The secretary by whom this was done was he who, as president of a subordinate corporation of the oil combination, had been the commanding officer at the front in the great battle with Toledo.[579] When he was nominated for Secretary of the Treasury, Senator Payne made himself conspicuous by soliciting support among the Democrats for the confirmation of this Republican. "He could not be chosen to the Toledo Council from any ward to-day," said the New York Times, February 23, 1891, "so bitter is the feeling against him," and the same paper declared that his defeat in Ohio as a candidate for Congress in 1890 was entirely due to his connection with the oil combination. But though of so little political power that he could not command a majority of the votes in his own Congressional district, there was influence behind him which could get the head of his party and the government to put him in the seat illustrious with the memory of such men as Alexander Hamilton and Salmon P. Chase. "The objection to Governor Foster as Secretary of the Treasury, that he was an associate in business of the members of the great oil trust," said the New York Press, "President Harrison did not regard as serious enough to have any weight." It was pointed out by the Buffalo Courier editorially, February 23, 1891, and other papers, that the oil trust, which Mr. Foster had been serving, "is not only a heavy exporter but a heavy importer, especially of tin plate, and is an extensive claimant for rebates of duty on the tin of cans in which oil is exported."
An item of Associated Press news in December, 1892, says that the Secretary of the Treasury has just decided that the oil combination shall be paid by the Treasury a drawback of the duties it has paid on imported steel hoops for barrels in which it exports oil. "It isn't pleasant," said the New York World, editorially, February 23, 1891, "to have a Secretary of the Treasury who holds intimate relations with the oil trust." It is through the Secretary of the Treasury that the company receives the mail subsidies of millions a year. All the statistics and official publications with regard to the "decline of American shipping" and "foreign competition with American oil," and about the tariff, as on oil, coal, steel, tin, etc., and many other financial and commercial matters of pecuniary concern to them, are under the charge of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Treasury Department's Commissioner of Navigation, in 1892, sends circulars to the boards of trade and chambers of commerce all over the country, calling attention to the small amount of money paid by our government to American steamers for the mails, and advocating the establishment of a merchant marine and naval reserve on the principle adopted by Great Britain—i.e., the payment of subsidies.
When Senator Hoar, speaking of the oil combination in the debate on the Payne case,[580] asked, sharply: "Is it represented in the Cabinet at this moment?" he referred to the Secretary of the Navy. Subsidy had not then insinuated itself into the policy of the government; but when that came, the uses of a Secretary of the Navy were clear enough. It was by the influence of the Secretary of the Navy that the subsidies for these steamships of the oil trust were got through Congress. It is the Secretary of the Navy who passes upon the speed of the ships receiving subsidies; and his findings are binding upon the Post-office Department which awards the contracts and upon the Treasury Department which pays. In the rush of the closing hours of the session of 1889-90 of the Fifty-first Congress, upon the urgent recommendation, made in person to the Naval Committee, of the same Secretary of the Navy who had pushed through the subsidy special legislation we have described, $1,000,000 was appropriated for the purchase of nickel ore. It is an emergency, said the senator who spoke for the Naval Committee to the Senate. The nickel was to be bought by the Secretary of the Navy; when and where was at his discretion. The ore was to be used for alloying steel in the manufacture of armor plate. The same Congress took off the duty of hundreds of dollars a ton on nickel imported. The only nickel mine of importance in America was then at Sudbury, Canada. In pressing the appropriation through Congress it was stated that the mine, like the steamship company subsidized later, was owned by "our citizens." After investigation in Cleveland, New York, Washington, and Canada, the Daily News of Chicago declared that the appropriation of $1,000,000 and the abolition of the duty were done in the interest of members of the oil combination; that they were "our citizens" who were the owners of the nickel mine at Sudbury; that they had sent an able lobbyist to Washington to secure the legislation; and that, in anticipation of his success, the product of the mine had been withheld for a year from the market, until ore to the value of millions had accumulated. It was said that by April 1, 1890, there were 5000 tons on the dump, the duty on which, at the old rate, would have been $1,500,000. Whether these statements were correct or not—and in the absence of official investigation it is impossible to tell—the narrative answers fully the purpose of giving the uninitiated public an idea of the relations that may exist between public departments and private syndicates with great profit—but not to the department. The appropriation was passed September 29, 1890. The books of the Navy Department show that the Secretary thereupon made contracts with the Canadian Copper Company, by which, up to June 15th following, it sold the government $321,321.86 worth of nickel. A litigation arising among its stockholders in the spring of 1893 disclosed among them no less close a connection of the oil trust than the senator from Ohio who had served it in Congress from 1876 to 1891.
The message of a Republican President in 1892 commended the special legislation in favor of the two steamers, and urged Congress not to fail to appropriate money to pay them their subsidies. The Democratic Postmaster-General, who now stands between the United States and these carriers of the foreign mails, is one of the firm of distinguished counsel who defended the interests of some of the owners of this steamship line in the conspiracy trial at Buffalo.[581] He is to give them the vouchers upon which the millions a year of subsidies are to be paid, and he may be called upon to consider new contracts. In the Presidential campaign of 1892 the head of the oil trust was prominent on one side figuring among the officers of great political mass-meetings in New York, while the associate referred to by Senator Hoar was the active manager of the political fortunes of the other party. This is not a solitary instance. The great man who testified twenty-one years ago that he was a Republican in Republican districts, a Democrat in Democratic districts, but everywhere an Erie man, has now an army of imitators. The people had this authoritatively explained to them while they were dazedly watching the speculation in sugar-trust stock in Wall Street and the Senate rise and fall with the manipulation of the sugar tariff in committee. The president of the sugar-trust, before a special committee of the United States Senate, testified that this "politics of business" was the custom of "every individual and corporation and firm, trust, or whatever you call it."[582] Asked if he contributed to the State campaign funds, he said: "We always do that.... In the State of New York, where the Democratic majority is between 40,000 and 50,000, we throw it their way. In the State of Massachusetts, where the Republican party is doubtful, they probably have the call.... Wherever there is a dominant party, wherever the majority is very large, that is the party that gets the contribution, because that is the party which controls the local matters"—which include the elections to Congress and the Presidential election.[583] Federal judges find the sugar trust not subject to the anti-trust law.[584] The Attorney-General has not got decisions in the suits against it for refusal to answer Census questions. Congress forces the people to buy sugar of it only, and at its price. The Secretary of the Treasury drafts for a committee of Congress a tariff like that the trust needs. Our President is the head of the "dominant party that gets the contribution," and he joins the sugar lobby by recommending, unofficially, legislation in its favor.[585]
By what law gives it, and by what law does not take from it, the sugar trust can issue $85,000,000 of securities on $10,000,000 of property, and collect $28,000,000[586] a year of profits. Control of government, with its Presidents, Congress, Federal Judges, Attorney-Generals, and Cabinet Secretaries, would be a great prize. Probably none of the trust's "raw material" would be so cheaply bought as this if it could be purchased by campaign contributions of a few hundred thousand dollars. In an interview in the New York Herald of March 25, 1894, the debonair president of the trust, to shame the objections of picayune souls, cries, "Who cares for a quarter of a cent a pound?" The answer is not far to seek. He does.
"THE COMMODITY IS NOT SO GOOD AS BEFORE"
—Lord Coke.
Three hundred years ago Lord Coke, in the "Case of the Monopolies,"[587] declared these to be the inevitable result of monopoly: the price of the commodity will be raised; the commodity is not so good as before; it tends to the impoverishment of artisans, artificers, and others.