
"So surely as Matthews lives, and so long as he lives," District Attorney Quinby said in the criminal prosecution, "he will never again make another dollar upon a barrel of oil he may manufacture. The word has gone forth, right in this court-room, that this man shall be crushed, and he can never again run his works successfully. That is going to be one of the results of this case." The fulfilment of this prediction came swiftly. This sentence of ruin upon Matthews was executed before sentence was even pronounced upon the conspirators against him. He had been left crippled by the flight and corruption of his partner, the only practical oil man in the enterprise. When he tried to obtain some one to take his place, he could not get word of any one not connected with the oil combination. He did not dare to advertise, and knew no one in Buffalo he could venture to speak to. He had made contracts before opening the works, and was unable to fill them. The pipes had been laid wrong; it took him a year trying one way and another, and making a great many mistakes, to set them right. His third partner was frightened back into the employ of the oil combination by threatening litigation.
Then came the suits to destroy, punctually as threatened.[502]"If one court does not sustain the patents, we will carry them up until you get enough of it," one of the trustees said to Matthews. One of the Rochester managers, in speaking of thesesuits, said: "I don't know as we will gain anything really, but we will embarrass them by bringing these suits, and, if it is necessary, we will bring them once a month; yes, we will bring them once a week." One, two, three, four, five suits came with injunctions. "Null and void" was the verdict of court after court on the worthless patents and pretended trade-marks on which he was sued.
Matthews had to keep pushing his pursuers to trial. What they wanted was not decisions but delays, to ruin him by the waste of time and money.[503]"It cost me one-third of my time, and $25,000 or more to defend these suits." These suits were used to scare away his customers. "I was instructed," said the Boston representative of the combination, "to tell the customers that the Buffalo company were using their patents."[504]The sole legal victory the combination won was the recovery of six cents damages on a technical point.
Matthews, on his side, took to the courts. He sued his persecutors as individuals and corporations. He pursued them civilly and criminally. He was successful in defending himself against their suits. All his suits were successful as far as he was able to carry them. One suit for damages produced a $20,000 verdict; another was for $250,000, on the still stronger evidence procured in the criminal trial. It took Matthews two years—from 1883 to 1885—to get his first case for damages for conspiracy to trial. All that time was consumed by his opponents in quibbles about procedure, technical objections, and motions for delay, appealing them from court to court. The judge, in taking from the jury afterwards the three trustees who had been brought to trial for conspiracy, declared that he could see no reason to believe that these suits had been brought without probable cause. But the jury before which the suit for damages was tried saw plenty of such reasons, and gave Matthews' company a verdict of $20,000 damages. The views of the judge and jury might have varied in the same way on the question of the guilt of the three members of the trust.
Matthews woke up one morning to discover, as he had been told he would, that there was no Atlas Company to get his oil from. Corporations may have no souls, but they can love each other. The Erie Railroad killed the pipe line of the Atlas Company for the oil combination.[505]The courts had been kept busy granting injunctions against it on the motion of the Erie. These were invariably dissolved by the courts, but an application for a new one would always follow. At one time the lawyers had fifteen injunctions all ready in their hands to be sued out, one after the other, as fast as needed. The pipe line was finally destroyed by force. Where it crossed under the Erie road in the bed of a stream grappling-irons were fastened to it, and with an immense hawser a locomotive guarded by two freight cars full of men pulled it to pieces. The Atlas line and refinery became the "property" of their enemy. Matthews' supply of crude oil was not cut off immediately. He was tapered off. One of the superintendents of the Atlas testified in the suit for damages Matthews brought against the Atlas after it passed into the hands of the combination, that by the order of the manager of the refinery he mixed refuse oil with the crude which they sold to the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company. Finally the supply was shut off altogether.
Matthews turned to the railroads connecting Buffalo with the oil country. They all put up their rates. At the increased rates they would not bring him enough to keep him going; they would not give him cars enough, and told him they would not let him put his own cars on the road. Even the lake steamers raised their rates against him. The farmer-refiner was taking his lesson in the course which had driven his first employer to dig oil-wells because "there were restrictions in the shipments." Cut off from a supply by either pipe or rail at Buffalo, Matthews made an alliance with the Keystone Refinery in the oil regions. War was now made upon the Keystone. It was finally ruined.
Packs of lawyers were set upon Matthews, and they finally brought him down. An attorney appeared before a judge and made a motion that the property of Matthews' company be taken out of Matthews' hands and be placed in the charge of a receiver, as officer of the court, to secure a debt due a Buffalo bank. This done, the lawyer appeared before the judge who afterwards decided that $250 fine was punishment enough for criminal conspiracy, with an offer from the monopoly to pay $17,300 for the discontinuance of the suits for damages which Matthews had instituted, and $63,700 for all the other assets. The other creditors and all the stockholders opposed the motion, but the judge granted it. There were two suits. One had produced a verdict of $20,000, and the other one for $250,000 was brought on the new and much stronger evidence secured in the criminal trial. As to the value of the property, Matthews had brought his enterprise to the point where it was worth $20,000 a year. It was capable of producing many times that amount of profit. Had not Albert been enticed away, the new works would have yielded a profit of over $100,000 the first year. They had a capacity of 70 to 80 barrels a day of lubricating oil, and the profit was $5 to $6 a barrel at the time Matthews and Albert went into the business.[506]The judge, overruling a majority of the creditors, ordered the receiver to accept the offer. He gave as his reason for selling these damage suits that a criminal prosecution had already taken place for the same offences, and a person could not be punished twice for the same offence. As they had not yet been punished, this meant, if it meant anything, that the suits were to be sold out for this inconsiderable sum, and the guilty men were to get their punishment in the sentence he was to pass upon them in the criminal court.
Three months later, before the same judge, these convicted agents stood up to receive their criminal sentence. The judge gave them the lightest sentence in his power, "nominal punishment." He did so, he was reported by the Buffalo pressto have said, because "it has come to the attention of the court that civil suits have been brought to recover damages sustained by reason of the same overt acts. Large punitive damages are demanded in those actions. It is fundamental that a person cannot be punished twice for the same offence."
The judge released them from the suits for damages because they were to be punished criminally. Then he released them from any but nominal punishment, because there had been suits for damages. One would infer that the civil suits for damages were in full career in the courts, to end possibly in hundreds of thousands of dollars' damages against the convicted. No one would infer what was the truth—and who should have remembered it so well as the judge, for it was he who had done it?—that the civil suits had been ordered sold. The judge had ordered his officer—the receiver—who had the luckless Matthews' affairs in his grip, not to try the cases, but to sell them. The suits had been ordered sold in February preceding, and they were as dead as—justice. But as all the technical formalities and slow proceedings needed to consummate the sale had not been completed when sentence was passed in May, the damages they might produce were made a reason for inflicting none but nominal punishment. The order of sale made it impossible that they should ever be tried.
Of the money paid into court, nearly half—$30,000—went to the lawyers, and, crudest stroke of all, the attorney who had made the successful motion before the judge to take Matthews' property away, and to order the forced sale, got $5000. Matthews got nothing. Even his right to sue his destroyers had been sold to them on their own motion and at their own price.
The crime was plotted in March, 1881. The participants were indicted in 1886. It took until May 15, 1887, to secure conviction. While sentence was still unpronounced Matthews' property was put into the hands of a receiver of the court, January 16, 1888; the property was sold by order of the court, February 17, 1888; sentence was pronounced May 8, 1888; the formalities of the sale were consummated July11, 1888; and the sentence, coming last of all—the fine of $250—was executed May 1, 1889.
Matthews had tried to make money in oil, and had failed; but his competition had forced those in control of the markets to increase the price to the producer, and he made light cheaper to the community. In Buffalo his enterprise had caused the price to drop to 6 cents from 12 and 18 cents, in Boston[507]to 8 cents from 20. Oil has never since been as high in Boston or Buffalo as before he challenged the monopoly. And he forced the struggle into the view of the public, and succeeded in putting on record in the archives of courts and legislatures and Congress a picture of the realities of modern commerce certain to exercise a profound influence in ripening the reform thought with which our air is charged into reform action.
Nothing is so dramatic as fact, when you can find the fact. The treatment his church gave the brother, who had been the victim, as judicially declared, of a criminal conspiracy, is described in the following letter from Matthews:
"Buffalo, January 19, 1888."My dear Friend,—As your father was a clergyman, and as you feel an interest in church affairs, I think you will wish to know of my recent experiences. My church here is not a rich one, but we pay as much for church music as we do as salary to our pastor. Probably the wealthiest man in our church is an agent of the oil trust. He receives a salary of $18,000 per year, and keeps their retail store here, and has been a witness for them in important suits. He does not belong to our church, but is a trustee and treasurer of the Church, and is very kind to our pastor, whom he took last summer on quite an extended vacation trip in New England. But you know the class of men that usually become trustees in our city churches these days."My pastor surprised me a few days ago by making a visit at my office, and telling me that as my term of office as member of the session expired soon, it might be best for me not to be a candidate for re-election, in view of what the newspapers had said about me, and the opposition there was. He said, however, that he personally felt friendly to me, and regarded me highly. He seemed to be embarrassed, but I quickly relieved the situation by saying that I had told my family some months before that I should not again hold a church office. I told the doctor he well knew Idid not desire office in or out of the Church. True, the newspapers, under the influence of the oil trust, had ridiculed me as 'farmer Matthews from the country.' But why should my pastor mock me with such shallow pretences for reasons for church opposition to me? I had engaged in the oil business without the consent of the oil monopoly, and my pastor then and there told me my friends thought me foolhardy in doing so. I could hardly suppress my feelings on hearing this said by the man who baptized my children and ministers at the church altar. What could all this mean? I had only fought for my rights as an American citizen, as a manufacturer and shipper of oil. I had been sustained in every detail by the courts. I had convicted in our courts prominent men of conspiracy, little thinking that the subtle power of these men could come to dominate the Church itself. My feelings were intense, and words came thick and fast—all too tame to express my feelings. I told the doctor how I had struggled on from boyhood, and at middle age had accumulated a few thousand dollars, and in all these years had never sued a man or been sued, and that my struggle with the oil monopoly was for rights that no one worthy to be called a man dare to surrender. I told the doctor how I had been hounded, and my business beset by spies—that my friends had often told me I was in danger of assassination if I continued the fight in the courts. He, having done his errand, seemed uneasy, and anxious to go. I told him I had seen the rising and corrupting power of this trust in their control of our aldermen and courts, in state and national legislation. I could witness all this with comparative composure; but it made every drop of my blood hot to see them erect their altars for Mammon worship in the Church of the living God. I had seen the hard-won earnings of a lifetime swept away, and had hoped that at least one word of sympathy might come from the Church. If I had been robbed by old-fashioned highwaymen and the Church received none of the loot, church sympathy would have been hearty and abundant. But no; Sabbath after Sabbath our reverend doctor rises in the pulpit, and, at the regular time, says: 'Let us worship God in the gift of money.' Religion, divine worship, and money all seem to have a like meaning as they are alternately mentioned in our pulpit. My ancestors far back were church people, but this worshipping money, or worshipping God with money, is all new to me. It was not the acceptable worship required by Christ and taught by his disciples. After the conversation I had with my pastor that day I trudged home, but could not sleep that night. My heart was too full of sorrow as well as anger. I hope you will forgive me for writing you so long a letter. I have written much more than I intended to, but did not see where to stop. There are many things I wish you could see but not experience in the life of a business man nowadays. I want you to write often, as every word from a true friend is prized highly in these dark days for me."
"Buffalo, January 19, 1888.
"My dear Friend,—As your father was a clergyman, and as you feel an interest in church affairs, I think you will wish to know of my recent experiences. My church here is not a rich one, but we pay as much for church music as we do as salary to our pastor. Probably the wealthiest man in our church is an agent of the oil trust. He receives a salary of $18,000 per year, and keeps their retail store here, and has been a witness for them in important suits. He does not belong to our church, but is a trustee and treasurer of the Church, and is very kind to our pastor, whom he took last summer on quite an extended vacation trip in New England. But you know the class of men that usually become trustees in our city churches these days.
"My pastor surprised me a few days ago by making a visit at my office, and telling me that as my term of office as member of the session expired soon, it might be best for me not to be a candidate for re-election, in view of what the newspapers had said about me, and the opposition there was. He said, however, that he personally felt friendly to me, and regarded me highly. He seemed to be embarrassed, but I quickly relieved the situation by saying that I had told my family some months before that I should not again hold a church office. I told the doctor he well knew Idid not desire office in or out of the Church. True, the newspapers, under the influence of the oil trust, had ridiculed me as 'farmer Matthews from the country.' But why should my pastor mock me with such shallow pretences for reasons for church opposition to me? I had engaged in the oil business without the consent of the oil monopoly, and my pastor then and there told me my friends thought me foolhardy in doing so. I could hardly suppress my feelings on hearing this said by the man who baptized my children and ministers at the church altar. What could all this mean? I had only fought for my rights as an American citizen, as a manufacturer and shipper of oil. I had been sustained in every detail by the courts. I had convicted in our courts prominent men of conspiracy, little thinking that the subtle power of these men could come to dominate the Church itself. My feelings were intense, and words came thick and fast—all too tame to express my feelings. I told the doctor how I had struggled on from boyhood, and at middle age had accumulated a few thousand dollars, and in all these years had never sued a man or been sued, and that my struggle with the oil monopoly was for rights that no one worthy to be called a man dare to surrender. I told the doctor how I had been hounded, and my business beset by spies—that my friends had often told me I was in danger of assassination if I continued the fight in the courts. He, having done his errand, seemed uneasy, and anxious to go. I told him I had seen the rising and corrupting power of this trust in their control of our aldermen and courts, in state and national legislation. I could witness all this with comparative composure; but it made every drop of my blood hot to see them erect their altars for Mammon worship in the Church of the living God. I had seen the hard-won earnings of a lifetime swept away, and had hoped that at least one word of sympathy might come from the Church. If I had been robbed by old-fashioned highwaymen and the Church received none of the loot, church sympathy would have been hearty and abundant. But no; Sabbath after Sabbath our reverend doctor rises in the pulpit, and, at the regular time, says: 'Let us worship God in the gift of money.' Religion, divine worship, and money all seem to have a like meaning as they are alternately mentioned in our pulpit. My ancestors far back were church people, but this worshipping money, or worshipping God with money, is all new to me. It was not the acceptable worship required by Christ and taught by his disciples. After the conversation I had with my pastor that day I trudged home, but could not sleep that night. My heart was too full of sorrow as well as anger. I hope you will forgive me for writing you so long a letter. I have written much more than I intended to, but did not see where to stop. There are many things I wish you could see but not experience in the life of a business man nowadays. I want you to write often, as every word from a true friend is prized highly in these dark days for me."