ALL THE WORLD UNDER ONE HAT
"This business belongs to us." This was the reply the president of the
oil combination made to a neighbor who was begging to be allowed to
continue the refinery which he had successfully established before his
tardier but more fortunate competitors had left their produce stores,
lumber-yards, and book-keepers' stools. He could remember, the neighbor
told the New York Legislature, before there was any such company as
theirs, and when the president of the poor man's light was still in the
commission business opposite him and his refinery. He described how
the president left this commission business, and "commenced to build
a refinery there of a small capacity.... He used to say to me, 'What
is a good time to sell?' and 'What is a good time to hold?' as he said
he thought I knew." The day came when the neighbor who had been first
found that the last was to be first. He was making $21,000 to $22,000
a year, but he had "to sell or squeeze." He had several conversations
with the new-comer who had been so successful in learning when it was
"a good time to hold." To save his livelihood, "I did almost condescend
to tease him," he testifies. But the only reply he could get was: We
have freighting facilities no one else can get.[625] This business
belongs to us. Any concern that starts in this business we have
sufficient money to lay aside a fund to wipe it out. "They went on just
as if it did belong to them, and there were others started before he
did in it which I thought it belonged to quite as much as it did to
him.... I am wiped out and made a poor man.... I think they are making
a profit out of my ruin."
His refinery had been giving him a profit of $21,000 to $22,000 a
year. It had cost him $41,000, but he had to sell it for $15,000. This
purchase of $41,000 for $15,000 was one of "the little economies" to
which the trust ascribes its success. It was not a "good time to sell,"
but he sold. Part of the "squeeze" put upon him was the rebate given to
the buyer. He could not have got the rebate if he had applied for it,
but he would not apply for it. "I made application for lower freights,
but not for any drawbacks; I did not suppose that was the right way to
do business."[626]
"This business belongs to us." This remark was not prophecy, but
history. It was in 1878, and the claim had been already made good.
The New York Legislature, in 1879, reported that the speaker and his
associates had control of 90 or 95 per cent. of the industry. "It has
absorbed and monopolized this great traffic, which ranks second on the
list of exports of our country."[627] This conclusion was based on the
evidence of officers and stockholders.[628] Their shadow grew no less.
The Interstate Commerce Commission found in 1890 that they "manufacture
nearly 90 per cent. of the petroleum and its products in the United
States."[629]
"Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." For the
perfection of this triumph no trifle has been disdained, from the well
in the mountain to the peddler's cart in the city. The bargemen of the
Alleghany, the coasters of the sea-shore, and the stern-wheelers of
the Western rivers all had to go one way. "We drove out the shipments
in the schooners from Baltimore and Washington, and we stopped almost
the shipments by river down the Mississippi by boat," said one of the
successful men. His plan had been so thorough as even to seek to
"drive off the river schooners."[630]
The last stage in their economic development--that in which the people
of the oil region lose the ownership of the oil lands and become hired
men--is already far along. Although at first the oil combination
owned no oil lands to speak of--"It does not own any oil wells or
land producing oil, and never did," its president said, in 1880; "an
infinitesimal amount," he said later[631]--it has of late years,
through corporations organized for that purpose, been a heavy buyer and
leaser of the best oil lands in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Kentucky,
and the West.
Monopoly anywhere must be monopoly everywhere. At the beginning it was
enough to control the railways; by these the pipe lines, refineries,
and markets were got. These were secured, only to find that it was
vital to control the source of supply. The producers once gave an
illustration of what it would be for the sole buyer to come to the
market and find that the oil he must have was not on sale at his
price.[632] "We have during the past year," one of the combination
said, in 1891, before a committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature,
"invested a very large amount of money, and have induced our friends to
come forward with new capital to engage in the business of producing
oil."[633] By the policy of becoming producers the combination has
changed its position from that of mere intermediary--though one as
irresistible as a toll-gate keeper--to that of absolute owner. The
spectre it has seen rise before it, of the producers organized as one
seller to meet it as the only buyer, has been laid to rest.
"We are pushing into every part of the world, and have been doing
so," the president told the New York Legislature in 1888.[634] Their
tank-steamers go to all the ports of Europe and Asia, and their
tank-wagons are as familiarly seen in the cities of Great Britain and
the Continent as of America. An agitation of extensive proportions was
begun in 1893 in the press of Canada and in the Dominion Parliament
to admit American oil at a lower duty. There was no popular demand
for such a step. No general reduction of the tariff was proposed. The
movement was simultaneous in the press of different parts of Canada,
and it was promoted by papers as important as the Toronto _Globe_
and Montreal _Star_. It was resisted with desperation by the 20,000
persons who are employed in the Canadian oil industries, the growth of
thirty-two years--"not a rich, gay, bloated population, rioting with
the plunderings of the farmers, revelling in all kinds of luxuries,
making merry with their friends," says a newspaper correspondent, who
visited them in December, 1892, "but a hard-working community, in which
all live comfortably; few are rich."
This opposition was successful with the Dominion Parliament in that
year, and it refused to admit American oil at a lower tax. But the
finance minister then, by executive action, did in part what the
Legislature had refused to do. By lowering the inspection duty and
changing custom-house conditions he made a considerable reduction in
the tax. The agitation to reduce the tariff was not relaxed, and was
finally successful in 1894, when Parliament lowered the duties on oil,
and to that extent surrendered the Canada producers and refiners to
their American competitors.
The Scotch refiners, some of whom have been in business forty years,
have become as loyal subjects of an American ruler as of their own
queen. They make only as much as he allows, and sell at the price he
fixes. He has demanded year by year a greater proportion of their
business.[635] In 1892 they were notified that they must reduce their
output by 10 per cent.[636] The Scotch, anxious for the accelerating
future, begged that the "arrangement" might be made for three years
instead of one. But this was denied them. The agent from America who
brought them their orders would promise no more than "to place the
matter in a favorable light before his colleagues in America."[637]
By October of that year the capital of the Scotch companies, held
mainly by small investors, had shrunk $5,000,000 in value. But to this
item the London _Economist_ adds the consolation that "that powerful
organization"--the American--"has for years professed the kindliest
feelings for the Scotch producers." Dr. Johnson said that much may be
made of a Scotchman if caught young. The American caught him old.
The disturbance fell heaviest, as always, on the working-men.
"Reduction in wages is now being effected," writes the managing
director of the oldest and largest of the Scotch companies in the
_Economist_. "Another 10 per cent. reduction in miners' wages has been
resolved upon," the _Economist_ announces in its issue of October 8,
1892.
One of the causes that contributed to the downfall of the Scotch
refiners was the fact that the British government reduced the test
required for illuminating oil. This new regulation opened the British
markets to a flood of cheap oil from America.[638] The Scotch oil is
better made and more expensive. "We cannot tell," said a correspondent
of the Glasgow _Herald_, "what powerful interest the American oil
combination did not bring to bear on our government. The public had
then no champion, and as a rule never have on these occasions."
The unkindest cut of all is that it was from the Scotch manufacturers
themselves that their American rival and ruler learned the secrets of
the industry it is now absorbing on the instalment plan. In one of its
publications it has told how its "experts visited the great shale works
in Scotland, and studied their methods," and how "the consequence was
that extensive works were erected."[639]
The economic development of Germany is not so much behind that of
Great Britain and America as to seem uninviting to the unhasting
but unresting American. Some years ago enterprising German importers
invested a large amount of capital in tank-steamers, because they
thought these solved the problem of the transportation of petroleum.
When the Americans refused to supply them any longer with oil for their
steamers to carry, they saw that there was more in this problem than
they had guessed. Importers who had no steamers found one day that
American enterprise had secured practically all of them, and had very
decided notions as to whom cargoes should be taken. The heads of two or
three of the largest houses boarded a steamer for New York, and came
back stockholders in a German-American company which controls most of
the German business, as the Anglo-American company controls that of
Great Britain. "If the great company with unlimited capital cares to
lose money, it can drive us from the field," was the explanation of
the head of one of the largest German concerns, as quoted in the Weser
_Zeitung_.
At the beginning of the next year some Holland firms were invited into
the same shelter, and became the "fittest"; and then followed the
Belgian and the Scandinavian countries. The Berlin _Vossische Zeitung_
of June 18, 1891, described the line of march: "One group of business
men after another is thus made superfluous and pushed aside. First
the wells, pumps, and refineries in America, then the American export
trade, then the private freight vessels adapted for transportation of
petroleum, then the European import trade, then the export trade from
European ports, and, finally, this over-powerful company threatens to
seize the entire retail trade in petroleum. It is a world monopoly."
Hundreds of boatmen engaged in a flourishing river trade in Germany
were driven out by tank-boats. If they had changed to tanks, they
would have been dependent on their opponent for the oil to fill
them. Importers in barrels were cut off by a change which the German
government made in the tariff on barrels. The Americans were also
helped by an increase in the German tariff on Russian oil of 50 per
cent., which made it so much the more difficult for it to compete with
American oil. As one way to kill competition where it still existed,
all statistics were suddenly withheld by the German-American member of
the trust. Neither exports nor imports were known except to the ruling
company; all others were kept in the dark.
This success in Germany has not been due to favoritism on the highways.
The extraordinary discrimination on railroads in America would be
impossible in Germany. With hardly an exception the railroads are under
the supervision of the State, and are very carefully controlled. Even
the private roads would not dare to give any but the open rates. In
Austria-Hungary, formerly, secret rates were in full swing, but the
system is now said to be destroyed.
Prices have declined in Germany, and the people at large make few
complaints except about the quality of the American oil. It has become
more sooty than formerly. In the beginning it burns well, but it ends
with giving a very poor light. This has been conjectured to be due to
a mixture of the inferior Ohio oil with that of Pennsylvania; but "it
cannot be proved," the German chronicler reports.[640] "The working
people," says one of the Berlin papers, "will have to foot the bill,
and the working people only. The well-to-do and rich of to-day can have
other fuel and light, but to the oppressed working-man petroleum is as
great a necessity as his potatoes." The German papers, in casting about
for means of checkmating the increase of prices which they believe will
result from the consummation of this monopoly, advocate the use of
water-power and also wind-power to create electricity.
The attention that has been attracted to the growth of this power does
not come from the public at large, but from those directly interested
and the sympathy and interest of the German "national economists."
The latter point out that the present cheap prices are "war prices."
They predict that as soon as the world monopoly is established and
all territory is under complete control a rise of prices will take
place. They are advocates of State monopoly as better than private
monopoly. If State monopolies prevent free competition, at least
they are able, they say, to give some compensation to those who are
hurt. In the tobacco monopoly hundreds of millions were set aside
by the German government for this purpose, but even that was not
considered sufficient. But this monopoly is a private affair. It
swallows the profits of all those whom it destroys. Numerous industries
have been ruined--importers, ship-owners, brokers, local dealers,
exporters, retailers, river boatmen, and numerous other trades--but
no one receives indemnity. The public opinion of the government, the
Reichstag, the national economists, the philanthropists, is active
in support of the middle class, but in spite of all this a whole
department of industry has been torn away from it.
There are one or two "independents" in Germany whom, like the
independents in America, the trust has not yet been able to crush,
though it is turning the markets topsy-turvy for that purpose. The
_Pall Mall Gazette_ of June 18, 1894, notes that the trust is selling
refined oil in Europe at prices lower than those at which crude oil can
be delivered from America.
The Austrian journals have been chronicling the absorption of the
principal refineries of Austria and Hungary by a combination, of which
the Rothschilds are the most important members, as they are of that
in Russia. This combination, which first appears in 1892, has by 1894
accumulated a reserve of 3,000,000 gulden on a capital of 1,000,000
gulden, and its profits for 1894 are expected to be 100 per cent.
The Prager _Lloyd_ of April 26, 1894, giving these and other facts,
adds that "the government of Austria as well as of Hungary takes the
ground that if a petroleum monopoly is to be formed it should be in the
hands of the State, not of a corporation, certainly not of a foreign
corporation, least of all an American one."
This remedy of a State monopoly as an alternative to private monopoly,
as suggested in Austria and Germany, has as yet had few advocates in
America. Our public opinion, so far as there is any public opinion,
restricts itself to favoring recourse to anti-trust laws and to
boycotting the monopoly and buying the oil of its competitors. But
there are too few of these to go around, and they are shut out of most
of the markets. The shrewd monopoly is itself the most diligent caterer
to such American demand as there is for the "anti-monopoly" product. It
does business under hundreds of assumed names, and employs salesmen at
large salaries to push the sale of "opposition oil" in our disaffected
provinces.
With the news from Germany came the announcement that similar control
had been obtained of the business of the firm at Venice which did
most of the oil business of Italy, and a new company had been formed,
of which the American "trustees" own a majority. In a letter sent to
Minister Phelps, at Berlin, a resident representative of the American
oil combination says, as quoted in the New York _Tribune_, October
5, 1891: "For the furtherance of our programme and as participators
in the large European investment which this programme involves, we
have sought and been fortunate enough to secure the co-operation of a
coterie of well-known merchants, who have been long and prominently
identified with the petroleum commerce of the Continent." The Società
Italo-Americana del Petrolio (the Italian-American Oil Company) is in
Italy what the concerns just described are in the countries to the
north of it. The head of the oil combination was quoted by the New
York _Tribune_ of July 1, 1891, as saying: "The cable despatches are
substantially correct as regards our interest in the German and Italian
companies."
The French government a year ago lowered the tariff on petroleum
one-half. This was followed, the French press reports, by the erection
of a refinery by the American trust at Rouen, and the purchase by it of
land in Marseilles, Cette, Bordeaux, and Havre for other refineries.
The machinery needed was shipped from America. Large offices were
opened at Paris by the American combination for the administration of
the industry in France, which was to be concentrated into its hands
like that of the rest of Europe. The sequel, if the _Frankfurter
Zeitung_, a prominent German commercial paper, is correctly informed,
is that the French refiners, as the Scotch did before them, have
come to terms with the American trust. It has agreed not to start up
its refineries in France, not to sell any refined oil in America for
shipments to France, and not to allow any American outsiders to compete
with the French refiners.
There was a report in June, 1892, that a Dutch company had succeeded
in refining petroleum in Sumatra, one of the possessions of the
Netherlands' East India colonies, and selling it in India. The
solicitor of the trust, asked about it by the New York _Times_, June
5, 1892, said, "It cannot be true." The oil combination, he continued,
"has agents in the Netherlands' East India colonies and at Sumatra, and
it would certainly have heard of this corporation and its competition
if there was anything worth hearing."
There are great oil-fields in Peru. Since the close of the war with
Chili there has been an active development of them, and the commercial
reports of San Francisco say that fuel oil is now being supplied from
this source to our Pacific States. This has not been done by the
Peruvians. It was an American who organized the oil industry of Peru.
The principal company was formed by the same expert who went years ago
from Pennsylvania to Russia to Americanize the oil interests of the
Caucasus. After he had succeeded in that task he went to Peru. He died
in the spring of 1894. At about the time of his death the newspapers,
by a coincidence that arrests attention, chronicled the departure from
New York of a well-known man who was going to Peru, as he stated in an
interview, to look after the interests of the members of the oil trust.
But there is no official information that they have any ownership or
control there.
When one of the officers of the combination was before Congress, in
1888, he was asked if there had been any negotiations by his associates
with the Russian oil men.
"We have never had any serious negotiations,"[641] he replied.
The word "serious" was a slip. He withdrew it. "We have never had any"
was his revision. Three years later the same official, in a speech to
persuade the Pennsylvania Legislature that the pipe-line interests of
the oil country did not need the regulation by the State then under
debate, but were abundantly safeguarded by him and his associates,
said: "It may not be amiss for me to say that we have had, at different
times during the last several years, most flattering propositions
from people who are identified with the Russian petroleum industry,
to come there and join them in the development and introduction of
that industry. We have declined these offers, gentlemen, always and
to this day, and have held loyal to our relations to the American
petroleum."[642]
There had been negotiations, after all!
The reports of the United States consul-general at Berlin, in
1891, transmitted many interesting articles from the German papers
concerning the alliance which it was believed had been made between
the Rothschilds and the American oil combination. A company managed by
the great bankers has obtained a commanding position in the Russian
oil business, and the American and the Russian were even then said to
have divided the world between them. The Berlin _Vossische Zeitung_
said: "Heretofore the two petroleum speculators have marched apart,
in order to get into their hands the two largest petroleum districts
in the world. After this has been accomplished they unite to fight
in unison, and to fix as they please the selling price for the whole
world, which they divide between themselves. So an international
speculating ring stands before the door, such as in like might and
capital power has never before existed, and everywhere the intelligible
fear prevails that within a short time the price of an article of use
indispensable to all classes of people will rise with a bound, without
its being possible for national legislation or control to raise any
obstacles."[643]
But some of the closest European observers have seen reasons from
the beginning to believe that the Rothschilds are in the Russian oil
business only as the agents of the American combination. This is freely
asserted by the Continental press. The policy of the Rothschilds has
been never to engage in commercial enterprise on their own account.
The tactics used by the Rothschilds in oil have been an almost exact
reproduction of those of the combination in America. From the first
they gave the subject of freights their special attention. They showed
no ability for new or independent undertakings, but they tried, to use
the words of an Austrian-Hungarian consular report from Batoum in 1889,
"following the example of the combination in the United States, to get
the bulk of the Russian petroleum trade into their hands"; using the
large money power at their command for speculation, freely advancing
money for leases and delivery contracts, and specially acquiring all
the available means of transportation. The experience of the people of
Parker[644] is recalled by the statement that the Rothschild company
would leave hundreds of cars loaded with petroleum on the tracks for
weeks to prevent competitors from shipping and from filling their
contracts. When the city of Batoum, in 1888, refused to allow it to lay
pipes over the city lands to the harbor, it was with the enthusiastic
approbation of the agitated citizens. The authorities gave as their
reason that through large establishments of this kind the capitalists
gained a monopoly, crushing out smaller producers to the disadvantage
of all classes of the population. In the absence of official
investigations, a free press, and civilized courts--that knowledge
which is not only power but freedom--it is impossible for any one in
Russia, or out of it, to know the truth as to the relations of the
Rothschilds to the American monopoly. The latest news in the summer of
1894 is of a great combination of Russian and American oil interests,
under the direction of the Russian Minister of Finance, for a division
of territory, regulation of prices, and the like. Information of this
was given to the world by that minister's official organ in November,
1893. Thus says the Hanover (Germany) _Courier_ of November 11th: "With
the direct sanction of the Russian government the management of the
enormous wealth that lies in the yearly production of Russian petroleum
will be concentrated in the hands of a few firms.... The Russian
government lends its hand for the formation of a trust that reaches
over the ocean--a trust, under State protection, against the large mass
of consumers. This is the newest acquisition of our departing century."
It was announced that, in pursuance of this plan, the Russians were to
be given exclusive control of certain Asiatic markets. The officers
of the American combination are not easily reached by newspaper men.
But when this news came long interviews with them were circulated in
the press of the leading cities, dwelling upon the "Waterloo" defeat
they had suffered, and reassuring the people with this evidence
that there was, after all, "no monopoly." The Russian interests are
dominated by the Rothschilds, and if the Rothschilds are, as these
European observers declare, merely the agents of the Americans, even
unsophisticated people can understand the cheerfulness with which the
trustees in New York dilate on their Waterloo at the hands of their
other self. Only this could make credible the report that the world has
been divided with the Russians by our American "trustees," who never
divide with anybody. In dividing with the Russians they are dividing
with themselves.
Though it is reported that discriminations by the government railroads
of Russia were used to force the Russian producers into this
international trust, still, at worst, every Russian producer was given
by his government the right to enter the pool. But no similar right for
the American producer is recognized by our trust. It admits only its
own members. The others must "sell or squeeze." There is something
in the world more cruel than Russian despotism--American "private
enterprise."
One of the conditions said to have been made by the Russian government
is the natural one that the American trust, as it has agreed to do for
the French, must protect its Russian allies from any competition from
America. Extinction of the "independents" has therefore become more
important than ever to the trust. The prize of victory over them is not
only supremacy in this country, but on four other continents. This will
explain the new zeal with which the suppression of the last vestige of
American independence in this industry has been sought the last few
months of 1893 and in 1894. Especially strenuous has been the renewal
of the attack on the pipe line the independents are seeking to lay to
tide-water, and which they have carried as far as Wilkes-barre.[645]
That pipe line, as it is the last hope of the people, is the greatest
menace to the monopoly. The independents, as they have shown by the
fact of surviving, although they have to pay extraordinary freights and
other charges from which the trust is free, can produce more cheaply
than the would-be Lords of Industry, as free men always do.[646] By
means of this pipe line, suspended though it is at Wilkes-barre, are
now made the only independent exports of oil that go from America to
Europe. Once let the "outsiders" with their line reach the sea-shore
and its open roads to the coast of America and Europe, and it will be
a long chase they will give their pursuers. Everything that can be
brought to bear by market manipulation, litigation, and other means is
now being done to prevent the extension of this line, and to bankrupt
the men who are building it through much tribulation. The mechanical
fixation of values, by which the refiners who use this line to export
oil are compelled to meet a lower price for the refined in New York
than can be got for the crude out of which it is made, has been already
referred to, and, as shown above, the same prestidigitation of prices
is being resorted to in Europe against the independents of Germany.
Early in 1894 the independent refiners and producers resolved to
consolidate with this pipe line some other lines owned by them in order
to strengthen and perfect the system, and put it in better shape to
be extended to tide-water. This consolidation was voted by a large
majority both of stock and stockholders. But a formidable opposition
to it was at once begun in the courts by injunction proceedings in
behalf of one man, a subordinate stockholder in a corporation of
which the control is owned, as he admitted in court, by members of
the oil trust.[647] The real litigant behind him, the independents
stated to the court, was the same that we have seen appear in almost
every chapter of our story, with its brigades of lawyers. "An unlawful
organization," the independents described it to the court, "exercising
great and illegal powers, ... and bitterly and vindictively hostile to
our business interests." They came into court one after the other and
described the ruin which had been wrought among them, telling the story
the reader has found in these pages.
"It is our hope," they said, "when we once reach the salt-water that
there will be no power there controlling the winds and the waves, the
tides and the sun and moon, except the Power that controls everything.
When we once are there the same forces that guide the ships of this
monopoly to the farther shore will guide ours. The same winds that waft
them will waft ours. There is freedom, there is hope, and there is
the only chance of relief to this country.... Through three years of
suffering and agony we have attempted to carry on our purpose.... You
could have seen the blood-marks in the snow of the blood of the people
who are working out their subscription as daily laborers on that line
with nothing else to offer."
The injunctions asked for by this opposition were granted by the lower
court, but the independents took an appeal to the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania. They first placed their petition for the rehearing in the
hands of the chief-justice on Thursday, May 24th; on Monday, May 28th,
the petition was renewed before the full court; on Thursday, May 31st,
the court adjourned for the summer without taking any action upon the
petition. The court in July agreed to hear the case at the opening of
its next term, the first Monday of October. Section II. of Article I.
of the Constitution of Pennsylvania says: "All courts shall be open,
and every man, for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person,
or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and
justice administered, without sale, denial, or delay." To guard against
the injustice which might arise by the granting of special injunctions
by the lower courts--like that granted in this case--which might
remain for months without remedy, the Legislature, in 1866, enacted
a law which reads as follows: "In all cases in equity, in which a
special injunction has been or shall be granted by any Court of Common
Pleas, an appeal to the Supreme Court for the proper district shall be
allowed, and all such appeals shall be heard by the Supreme Court in
any district in which it may be in session."
As if there had not been enough to try these men, misfortune marked
them in other ways. The Bradford refinery of the president of their
pipe line was visited by a destructive fire during these proceedings
in court. The Associated Press despatches attributed the fire to
"spontaneous combustion," whatever that may be. But in another
newspaper an eye-witness described how he saw a man running about the
works in a mysterious way just before the flames broke out. On the same
day, by a coincidence, the main pipe of the independent line was cut,
and the oil, which spouted out to the tree-tops, was set on fire at a
point in a valley where the greatest possible damage would result, and
the telegraph wires were simultaneously cut, so that prompt repairs
or salvage of oil were impossible. The Almighty is said to favor the
heaviest battalions, and accident, if there is such a thing, seems to
have the same preference, as has been shown in many incidents in our
history, such as the mishaps to the Tidewater pipe line, and the Toledo
municipal gas line.[648]
An intimation is given in the Continental press as to one of the
motives under which the Russian government acted in promoting the
alliance between the Russian and American oil men. It desired, it
is said, to secure the influence of the powerful members of the
oil combination in favor of certain plans for which Russia needed
co-operation in America. There has been nothing for which the Russian
government has so much needed "sympathetical co-operation" in America
as for the ratification of the Extradition Treaty. The Russian
government has obtained this ratification, and obtained it in a way
which indicated that some irresistible but carefully concealed American
influence was behind it. The New York _World_, in its editorial
columns of May 25, 1894, made the suggestion that the power behind
this treaty of shame was that of the oil trust, earning from the czar
the last link in its chain of world monopoly. It asked if it was the
influence of the oil combination that induced the Senate's consent
to this "outrageous treaty." "Was this one of the conditions upon
which that monopoly was permitted to secure its present concessions
from Russia? Did it wield an influence in the Senate like that
which the sugar trust has since exercised, though for an advantage
of a different kind?" The Philadelphia _Press_ points out that the
Russian government had long and unsuccessfully sought to obtain the
ratification of this treaty, but at last got it quickly and quietly.
Did the oil combination, it asks, "succeed in bartering the character
of this country as a political sanctuary for the monopoly of the
world's markets?" Seldom has any public measure been so universally and
so indignantly condemned in America as was this proposal to use the
powers of Anglo-Saxon justice to return men who were accused only, and
were, therefore, legally innocent, to be tried without jury, counsel,
publicity, or appeal. Never has public opinion availed less. The
Federal executive refused even to delay the ratification in deference
to the sentiment against it. Those who were active in the agitation
against the treaty found something inexplicable in the unresting
and unlistening relentlessness with which it was pushed through.
Napoleon said that in fifty years Europe would be all Russian or all
republican. Even he did not dream that republican America would become
Russianized before Europe. The San Francisco _Call_ of March 3, 1894,
discussing the report that a commercial treaty with China was under
consideration at Washington, says the negotiation is in the interest
of the oil combination. It warns the public that the trust is willing
to reopen the opium trade in reciprocity to China for better terms for
the admission of American petroleum. This free trade with China and
Russia in the souls and bodies of Russians, Chinese, and Americans
would add only another instance of the many manipulations of government
which this combination has successfully attempted in all parts of the
world--in the tariffs of France, Germany, Cuba, Canada, and our own
country; in the raising or lowering of the governmental requirements
as to explosiveness of oil sold the people in England and the United
States, and in the subsidy legislation by which it got from Congress
for its ocean steamers a privilege rigorously denied by law to all
other citizens.
In this the oil trust is but an illustration. What it has done scores
of other combinations have accomplished, though not with equal
genius. The Hon. John De Witt Warner, member of Congress from New
York, has published a list of one hundred trusts which have been able
to influence the tariff legislation of the country in their favor.
The orgy of the sugar trust and Congress, out of which the tariff
bill of 1894 was born, was in the plain view of all the people. "The
appalling fact already disclosed," the New York _Daily Commercial
Bulletin_, the most important commercial and financial daily in the
United States, said in its editorial columns of June 4, 1894, "is
that for some months past the sugar trust has been the government of
the United States." The _Bulletin_ estimates that the profit to the
trust of one detail of the tariff bill postponing the duty on raw
sugar for six months will be $34,620,000. In all this our country is
not singular. The governments of Europe are used as the instruments
of profit for private enterprise to an extent which the people endure
only because they do not understand it. The latest instance is one of
the best. The _Investor's Review_ of London, England, in May, 1894,
calls attention to the fact that upon the accession of Lord Rosebery
to the Premiership of England the hitherto outspoken opposition of
the War Office to the Maxim gun had become entirely silent, and the
gun had been put into use in the army without competitive trial with
other machine-guns, some of them its superiors. "This is an unfortunate
fact for Lord Rosebery," says the _Investor's Review_, "because of his
relationship to the Rothschilds." This great house, the _Review_ says,
has "a strong pecuniary interest in the Maxim-Nordenfeldt Company,"
and his lordship's affinities to the house "have not in the past been
confined to those of family relationship alone, but extend to community
of interests on the stock exchange." The _Review_ therefore appeals
to Lord Rosebery, for his own sake and the sake of the government "to
prove by his deeds that he not only has had nothing to do with it, but
will peremptory stop this crime." If not, the _Review_ hopes enough may
be made of the scandal to overthrow Lord Rosebery's government, for it
desires "to see a beginning made of the endeavor to purge Parliament of
the guinea-pig director, the stock-gambler and punter, and the whole
unclean brood of City 'bulls' and 'bears,' jobbers in patents, bribers
and bribed, who help to degrade public life."
We of America are most sovereign when we sit in Constitutional
Convention by our representatives, and change the fundamental law
as we will. The Constitutional Convention gives us the unique power
of peaceful and perpetual revolution, to make bloody and spasmodic
revolutions unnecessary. Of all the inventions of that ablest group
of statesmen the world has seen--the founders of this government--this
is the greatest. The people of the State of New York are holding a
Constitutional Convention in 1894 to enlarge the garment of 1846 to
fit the growth of half a century. In that half-century the revolution
in society and industry which had been getting under headway ever
since the steam-engine and competition were invented has come to its
consummation. But the basic law of the Empire State has faced this
new world as changeless as the sphinx. Nearly half the other states
have made new constitutions, or amended the old ones to bring law into
line with life. Pennsylvania forbids the common carrier to become
the owner of coal-mines, or to consolidate with competing carriers,
or to give preference to any citizen. Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska,
Colorado, and many other states have framed provisions to control
the abuse of industrial and highway power. The State of Washington
in its Constitution declares that "monopolies and trusts shall never
be allowed in this State," and it forbids any association "for the
purpose of fixing the price or limiting the production, or regulating
the transportation of any product or commodity." The manual of the
constitutions of the world prepared for the use of the New York
convention shows that fifteen of the states of the Union have in one
way or another recognized the revolution which has taken place in
the industrial economy of the people, and sought to meet it with the
necessary political safe-guards.
When the delegates of the citizens of New York State meet in May,
1894, at Albany, in such a time to face such problems, the press
notes that a large proportion of them are corporation lawyers. The
place of president of the convention is secured by the chief counsel
of the oil trust. He is in Albany to resist the application to the
Attorney-General of the State to move for the forfeiture of the charter
of the principal corporation in the trust, and on his way he plucks the
presidency of the Constitutional Convention. "It is truly a momentous
event," he says in his opening speech, "when the delegates of many
millions of people gather together after an interval of fifty years
almost, for the purpose of revising and amending the fundamental law of
the State." The delegates thus momentously assembled, when they came to
choose the officer who was to wield over them a power as great as that
of the Speaker over the Federal House of Representatives, momentously
selected the most conspicuous attorney of the most conspicuous
embodiment of the forces with which the people are in conflict. The
president found words of kindly reference for many great questions--of
education, suffrage, city government, and the like--but for the great
questions of social power which fifteen states have found serious
enough for constitutional cognizance he had not a syllable. No plan or
even suggestion, great or little, for the new Constitution can reach
the convention direct. All must go to the appropriate committee, to be
smothered or reported, as the case may be. There are thirty of these
committees, and they are made up by the president of the convention,
who also designates their chairmen. Each committee has its subject, and
the subjects cover the bill of rights, the regulation of suffrage, the
control of corporations, the election of judges, future amendments of
the Constitution, and every other part of the organic law. Practically
the work of the convention will be the work of the committees, and the
committees are the work of one who is not only the attorney of the
oil trust, but is a part of the trust, a member of the organization.
"I happen to own one hundred shares in the Standard Oil Trust," he
said in his argument in Albany before the Attorney-General in behalf
of the trust. The trust has given formal notice that out of deference
to public opinion and the decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio, and
in pursuance of an agreement with the late Attorney-General of New
York,[649] it had dissolved itself. But this distinguished member
disregards the dissolution, for reasons of personal convenience, as he
tells the Attorney-General. "I have never gone forward and claimed my
aliquot share." The character of this trust, of which the president
and organizer of the Constitutional Convention persists in being a
member to the extent of refusing to be "dissolved" out of it, has been
adjudicated. It was, the Supreme Court of Ohio said,[650] "organized
for a purpose contrary to the policy of our laws. Its object was to
establish a virtual monopoly ... throughout the entire country, and
by which it might not merely control the production but the price
at its pleasure. All such associations are contrary to the policy
of our State and void." A similar judgment has been passed upon the
trust by the judiciary of the State of which this president of the
Constitutional Convention, besides being an officer of the courts,
is a citizen. It was entered into, the Supreme Court of New York has
said,[651] "for the purpose of forming a combination whose object was
to restrict production, control prices, and suppress competition, and
the agreement was therefore opposed to public policy and void." And a
higher court, the highest in the State, the Court of Appeals, decided
in the sugar-trust, case that a trust was in avoidance and disregard of
the laws of the State.
To the monopoly of oil, which was the starting-point, are being
added by its proprietors, one after the other, as we have shown, a
progressive series of other monopolies, from natural gas to iron. To
these assets is now to be added our bill of rights. The long fingers
of this power of mortmain reincarnate are long enough to reach from
its counting-room to the Constitutional Convention. The new Magna
Charta, to which the people look for help against void and unlawful
combinations, is to be drafted by committees made up by the attorney of
the chief of these void and unlawful combinations. The instrument which
is to protect the people against monopoly will come to them only after
every section has been exposed to the moulding touch of the greatest
monopoly in history. "This business belongs to us," and theirs is the
first and the last hand on the reins of the convention. The people can
vote on the Constitution after it is made, but the trust will see it
made. If the new Constitution is made so obnoxious that it is rejected,
as that of 1867 was, the old Constitution will do for the next fifty
years as for the last fifty. It is not monopoly that needs the revision.
Is this the end? When before the Interstate Commerce Commission, the
head of the combination was asked:
"The properties included in your trust are distributed all over the
United States, are they not?"
"Oh, not all over the United States. They are distributed."
"Are they not distributed, and are they not sufficiently numerous
to meet the requirements of your business from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, and from the Gulf to the northern boundary?"
"Not yet."[652]
The reply came in a tone and with a smile so significant that it was
answered by a comprehending laugh from the whole room--judges, lawyers,
reporters, spectators, and all.
"Not yet!"