Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1908 — DEPARTMENTAL SECRECY. [ARTICLE]

DEPARTMENTAL SECRECY.

Indianapolis News (Rep.). That we are to be subject to some inconveniences in electing to the presidency a member of the present administration is already sufficiently clear. No one Imagines, that the country will get the truth as to the $28,000,000 canal deal. It was charged openly during the campaign that $28,000,000 of the $40,000,000 given for the rights and property of the French company was paid to certain American citlsens who bought up the old securities. The charge was never denied, except in so far as Charles P. Taft denied that he got any of the money. But even he carefully refrained from appealing to the records, all of which are in the departments at Washington. Douglas Robinson, a brother-in-law of the President, whose name was mentioned in connection with the scandal, maintained a strict silence. No word was beard from William Nelson Cromwell, who was intimately related both to the canal deal and also to Mr. Taft, when he was Secretary of War. Mr. Cromwell has refused to throw any light on the subject. That some one got the money is practically certain. Who got it the country is not likely to know, unless, perchance, Congress is able to drag the facts to light. In The News of yesterday was printed a Washington dispatch to the New York Sun in which it was said that the whole story of the relations of the President and the late Secretary Hitchcock to the granting of a franchise to the Prairie Oil and Gas Company of Oklahoma, a subsidiary company of the Standard, was buried in the Department of Justice, a fact which is taken to indicate that Mr. Hitchcock intended to proceed criminally against certain men in high places. It is believed that the President overruled Mr. Hitchcock in this matter, and that the action was taken solely on the direction of the President, and over the protest of the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Hitchcock. The Sun says that the application of certain politicians of national prominence for a pipeline, which had been so stoutly resisted by Hitchcock, "came along at the time when Mr. Roosevelt was seeking nomination and election to the presidency.” It was in the campaign of 1!)04 that the Standard •Oil Company was solicited to make a big contribution to the Republican campaign fund. A little later, namely in March, 1904, Congress passed a bill directing the Secretary or the Interior to make regulations for permits for pipelines, but these were too rigid to suit the oil people, and then it was that Governor Higgins, of New York, wrote a letter to the President in the interest of D. N. Barnsdall, Pittsburg agent of the Standard, asking the President to order Mr. Hitchcock to grant the permit. This the President, so the Sun says, did, and Mr. HRchcock very reluctantly yielded. Now we quote from the Sun's story:

A few mouths later Mr. llithcock printed a volume of the private hearings held before his department on the applications for pipeline permits. In the document he gave a copy of Governor Higgins's letter. When the volume appeared it created some excitement. It was during the Hughes-Hearst gubernatorial campaign. The President was indignant at Mr. Hitchcock for giving out the Higgins letter, declaring that it was the property of the President himself. He ordered the copies of Secretary Hitchcock’s printed document to be called in and Bhipped to Oyster Bay, where Mr. Roosevelt was then staying. There was some excitement over the order, and agents from the interior Department were busy visiting newspaper bureaus and law offices iu Washington in quest of the objectionable document. No copies of it can now be had. The Standard Oil contribution of $ 100,000 to the Republican national campaign fund was paid in 1904 Just after the President had overruled Secretary Hitchcock and granted the Standard's application for a pipeline. We do not know why the Higgins latter should have bean regarded as the President’* personal property, as it was an official communication, •ad the basis for official action. Kor can we understand why any newspaper or combination of newspapers should have surrendered the document. But pursuing the inquiry still further, we find that the

regulations made by Mr. Hitchcock In December, 1906, following the favors shown to the Standard by the President, were more drastic still—so obstinate was this brave and sturdy man. In the congressional campaign of that year, Mr. Roosevelt again, according to the Sun. promised a Western Senator, who had a grievance against Mr. Hitchcock, that the Secretary should be removed the day after election. Then follows this: On Wednesday, the day after election, the President Issued a bulletin from the White House in which he virtually fulfilled - hip promise to the Western Benator by announcing the forthcoming retire-' ment of Mr. Hitchcock, but explaining that the Secretary was going out of his own volition and much against the President's wishes. The regulations of December, 1906, were promulgated on the eve of Secretary Hitchcock’s retirement from office. The Standard Oil Company defied the Interior Department and refused to apply for permits under the regulations of 1906. The company announced that it was acting upon the advice of ’ its counsel In refusing to avow itself a common carrier, as required by the Hitchcock regulations of 1906. In April, 1908, Secretary Garfield sent for President O’Neill, of the Prairie Oil and Gas Company, and agreed to waive the common carrier requirement of the regulations of 1906 to which the Standard Oil Company objected. Here, as in the canal case, the people are justified in believing the worst. For the records are in control of the accused men. A man of national reputation is quoted by the Sun as saying: “Yes, the report is there, but President Roosevelt dare not let its contents be known.” Perhaps Congress can find a way to get at the truth. These two matters should be made the subject of a thorough congressional investigation, an investigation in which forSecretary Hitchcock should be the leading witness. Really is it any wonder that Mr. Rockefeller supported Mr. Taft? Is it any wonder that the Standard thought it wise to give, through its officers, SIOO,000 to Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign fund? It is well that the people should realize that the departments at Washington belong to them, that their records are public records. This business of smothering things has gone quite too far. It is high time to turn on the light. At least we ought to know who got the canal money, and just what was the arrangement made by the President with the Standard, and what were the objections of Mr. Hitchcock to it.