"Did not the concern with which you were so connected purchase over 8,000,000 barrels of crude petroleum in 1881?"
"I am unable to state."
He was asked to give the name of one refinery in this country, running at the time (1883), not owned or substantially controlled by his concern. "I decline to answer."[713]
He was asked if he would say the total profits of his trust's companies for the last year (1887) were not as much as $20,000,000.
"I haven't the least knowledge on that subject."[714]
Phrenologists are right. Memory is not to be ranked with the mental attributes of the highest importance. The head of the New York Central could not tell when a stock dividend of something like $46,000,000 had been declared on one of his railroads—and a $46,000,000 dividend is something worth remembering. "I don't know.... I don't remember."[715] It is lucky for the rest of us that these great men forget something.
One of the chiefs of the oil combination was a witness in Cleveland in 1887 in a suit by the State of Ohio against certain railroads.
"What business in connection with the oil business is done in the building in which the oil trust has its office in New York?"
"I do not think I could state just what business is done in that building, I am sure."
Asked on the witness-stand in the Buffalo explosion case when it was he formed the "trust" with $70,000,000 of capital, the president replied: "I am unable to state," and he could not say where its articles of agreement were, nor who has control of it. When questioned before the Interstate Commission he could not tell within $25,000,000 how much business they were doing a year.[716]