| Show STANDARD OIL BHlBE 4 Half a Million Dollars Olfered an Ohio OfficiaL MONNETT llADE CHARGES 4 STANDARD OIL ATTORNEYS DE I AND ms PROOF + Deny Thai the Trust Was Connected With ny Attempt of Bribery Proceedixigs Against n Trust PipeLine Pipe-Line CompanyDamaging Testimony Testi-mony at Rearing Yesterday + New York March 201pon the arrival ar-rival of the interested parties in the Standard Oil company hearing at the I Hoffman House it was decided to take DO testimony today It was agreed to 11ave a hearing in the case ofJhe state of Ohio against the Buckeye Pipe coin l31W a hr11Ich of the Standard 011 company in the office of Mr Mills actIng act-Ing a > commissioner for the state Messrs Elliott and Cline counsel for the Standard Oil company sent a letter let-ter to Attorney General Monnett of Ohio today demandIng that he make ubllc the name of the man who of ered him a bribe to discontinue his fight This is the letter Hon F S Monnett Attorney General Gen-eral of Ohio On March l George Rice announced to thc pUblic press that a bribe of five hundred thousand dollars less a hundred thousand dollars com Jnission had been offered you to induce you to stop or delay orocecdin against the Standard oH company now pending in the superior court of Ohio You are reported to have denied en tlrely at Toledo the Rice stry but by the time 3OU arrived at Columbus the same day you concluded that the story was true and accordingly in yarlOUS newspapers on the morning of the 5th illSL you made a statement that the Standard Oil company through S some frIend ofyours had offered you 400000 to inUuEnce your action with respect to tll cases pending against it and other companies in the supreme court of Ohio Reputable neWSDaDcrs of the state notably the Cleveland Leader the Toledo Blade and the Ohio State Joutnal have called upon you to disclose the name of the friend who thus corruptly approached you You are cuoted in thE Cleveland Plain DealEr of the 7th inst as saving that if you were to give out the name of your friend half a dozen depart ments would be after him at once and it might be they could force or persuade him to kee his mouth shut You do not soeni to realize that the reason given by you for refusing to disclose the name of your friend is an admission that the company does not know the name of the party whom you say was commissioned to offer you 400000 and therefore you must have known that the alleged friend made the offer to you without the authority or knowledge of the Standard Oil company In the New York World of the 9th last you are represented as saying that you had written th friend who had tried to bribe you that you would not expose him until public interest demanded de-manded it in another interview ill the Commercial Commer-cial rJbune of the 6th inst you are represented as saying that your friend had agreed to protect you The arrangement ar-rangement for protection seems to be 111utucl So far as your statements connect the Sandard Oil company with any attempt at-tempt to bribe > you they are totally false You haC tle names Q1 claim to l1av nQt only of lie friethl who ap lroache you but also oj others < lcting with hin because on the 14th inst you saJd in the public press that these men u re telegraphing you from New York While nothing in your story has di reethy onnecte the Standard Oil com pany with the attempted bribery YOU have desired the nubile to assume sairi connections Ye now demand that you give the name or names of the persons who made such an offer to you claiming claim-ing to represent the Standard Oil com prn that we may take steps to quIet this last and most vicious of the many false and sensational stories to which you have given currency With reference to this letter Attorney Attor-ney General Monnett said he would reply re-ply to it after he ilad consulted with the supreme court of Ohio AFTER NOTRER COMPANY A hearing in the case of the state of Ohio against the Buckeye Pipe Line company was begun this afternoon in the office of Commissioner C Edgar Mills The hearing was held that the attorney general might take the depositions de-positions in the proceedings brought in Ohio to annul the charter of the Buckeye company for Violation of the antitrust laws of Ohio The claim of the prosecution is that the Standard Oil trust till exists and that despite the law the Buckeye Pine Line com pan is till a member of it The Buckeye Pipe Line company was organized or-ganized for the transportation of crude oil Its headquarters are at Lima 0 tnd Its capital stock is 10000000 H fl Hogers is the president At the proc eding today 31 F Elliott El-liott and Virgil P Cline represented the company Attorney General Mon nett appeared for the state of Ohio Y L FlagS acted as his assistant As a preliminary Messrs Elliott and Cline agreed to admit a COP of the testimony given in October last by John D Rockefeller in the Standard Oil company case provided the Ohio court should decide that such evidence was competent Counsel objected however holding that such testimony was not competent GeCrge Rice was the first witness cUe 11 Fl3gg asked him if he ever owned a certificate of the Standard Oil trust md lIe answered yes The witness wit-ness identfed a his property two cer tifcates one certificate of the Standard Oil trust and the other acertifcate of a assignment certificates of legal tie both original Have you ever owned a trust certf cah of the kind called a certificate of equitable interest which you handed Into the trust and for which you received re-ceived a certificate known as an assignment as-signment Flagg of legal title asked Il Mr Rice said he could not reply un les given an opportunity to explain and 111 Flag asked Did you ever hand il to the trust a certificate for which you received stock of a consttu ent company Mr Rice sid Yes and again asked to bc lowed to explain 11 FhiSS beld him to a C or a no answer swer 111 Flagg asked an explanation of the exchange of stock certificates and 111 Rice showed that at the dissolu tin of the trust he received in place of a certificate of stock a certificate ofassignment of legal tite which entitled en-titled him to his proportion of the property owped by the twenty different differ-ent companies represented in the trust The lat certificate conveyed to me said 111 Rice an equitable interet In the property owned by the trust the second conveyed to me the legal tite To whom did you present the certificate title cer-tificate supposed to convey the legal tite 1 did not present it I was pre seated by my agent Mr lcIemper to the liquidating trustees What dm you receive directly upon presentation of that certificate r received rporate scrip in nineteen nine-teen different constituent corporations and a paper acknowledgement of a fractional interest in the AngloAmeri can Oil company of London BUCKJE COMPANY I IT Now haiing stated s9 much wi r 1 you state if the Buckeye Pipe Line company vas a member of what 18 known a the Stan d Oil trust askedrr Flag Yes t wa i How do you know By its being represented in the corporate cor-porate 5crIpI received from the liquidating liquid-ating trustees In answer to questions witness said he had owned this corort scrip about three year He had never received re-ceived any dividends from any of it None of the companies in which lidre celved frctional shares upon surre del to the trst of the trust certificate paid dividends on such fractional share Besides this scrip witness sad he had six shares represented jy certificates of the Standard Oil trust A special dividend of the Standard Oil trust certificates in the hands of the liquidating trustees Mr Rice aid amounted to 35 per cent for th lat two yea or 17 per cent a yea Th regular dividend was 12 per cent a Year making a total dividend of 29 per cent per yea Witness saidJhe fact that the treesevenths of the stock of the pipe line company still remained re-mained asft did constituted the reason for the existence of what is known a a liquidating board f trustees He Understood un-derstood that the other foursevenths were owned almost exclusively by the liquidating trustees and the officers of the other nineteen constituent com panie His refineries had been shutdown shut-down for about thee years He was still producing oil He thought the Buckeye company did 95 per cent of the local plpage in the state of Ohio He was not aware that other companies business compan-ies had tied to obtain some of this 111 Chad asked the wines if he had not testified in Columbus against the Standard Oil company and against the Buckeye Pipe Line company on behalf be-half of Attorney Genera Ionnett 111 Rice saidthe had and in reply to other questions said that his expenses had ben laid by the attorney general but that he had not been pad for his time nor did he expect to be pad for it The bearing will becontnued tomorrow |
