Show 7 GARLAND lIe Testifies Before the Telephone Tele-phone Investigators i TELLS HIS SIDE OF THE TALE The Brief History of HIi Connection I with the Tan Electric Baslneti Garland Testifies WAsin > oTON April W The announcement an-nouncement that AttorneyGeneral Garland was to appear before the Telephone Tele-phone investigating committee caused a large attendance this morning It was nearly threequarters ot an hour arter the regular hour of meeting when the AttorneyGeneral appearedlooking pale and rather feeble With a courteous cour-teous salute to the committee he immediately imme-diately took the stand and on the invitation invi-tation of the chairman he began to make a statement of his connection with the PanElectric He wished he said to lay before the committee and reaffirm the matter contained in his statement to the President on October 3th last In addition he wished to explain two or three points of that statement On February 1333 General Atkins had said to the witness that he believed the Rogers inventions were of great utility if properly handled and that money could be made out of them being a poor man like himself General Atkins had desired wittness to enter into this I told him said witness that I had never undertaken to make any money except by law and poker I had always lost at poker and generally won at law I was willing to go into this if he thought it offered any inducements Continuing witness said that Senator Haris made substantially the same statement about the invention and two or three days afterwards he witness had been introduced to Mr Rogers and his son at their home He briefly told of their organization of the Pan Electric Elec-tric Company as detailed by Senator Harris and other witnesses and then turned his attention to applications made to him to bring suit against the Bell Company It was in the inference and not in a fact he said that the Pan Electric had made the application The inference was founded on two reasons I viz First that Cot Young came with 1 the other gentleman in the latter part of Juy and witness knew him to be the treasurer and secretary ot the Pan Electric and second because witness had on May 25th received a letter from Rogers > requesting a suit to be brought as a stockholder of that company and witness had treated Ben Rogers letter as personal and he knew Lingers bad no authority to make the application that such an application must be made from the president of the company Therefore the letter had remained unanswered un-answered and a personal paper had not been filed In July Van Benthuiaen had presented lila application for a suit basing it on a law which he stated had been passed at the last session of Congress Witness had not heard of the law before that I and had some search made but could not find the act the application how ever was so well written and apparently set out the passage of the bill so positively posi-tively that the witness felt that the bill had become a law The application had been referred to by witness to the Interior In-terior Department where it should have gone in the firaUinstance and witness had heard no more of it until it I had been returned last January with other papers After receiving Van Benthuisens letter witness had setjo I work to examine into the matter i III i mat-ter for though he had no intimation to that effect he I was satisfied that other applications It I would be made Looking over the authorities he concludedthat 1 he could not order the suit and when Van Ben I thuisen Young and the others came to him he had determined that he would not touch it at all under any circumstances When witness was still thcrSeaate Senator Platt had come to him one day with Bell to authorize government suits and had asked his opinion of it Witness had looked it over and had regarded it as unnecessary unneces-sary that it would do no good that was all he ever said or heard of the bill until it had been brought to his attention through the application appli-cation In the early part of the fall a Mr Humphrey of the Globe Telephone Company had called upon him at the department about the application He thought he was going to jump over on me said witness Humphreys had insisted that he witness order a suit and had said it was very curious because he witness was in another company that his Humphreys rights should be disregarded dis-regarded He got mad because I would not do anything about it said the witness wit-ness and we parted not with mutual respect and admiration at alL Witness Wit-ness denied that he had ever given an opinion about him the opinion he had given and the only opinion was to the effect that the Pan Electric inventions were not infringements that they were improvements upon telephones that were differently patentable a well recognized principle While a stockholder stock-holder he had been very delicate in attending at-tending the meetings for the reasons that the place of meetings was inconveniently incon-veniently situated that they were held at night when witness rarely went out of his house Although witness was at torn y for the company yet Mr Young and Senator Harris usually drew up the legal papers and when they were referred refer-red to him witness made such alterations altera-tions as seemed to be necessary These papers had been submitted to witness in the Senate Judiciarv room but it was a mistake to say that any boaid meetings had been held in that room Witness was satisfied that he had never attending a meeting of the company lines the last Presidential election I Mr Ranney wished to know to what extent he had acted as counsel for toe company Witness replied that as he had stated the had looked over fcgal papers brought to him by others ifct had not performed any other duties as attorney Mr Ranney took uo the i legal phase of the case and examined the witness at some length as to understanding of the issues litigated liti-gated in the DolbearDrambaugh and other cases The witness had never understood from the cases that be had read that anything more than the question tion of infringement had been decided in each case He never understoofftha the issue was Bells broad claim to the act of telephony Mr Ranney asked why the witness feeling that a party had a right to be heard that they should not be deprived of that right and duty devolving dn the Solicitor General he had not referred them to the SolicitorGeneral The witness answered an-swered that he did not want to be concerned con-cerned in the matter at all After he had examined ij i te had concluded that it would be better for him not to sug pest what the applicants should do Certainly the gentleman looked mad when he had refused to touch the matter Mr Rannev Did Casey Young look madWitness WitnessCasey did not look well phased Continuing he said that Mr Young did not open his mouth after introducinj the gentlemen It was due to all suits that he should state the fact that after he had declined to take any action in I the matter of ordering a suit a number of prominent gentlemen legal gentlemen gentle-men had written to him Insisting that notwithstanding his connection with the PanElectric it was his duty to have brought the suit Some of the most prominent men in the country had written to that effect Mr Rannei objected to the statement He did not notCAre to go into what he had written Witness remarked that he was simply trying to show his position at the time ilrRanney wished to know if the writers had felt that it would be improper to tell the applicant that he was disabled dis-abled and refer them to solicitor general gen-eral It would not have been improper im-proper responded the witness but it was a question of delicacy with me Mr Ranney Dont you think you were little oversensitive Witness Jo sir with me it was a case like that of Lorenzo Dawsinan You will be damned if vou do and be damned if you dont Laughter Mr Ranney referred to previous testimony concerning the witness refusal re-fusal to hear the application and a subsequent sub-sequent search for missing law asked how he knew that another application would be made Witnzss replied that he did not know that he only supposed that parties would return to request the reference of their application to the SolicitorGeneral They had also threatened to appeal to the President Mr Ranney inquired if it had occurred to the witness as a reason for not telling Goodeof the receipt application that if he had told him of his action In refusing to consider the application thatMr Goode might feel bound to regret re-gret it while he said nothing Mr Goode would act upon the orig inal application and might crant the request The witness responded firmly in the negative As Mr Ranney still pressed the witness for his reason in remaining still he remarked that after what had occurred seemed to him that it was with the utmost propriety that be had kept silent He thought it would have been extremely indelicate i LL iu utivu saiu anyimng aDDu It Turning his attention to the ordering of the Memphis suit the witness said that he had arranged to leave Washing ton on August 27th and spend the entire en-tire month of September at his home in Arkansas He had chosen that time because he had found September the best month to be out Washington and because he could shoot deer in Arkansas Ar-kansas in thai month under the game raw The deer did not become ripe until September said he Mr Goode had returned about the middle of August but witness had said nothing to him about the applicatioi he had received re-ceived because he did not know exactly what to say He supposed the gentlemen gentle-men who Had made the application would find their remedy if they sun posed they had one Wnen the witness bad come back to Little Rock he revived re-vived a dispatch from theNew orleans TimetUemoerat saying that his admiring ad-miring newspaper friends were complimenting compli-menting him on ordering the suit against the Bell Company He replied that he had not ordered any such suit He had returned to Washington about October 1st and when he called at the White House the President had told him the papers were speaking of the casewhere upon he had made the explanation that had been published Witness had never opened his mouth to Mr Goode about it because Solicitor Goode under the statute was perfectly free and independent inde-pendent and witness had no more control con-trol over him in his witnef absence or disability than he had over gentlemen gentle-men in Congress He had never to this rtA 7 finnlrpn tn MV finnria nhnnt th I lint suit or the one alleged to be pendinc Mr Goode had said something some-thing about counsel and the practice of the government in dealing with counsel He did not know what was In the bills had never seen the papers on which the suit was predicated and had never talked with Secretary Lamar or the gentlemen who had sat with him He bad even declined to talk with the President about the suit One of the rentlemen in Secretary Lamars de partmentMr Zach Montgomery an old college < < friend and appointed at his 1 i dd 1nJyg dl f solicitation had declined to sit In the case because of his friendship and old acquaintance with the witness He had seen some notice now and then about Garland being the recipient of a I block of stock as a gift Of course there had been no gift about It As to the question of propriety there was no more impropriety in his position than in the case of the gentlemen holding railroad stocks in Congress or Congressmen golngover to the supreme Court to practice for money It was a legitimate business and witness had never learned of any legislation being asked His only regret was it had not panned out If any question had come up in Congress connected with the company he should not have voted for it He had recommended Dr Rogers and his son to Messrs Cox and Hewitt because he regarded them as very competent com-petent men in their line Witness had talked with Architect Clarke about Harris Har-ris Rogers application appointment I as House electrician and about putting in Rogers telephones but after consultation consulta-tion with the President pfo ttmporc of I the Senate Mr Clarke had refused to make the appointment Thurmao inquired if the witness regarded I re-garded the stock as a gift He replied in the nrgative five or six persons had 1 come together Tor the organization of a company and they had made the assess menu the first move being to give a note for 11000 which was followed fol-lowed by assessments of 50 or 100 each He did not regard re-gard the inventions as having any marketable value The company was to establish their utility and put them on tbe market Chairman Boyle D d you contemplate contem-plate using your official position for the advantage of the enterprise Witness Not at all If I had been a private citizen I would have done much better than when an officia He added that hn had no more idea of using bis official intlucnce than ot jumping into the Potomac nver with a mill stone around his neck The company I I br pany was simply an undertaking half a dozen impecunious centlemeil They had never tried to boom the business bus-iness and scatter the stock upon the country At least he had never heard of it Tile chairman asked why the witness wnud to put a telephone in the Capitol Capi-tol The witness replied that they wanted tn exhibit the instruments to the J ublic It was IIOt the intention to bring them before Congress In answer to a question by the chairman the witness sa d he had never had a case in hisIife I Mr Hall inquired for the witnesss understanding of tho reason for referring refer-ring the applications to the Interior Department He replied that it was simply for information and such suggestions sug-gestions ai they might see proper to make in the premises it was advisory of course Referring to his vacation the witness said that believing Mr Goode would net return in season he was about to send for Mr ilaurv Under the statute Mr Goode hadthe right to act as well in his witness absence as in his disability and he had expected when he had refused re-fused to entertain the application that the gentleman would go at once to Mr Goode He did not know that they would follow that course and had not suggestad IL He had gone to his home at Hominy Hill Arkansas leaving instructions to send no departmental < < 1 f mental letters to him The House was 100 miles from Little Rock and 17 miles from anywhere else Mr Ranney took up the examination examina-tion at this point He questioned whether the witness regarded his stock as a purchase as he had said it was not a gift The witness replied re-plied that it was not precisely a purchase pur-chase it would be difficult to define it in one word still taking assessments into consideration it might be called a purchase pur-chase He was J100 out bythe assessments assess-ments Mr Ranney began an inquiry into the contracts of the company but the witness knew very little about them |