Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

Representative Hopkins, of Pennsylvania, rose in his place in the House of Representatives on May 16, 1876, and asked unanimous consent to offer a resolution for the appointment of a committee of five to investigate the charges that "many industries are crippled and threatened with extreme prostration" by the discrimination of the railroads, and to report a bill for the regulation of interstate commerce. This was the first move to reopen in Congress the great question, first on the order of the day both in England and in America, which had been smothered by the Committee of Commerce of 1872. It required unanimous consent to bring the resolution before the House.

"Instantly," said Representative Hopkins, in describing the occurrence afterwards,[557] "I heard the fatal words 'I object.' The objector was Mr. Henry B. Payne, of Cleveland." Other members appealed to Mr. Payne to withdraw his objection.

The Speaker of the House: "Does the gentleman from Ohio withdraw his objection?"

Mr. Payne: "I do not."

In a private conference which followed between Representative Payne and Representative Hopkins, the former said, as Mr. Hopkins relates: "What he objected to in my resolution was the creation of a special committee; but if I would again offer it and ask that it be referred to the Committee of Commerce he would not object. I thought perhaps there was something reasonable in his objection. A special committee would probably require a clerk, which would be an expense. He looked to me so like a frugal Democrat, who had great confidence in the regular order of established committees and did not want the country to be taxed for clerks attending to the business of special committees—I say that he so impressed me that, as the record will show, I adopted his suggestion."

When the Committee of Commerce to which the investigation was accordingly referred began its investigation, a member of the oil combination, not then, as later, a member of the Senate, took his seat by the ear of the chairman, who was from his State, "presiding," as the oil producers said in a public appeal, "behind the seat of the chairman."[558] The financial officer of the oil combination was called as a witness, but refused to answer the questions of the committee as to the operations of the company or its relations with the railroads. The vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad also refused to answer questions. On the plea of needing time to decide how to compel these witnesses to answer, the committee let the railroad vice-president go until he should be recalled. But the committee never decided, and the witnesses were never recalled. The committee never reported to Congress, made no complaint of the contempt of its witnesses, and the investigation of 1876, like that of 1872, came to a mute and inglorious end.

When Representative Hopkins applied to the clerk of the committee for the testimony, he was told, to his amazement, that it could not be found. "Judge Reagan," he relates,[559] "who was a stanch friend of the bill"—for the regulation of the railroads—"and very earnest for the investigation, and who at the time was a member of the committee, told me that it had been stolen."[560]

Eight years after "I object" the people of Ohio were a suppliant before the Senate of the United States. They believed that their dearest rights had been violated, and they prayed for redress to the only body which had power to give it. Officially by the voice of both Houses of the State Legislature and the governor, unofficially by the press, by the public appeals of leading men, by the petitions of citizens, press, leaders, and people, regardless of party, the commonwealth asserted that the greatest wrong possible in a republic had been done their members, and sued for restitution. They declared it to be their belief that against their will, as the result of violation of the laws, a man had taken their seat in the Senate of the United States who was not their senator, that they had been denied representation by the senator of their choice; and they demanded that, in accordance with immemorial usage, the evidence they had to offer should be examined, and their right of representation in the Senate of the United States restored to them, if it should be found to have been taken from them. After the Legislature had examined sixty-four witnesses, the Ohio House of Representatives resolved that "ample testimony was adduced to warrant the belief that ... the seat of Henry B. Payne in the United States Senate was purchased by the corrupt use of money." The Ohio Senate charged that "the election of Henry B. Payne as Senator of the United States from Ohio ... was procured and brought about by the corrupt use of money, ... and by other corrupt means and practices."

Both Houses passed with these resolutions an urgent request for investigation by the Senate of the United States.[561]

Mr. Payne's election by the Legislature was a thunder-clap to the people of Ohio. They did not know he was a candidate. Who was to be United States Senator was of course one of the issues in the election of the Ohio Legislature of 1884, and the Democratic voters who elected the majority of that Legislature had sent them to the State Capitol to make George H. Pendleton or Durbin Ward senator. One of the leading newspaper men of the State testified: "I went over the entire State during the campaign.... Out of the eighty-eight counties I attended fifty-four Democratic conventions and wrote them up, giving the sentiment of the people as nearly as I could, and during that entire canvass I never heard a candidate for the Legislature say that he was for Henry B. Payne for United States Senator; but every man I ever talked with was either for George H. Pendleton or General Ward. I think out of the Democratic candidates throughout the State I conversed with at least two-thirds of them."[562] As was afterwards stated before the Senate of the United States by the representatives of the people of Ohio, "He was in no wise publicly connected with the canvass for the Senate, nor had the most active, honorable, and best-posted politicians in the State heard his name in connection with the senatorial office until subsequent to the October election [of the Legislature]. He was absolutely without following."[563]