For three oppressive July days the Senate gave almost all of its time to a bitter debate on the report. The name of the Standard was freely used. "The Senate of the United States," said Senator Frye, "when the question comes before it as this has been presented, whether or not the great Standard Oil Company, the greatest monopoly to-day in the United States of America, a power which makes itself felt in every inch of territory in this whole republic, a power which controls business, railroads, men and things, shall also control here; whether that great body has put its hands upon a legislative body and undertaken to control, has controlled, and has elected a member of the United States Senate, that Senate, I say, cannot afford to sit silent and let not its voice be heard in an inquiry as to the truth of the allegation." The majority report was adopted, however, by a vote of forty-four to seventeen. "The most unfortunate fact in the history of the Senate," said Senator Hoar. [116]

For the time the matter rested, but only for the time. The failure to investigate rather intensified the convictions that Payne's seat was bought by the Standard Oil Company. In 1887 Mr. Payne voted against the Interstate Commerce Bill. "That is why he was put in the Senate," people said bitterly. The feeling became still more intense in 1888. The question of trusts was before Congress. The Republicans had come out with an anti-trust plank in their platform; the Democrats, in response to Mr. Cleveland's message, were declaring the tariff the greatest trust-builder in existence, and calling on their opponents for reform there if they were sincere in their anti-trust attitude. In this agitation the Standard Oil Company undoubtedly exerted its influence against all trust investigation and legislation. The charge became general that they were helping the Democrats. This is why they wanted a Democratic Senate. In September, 1888, when a phase of the question was before the Senate, Mr. Hoar, with his genius for asking far-reaching questions, said one day: "Is there a Standard Oil Trust in this country or not? … If there be such a trust, is it represented in the Cabinet at this moment? Is it represented in the Senate? Is it represented in the councils of any important political party in the country?"

It was the first time that Mr. Payne had been sufficiently aroused to reply. "There is nothing whatever to sustain the insinuation which the honourable Senator conveys. I make the declaration now for the first time, and it will be the last time I shall ever take notice of it. The Standard Oil Company is a very remarkable and wonderful institution. It has accomplished within the last twenty years of commercial enterprise what no other company or association of modern times has accomplished, but, Mr. President, I never had a dollar's interest in that company. I never owned a dollar of its stock; I never rendered it any service, and that company never rendered me any service. On the contrary, when a candidate for the other House in 1871, no institution, 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. …

"As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of the stockholders of the Standard Oil Company are now and always have been Republicans. Within my knowledge there are but two Democrats who have ever been stockholders in that company." Farther on Mr. Payne interpolated this irrelevant remark: "Not only are the majority Republicans, but they are very liberal in their philanthropic contributions to charities and benevolent works, and I venture the assertion that two gentlemen in that company have donated more money for philanthropic and for benevolent purposes than all the Republican members of the Senate put together."

Mr. Payne's denial was not sufficient to silence Senator Hoar. He returned to the attack. It was a "general public belief," he declared, that the Standard Oil Company was represented in the Cabinet and Senate. He called attention to the newspapers' charge to that effect, and declared that he had received many personal letters charging that the Standard was helping the Democrats. He asked for information when he asked his question; he made no charges. Mr. Whitney was the member of Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet to whom Senator Hoar referred, and he promptly, in a public letter, disclaimed all connection with the Standard Oil Company. Mr. Hoar said he "cheerfully accepted" the denial. As for Mr. Payne, he was not satisfied, and when Mr. Payne in heat replied to him, Senator Hoar closed his lips forever in a burst of biting sarcasm:

"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 own part and then remained dumb, I think should forever after hold his peace. … I think few men ever sat in the Senate who would refrain from demanding an investigation under such circumstances, even if it were not required by the Senate itself. … There were Senators who thought that the admission of that Senator, the continuance of that Senator in his seat without investigation, indicated the low-water mark of the Senate of the United States itself." [117]

And there the Payne case rested. It was never proved that the Standard Oil Company had contributed a cent to his election. It was never proved that his seat was bought, but the fact that, in the face of such serious charges, rehearsed constantly for four years, neither Mr. Payne nor the Standard Oil Company had done aught but keep quiet, convinced a large part of the country that the suspicion under which they rested was less damaging than the truth would be. In the minds of great numbers this silence was a confession of guilt. The Payne case certainly aggravated greatly the popular feeling that the Standard Oil Company was using the legislative bodies of the country in its own interest.

This feeling was intensified in 1887 by a terrific battle between the oil producers and Standard forces in the Legislature of the state of Pennsylvania. Since the compromise of 1880 the body of the oil producers had been taking no concerted action against the Standard. But their inaction was not due to reconciliation to Standard domination. As a matter of fact they were almost as bitter in 1886 as they had been in 1878, when they formed the Union which for two years fought so good a fight. The specific complaint of the oil producers at this time was that they were being "robbed" by the National Transit Company — the big Standard pipe-line consolidation, which had secured by the series of manœuvres already outlined the monopoly of handling and transporting crude oil. If the oil producers had been making money at this time it is quite possible that they would have paid little attention to the profits of the National Transit Company. The service they got was about as perfect as any human machine could render, and they would probably have recognised this and been willing to pay high if they too had been prosperous. But the condition of the oil producer in these days was in glaring contrast to that of Mr. Rockefeller. They had piled up oil until there were in 1886 over 33,000,000 barrels on hand. Naturally this had driven prices down. The average price for the last years had been under a dollar a barrel. In 1886 it fell down to 71-3/8, and everyone said it must go lower. Embittered and discouraged, the producers fell to comparing what they were getting out of the business with what Mr. Rockefeller was getting. It was not a consoling showing. The Standard Oil Trust had from its organisation in 1882 paid dividends on its $70,000,000 capital. In spite of the extraordinary outlay for tank-building and seaboard pipe-lines made from 1881 to 1884 — $30,000,000 it is computed to have been — the trust paid 10-1/2 per cent. in 1885, ten per cent. in 1886, and Standard Oil stock stood near 200! In contrast, the oil producer, in 1886, is estimated to have lost about six per cent. on his expenditures, and oil property depreciated one-third in value. [118]

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

By Eastman Johnson

Something was wrong. They could not charge the Standard with the price of oil. As long as over 33,000,000 barrels in stock lay on the market it could not rise. But they could and did complain of what it cost them to handle this oil, of storage and carrying charges, of the deductions for shrinkage and for loss by fire. If the Standard had not forced out every competing line, there would have been sufficient competition to have lowered these items — which at the present prices soon ate up the value of oil. And they fell to rehearsing the raids by which the various transporting companies which had fought themselves into independent positions had been forced into combination, their chief grievances being naturally the affair of the Tidewater. In this state of mind, and incited by the Buffalo, the Payne, and the Rice cases, it was natural enough that when suddenly, at the opening of 1887, a bill evidently intended to strike a blow at the Standard was introduced into the Legislature of Pennsylvania, the oil producers rushed pell-mell to support it. The opening sentence was enough for them. It was "An act to punish corporations." [119] This was what they had always sought, some way to punish Mr. Rockefeller for what they believed to be a conspiracy against their interests. The way in which the Billingsley Bill, as it was called from the name of its father, proposed to punish the Standard was to make it a criminal offence to charge in excess of certain rates it fixed — ten cents a barrel for gathering and delivering oil to storing points (the current rate was twenty cents); one-sixtieth of one per cent. per barrel a day for storage, with no storage charge for the first thirty days (one-half of one per cent. was the current rate); one-half of one per cent. shrinkage, instead of three per cent. Besides, the bill required the Standard to go to any well on application of the owner, it made the company liable for damage, and it required it to deliver oil of like kind and quality as that received.

The enthusiasm with which the bill was greeted was cooled a little by the announcement that as it stood it was unconstitutional — acts to punish being forbidden by the constitution of the state — as well as by an immediate realisation that the prices fixed for services were in nearly every case less than cost. The bill was immediately amended. When it came back it was at once apparent that, in spite of this preliminary hitch, a tremendous fight to carry it was being organised by the oil men. Then determination to push it grew in proportion to the Standard opposition. The Standard, indeed, realised immediately that unless a hard fight was made the bill would go through by popular clamour, and they turned their big lawyer, Mr. Dodd, against it, set their newspapers the Oil City Derrick, Titusville Herald and Bradford Era, all of them by this time subsidised organs — to argue against it, and sent Mr. Scheide, one of the ablest of their pipe-line managers, to present their side at Harrisburg. They also secured the services of a well-known young Republican member of the Legislature, Wallace Delemater, of Crawford County, one of the counties in the Oil Regions, to organise an opposition to the bill in the Legislature.

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