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, describes the battle of wits between the Rockefellers, Sr. and Jr., and Frank P. Walsh, Chairman of the Commission on Industrial Relations. Sandburg writes:
Sandburg also quotes at length from the testimony of John R. Lawson before the Commission who said in part:
THE TWO MR. ROCKEFELLERS—AND MR. WALSH
By CARL SANDBURG
THE Rockefeller family stays year after year in a fierce white light of publicity. Year after year one thing or another happens and again the finger of accusation is pointed at the Rockefellers and they are driven to defense.
In 1894, Henry Demarest Lloyd pointed to John D. Rockefeller as a thief and the Standard Oil crowd as thieves, pirates and liars. And Lloyd gave out a big thick book packed with a mass of evidence to back up the charge that John D. Rockefeller got his start and held his power by methods of thief and liar.
In 1901, Ida Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company was begun. And when her facts were collected and conclusions drawn and the indictment stated, everybody who read the history knew again that John D. Rockefeller is a thief and a liar, that he played a merciless business game, hit below the belt, slugged in the dark, and stole his millions by operating through crews of clever lieutenants, and yet was himself the man guilty as the head conspirator.
In 1907, Judge Kenesaw M. Landis levied a fine of $29,000,000 on the Rockefeller Standard Oil Company because that company by and through methods approved by John D. Rockefeller was a law breaker, and in gum-shoe style, after the manner of a cowardly back-alley robber, was stabbing rivals in the back.
![John D Rockefeller Sr, ISR, July 1915](http://images.dailykos.com/images/153640/small/John_D_Rockefeller_Sr__ISR__July_1915.png?1436799964)
In 1908, the yellow journalist who has now entered the service of Rockefeller then rendered a large publicity service. William Randolph Hearst in a campaign to put his Independent party on the political map, read a series of letters copied by photography from the letters stolen by a negro watchman from the vaults of the Standard Oil Company. And in these, John Archbold, the first lieutenant of John D. Rockefeller, is shown as a political corruptionist peddling thousands on thousands of dollars among hungry United States senators and congressmen and lobbyists in order to get the will of the Standard Oil Company done in the United States capitol at Washington.
In 1911, the Supreme Court of the United States formally "dissolved" the Standard Oil Company as a trust and ordered it to exist as a series of separate companies instead of one large company. And the event was used by John D. Rockefeller and a few close associates to hammer almost to nothing the shares of stock held by small stock holders. It resulted in what Albert Atwood, one of the best known accurate financial writers of New York, describes as "the greatest killing in Wall street." The lambs were slaughtered and their fleeces hung in the sun to dry. It was a clean-up of millions and is told in detail with all the evidence history asks, in an article by Albert Atwood in McClure's magazine about the time Standard Oil put its finishing stroke on the business of pitching Sam McClure out of the magazine game for keeps.
In 1914-1915, to jump several small chapters, a two-fisted Irishman from Kansas City, Mo., a lawyer of courage, intestines and democratic ideals, drew the two members of the Rockefeller family into the day light and pointed a finger at them and asked questions. When he was through every citizen of these United States who listened to the questions and answers knew that the guilt of manslaughter rests on the Rockefeller family and their hands are red with the blood of murderers with responsibility as direct and certain as can be asked of facts and logic supplied to reasoning human creatures.
This one man, this lawyer from Kansas City, Mo., is hated more by the Rockefeller family than any other man in this country. They hate him because he broke through, battered down their guard, knocked away their cunning Standard Oil evasions, and got results. The name of this Kansas City lawyer is Frank P. Walsh. He is chairman of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations.
To the charge and the argument of Henry Demarest Lloyd that the name of Rockefeller is that of a thief, Walsh added an arraignment for murder.
To the Ida Tarbell incriminations of Rockefeller as thief and liar, Walsh added an arraignment for the killing of women and children.
To the pile of proof which shows the Rockefellers double-crossing stockholders in Standard Oil and crushing all rivals by cunning, and ruthless tactics, Walsh added the new charge that this Baptist family, for all its millions handed out to churches and the cross and Jesus, works in secrecy to beat down the organizations of labor unions even to the extent of using thugs and drunken soldiers to burn women and children to death.
In the two examinations of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as a witness before the commission in 1914, Walsh kept a fairly calm behavior and the young heir to America's billionaire felt fairly easy. But in the final examination held in Washington in May Walsh turned loose. He grappled and clinched. He threw to the winds all judicial poise, ethics of profession, and courtesies of gentlemen. He roughed it. He stood up to the solemn-faced, crafty young billionaire-to-be in just the same style that Frank P. Walsh cross-examines, jams and mauls a witness in a Kansas City murder trial. The words and manner of Walsh toward the son of America's richest multi-millionaire practically said:
You helped in the murder of the women and children at Ludlow. You could have stopped the drunken gunmen and thugs. You knew what sort of a crew of red, bloody-handed sluggers, robbers, and desperadoes there were in the employ of Sheriff Jeff Farr. Your letters to Welborn and Bowers and your Colorado Fuel & Iron Company officers show you knew what was going on all the time and there wasn't a day went by but you had full reports on everything doing. You knew about the hire of murderers. Come across. This is where you don't get away with soft talk or a bum memory or a slack wit. Try to come clean for once. This is the way I work when I'm trying to unscrew the lips of a conniving, conspiring participant in a dirty job of killing decent people.
The commission of which Walsh is chairman was appointed "to investigate the causes of industrial unrest." Walsh says after two years of traveling from coast to coast and examining 1,000 witnesses in public hearings and 10,000 through a staff of investigators, that the most powerful control of jobs and money in this country centers in the hands of the Rockefeller family—and nobody is going to find immediate and personal causes of industrial unrest except by searching the Rockefeller family.
This is the big fact that lay at the bottom of the clash between the Kansas City lawyer and the Sunday school teacher from Tarrytown, N. Y., those days they clashed in May, and the formal, precise officials of governmental Washington sat up and blinked their eyes and wondered why a man should behave like a human being instead of an oyster.
What Frank P. Walsh did was to smash the Rockefeller, Jr., myth. The young man Rockefeller was coming along nicely, boosted by press agent stories and by the kindness of newspapers and magazines that want the advertising of business interests close to the Rockefellers. The foxiness, duplicity and treachery that attached to old man Rockefeller, Sr., was not at all definitely connected with the young man Rockefeller, Jr. He was different, modern, and not a chip of the old block.
The old man stood for spies, secrecy, double-dealing and double-crossing. To his enemies, he never blinked an eye if it was necessary to drive them to bankruptcy and business death or suicide and physical death.
Now the young man, the full blooded son of the old man, the junior who will carry the senior's name when the senior is laid away in a mausoleum,—the young man for all his college education and his roles as sociologist and philanthropist stands branded and known as the same ruthless, cruel type of the American business man as his father, John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
If anything the hatred and bitterness against John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in this country today is a fiercer and deeper feeling than any toward the old man. The senior made his worst enemies among the small capitalists and the middle class people whom he broke and drove out of the oil game. But the junior Rockefeller has earned the living scorn of every last fraction of that part of the working class of America which is in some form organized and alive.
Besides an established record for cunning, ruthless, cruel handling of men who refuse to obey him, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is a living likeness of his father, a sure chip of the old block, in the secrecy of his operating methods.
The old man always worked through agents, high-priced gum-shoe men with which he surrounded himself. He had John D. Archbold to sling out the slush money among United States senators and congressmen, and to plant spies and pussyfoot tattle-tales among bookkeepers and sales men of rival oil companies and in railroad and bank offices. So young Rockefeller had Starr J. Murphy and Jerome D. Lee around him to run errands to Colorado at the time Sheriff Jeff Farr swore in 300 deputy sheriffs, picked chiefly from slums, jails and tenderloin districts.
And as John D., Sr., had one Prof. George Gunton go into magazines and newspapers with attacks on Henry Demarest Lloyd's book, "Wealth Against Commonwealth," so John D., Jr., has a modern press agent, Ivy L. Lee (now nicknamed Poison Ivy Lee), to go out to Colorado and prepare and circulate a pamphlet filled with figures so clearly faked that Lee, when questioned before the commission, could not clear himself of the charge of faking.
That John D. Rockefeller is the same sort of surreptitious squirrel as his father is nowhere more clearly shown than in his use of Poison Ivy Lee for a press agent. Lee wrote a pamphlet sent to all newspapers, colleges, libraries and important public officials in the United States. It was titled "The Truth About Colorado." It stated that Mother Jones and Frank J. Hayes had received certain moneys from the United Mine Workers for service during nine weeks. Questioned by Walsh, Poison Ivy Lee admitted the pay was for one year instead of nine weeks and shoved the responsibility, passed the buck, on to President Welborn of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. Young Rockefeller has his errand boys pass the buck along just as old man Rockefeller did.
In the gift of silence and a bum memory, Father Oil-Czar has nothing on his natural born kid. The kid can keep secrets and clamp a lid on his mouth.
In the days when the old man was the terrible Headless Horseman of the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia oil fields, he was known for the way he could say the words, "I decline to answer." The Egyptian sphinx is a garrulous old gossip compared with John D., Sr. A picture of his face laid alongside a photograph of an Assyrian mummy shows two of a kind. And now the young fellow comes along. He has, of course, talked a lot more than his father. He has talked about white slavery, about Jesus and the New Testament, about the Rockefeller foundation and the good to come of Rockefeller charities,—but he has said nothing. He has told the great waiting world, wondering about his head and heart and soul, no more than the old man. Frank P. Walsh put some straight questions to him and he had a chance to go on record as a real guy, a living, red-blooded human entity. Instead, he crawfished, stuck his head into one hole and out of another and sometimes crept and sometimes jumped but always moved in zigzags.
"Would you remove from his official position a man in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company who was deliberately cheating the workingmen in the weighing of coal those workmen had mined?" Walsh asks Rockefeller. "I would do what I thought right. I would consider it carefully and then act as I thought best." "When you knew that Ivy Lee sent out a published bulletin containing false statements to the injury of labor union officials, why did you retain him in service?" "I believe in the integrity of Mr. Lee and I have no doubt he can give a proper explanation for any acts which he may have performed in the pursuit of his official duty."
Never a straight answer, never the forthright reply of an honest man living in day light with no fear of his chief official deeds being questioned. Always the round about, tentative reply of a rat nosing around a hunk of cheese on a wire.
And sometimes in that Washington hearing, the scene shifted from a light vaudeville sketch into a graveyard masque. This one piece from the official record of the hearing might stand as a good example of the smeary, wandering answers of young Rockefeller to pointed and honest questions:
Chairman Walsh—You made one public statement in which you said, as I recollect it, that the persons that lost their lives at Ludlow were not shot. They were smothered?
Mr. Rockefeller—The persons that lost their lives underneath the floor of the tent.
Chairman Walsh—Well, you made no mention in that statement, or reference, to those that lost their lives by bullets and the like?
Mr. Rockefeller—I don't recall whether I did or not.
Chairman Walsh—Don't you recall what you wrote?
Mr. Rockefeller—I do not.
Chairman Walsh—Why, you just wrote that about two weeks ago and sent it out publicly, saying that those who lost their lives at Ludlow—
Mr. Rockefeller (interrupting)—In the pit.
Chairman Walsh—In the pit, you say now, were smothered. You remember saying that?
Mr. Rockefeller—Yes, sir.
Chairman Walsh—Did you make reference to those who lost their lives by bullets?
Mr Rockefeller—I don't recall that I did.
Chairman Walsh—Did you intend not to make that public in connection with your statement to the public in regard to the loss of life there?
Mr. Rockefeller—I did not, no. The emphasis has always been put upon the women and children killed in the ground, and the point was to state that the report to us by people who should know was that they were smothered, and not struck.
Chairman Walsh—Did the reports that you got show that they were burned? That the arm of one of the women fell off—that the flesh fell off the bodies in taking them out?
Mr. Rockefeller—I don't recall that. It might have been true.
Chairman Walsh—Did you read the coroner's inquest?
Mr. Rockefeller—No.
Chairman Walsh—You did not read the account of the testimony any place?
Mr. Rockefeller—No.
Chairman Walsh—And you have not yet?
Mr. Rockefeller—No.
Chairman Walsh—Well, don't you think that you ought to read that to determine—you say hereafter you are going to try to have things better. Shouldn't you read that to determine what the facts are and what part your executive officers took in bringing on the train of incidents, we will say, that culminated in Ludlow? Don't you think you ought to know that, Mr. Rockefeller?
Mr. Rockefeller—Well, I think so long as I am undertaking to do the things that I think should be done I shall have to reserve the right to do them in the ways that seem to be best.
This is the young man who hired Abraham Flexner to write from first-hand study in American and European cities the most thorough work that has yet been written on white slavery and the working class girls that go from department stores and factories to the redlight districts for money and clothes.
This is the young man who directed a study of the hookworm disease in the southern states, whose charities and benefactions were told in tall type in many newspapers.
And this is the young man surrounded by soft-handed, long-headed, high-salaried lawyers, preachers and newspaper men and they are staging the young man and throwing a white spotlight on him and fixing him out for the public eye to be something he is not.
Ida Tarbell once wrote of the Rockefellers under the caption of "Commercial Machiavellianism" and she traced how Standard Oil follows today the method of the ancient Italian prince who believed in poison and the stiletto for your enemies—but always with a smile, with hands raised ready to bless.
"The velvet glove over a steel fist"—that's the Rockefeller family. That's the old man. And that's the young one. The compressed bitterness of it has not been told better than by John R. Lawson, now convicted of a murder he was twelve miles distant from at the time it happened. At the New York hearing Lawson analyzed this personal economic power which embodies today as nothing else does all the covert, left-handed stealings and killings of the capitalist system of industry. Lawson said:
[John R. Lawson on John D. Rockefeller Jr.]
John R Lawson
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Health for China, a refuge for birds, food for the Belgians, pensions for New York widows, university training for the elect—and never a thought or a dollar for thousands of men, women and children who starved in Colorado, for the widows robbed of husbands, for the children robbed of fathers. There are thousands of Mr. Rockefeller's employes in Colorado who wish to God they were in Belgium to be fed, or birds in Louisiana to be tenderly cared for.
For more than ten years John D Rockefeller, Jr., has been a director in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, vested with what is virtually the power of life and death over 12,000 men and their families. This power, let it be pointed out, came to him by no healthful process of struggle or achievement, but entirely through the fact that he was the son of his father.
In those first days, when he might have been expected to possess a certain enthusiasm in his vast responsibilities, Colorado was shaken by the coal strike of 1903-04. It is a matter of undisputed record that a mercenary militia, paid openly by the mine owners, crushed this strike by the bold violation of every known constitutional right that the citizen was thought to possess.
Men were herded in bull pens like cattle; homes were shattered. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended; hundreds were loaded on cars and dumped in the desert without food or water; others were driven over the snow of the mountain ranges.
A governor elected by 15,000 majority was unseated. A man never voted for on that office was made governor, and when there came a thing called peace the blacklist gave 6,000 miners the choice of starvation or exile.
The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company organized and led that attack on the liberties of freemen and yet you have heard from Mr. Rockefeller's own lips at this hearing that he never inquired into the causes of the strike, the conduct of his executives or the fate of those who were lost.
Ten years passed and in 1913 Colorado is once more pushed to the verge of bankruptcy by another strike. Many strike-breakers of 1903, reaching the limit of human endurance, followed the example of those whose places they had taken, choosing hunger and cold in tents on the mountain side and plains in preference to a continuation of unbearable conditions in the mines.
By actual count the union was supporting 21,508 men, women and children in the various colonies in January, 1914.
Asks What Rockefeller Did
What course did Mr. Rockefeller pursue in connection with this upheaval of employes? His duty was clear, for he is on record with the admission: "I think it is the duty of every director to ascertain the conditions as far as he can, and if there are abuses to right them."
Putting the injustice to one side, the fact remains that we claimed many abuses and cited them specifically.
The statute law of Colorado ordered a semi-monthly pay day, check weighmen so that we might not be cheated, the right to form unions, the eight-hour day and payment in cash, not script.
We charged that the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company had violated these and other laws, and in addition we told of evil housing conditions, high rents, company store extortions, saloon environment, armed guards, and the denial of freedom in speech, education, religion and politics.
Didn't Know Even Grievances
When 12,000 men back up such claims by taking their wives and children into wind swept tents, surely they would seem to be deserving of consideration. Yet upon the stand, throughout three whole days this week, John D, Rockefeller, Jr., insisted that he was absolutely ignorant of every detail of the strike. He stated that he had not received reports on labor conditions; he could not tell within several thousands how many men worked for him in Colorado.
He did not know what wages they received or what rent they paid.
He had never considered what the proper length of a working day should be. He did not know what constituted a living wage.
Most amazing of all, he had never even read the list of grievances that the strikers filed with the governor of Colorado and gave to the world through the press.
Ignorant of Other "Abuses''
He did not know whether or not 50 per cent of his employes worked twelve hours a day. When asked whether he considered twelve hours a day to be a hardship he answered that he was not familiar enough with the work to judge.
He did not know how many of his employes worked seven days a week the year round, but judged that it would be a hardship.
He knew that there was a system by which injured men or their families were compensated, yet he did not know what the system was.
Fourteen months thousands of men, women and children suffered on the mountain sides and prairies and two more months have gone since we called off the strike as a result of President Wilson's proposal, and yet he has not had the opportunity for a personal investigation.
His excuse for his lack of knowledge and his failures is that he is too busy.
What is his business?
He explained it by stating, "I spend a large part of my time in directing with others the various foundations which my father has established and in giving time to questions of investment."
[Mr. Lawson continued:]
It was only under questioning that he confessed that his father had received $8,889,000 from his bonds...and that the assets from the company were $23,000,000 in excess of liabilities, and that this item did not take in an appreciation in property values of $19,000,000.
"Keep Vast Property Idle"
Nor did he mention the vast holdings that the company refuses to develop, keeping them idle while the population increase adds to their value.
Whatever appearance of poverty clings to the company is not due to anything but its own stupid and corrupt policy. Had it taken the money it has spent in controlling officials and the electorate, in purchasing machine guns, the employment of gunmen and in crushing the aspirations of human beings, and spent it in wages and the improvement of working conditions, they would have had rich returns in increased productivity.
These—this record of indifference respecting human life and human happiness—are vital causes of industrial discontent.
An employer who is never seen and whose power is handed down from man to man, until there is a chain that no individual can climb.
Our lives and our liberties passed over as a birthday gift or by will.
Our energies and futures capitalized by financiers in distant cities.
Our masters too often men who have never seen us, who care nothing for us and who will not or cannot hear the cry of our despair.
And this young man, whose portrait is thus drawn in sharp lines, is sitting today master of the coal fields of Colorado, dictating to the miners who give blood and life to dig out each year ten million tons of coal for Rockefeller profits. There are ten square miles of this Rockefeller coal land, and the federal government geological survey says there are three hundred seventeen billion tons of coal ready for the diggers in the years to come there.
Before these billions of tons of coals are taken out from under the top of the earth, there will come closer and closer organization of the workers. There will come a more accurate and complete history of the Rockefellers and a surer massing of that evidence which points to this father and this son as thieves and murderers.
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Henry Demarest Lloyd Calls the Rockefellers Thieves—The real truth about the Standard Oil people is that they are thieves; the trouble is that neither they nor the people generally realize this. The task of today is to lay bare the realities of the Standard Oil methods, and the evils of the results so clearly that the public will be driven to see that modern business is piracy and theft and lying...There was a time when it was not murder to kill an enemy; when it was not theft to steal that which belonged to another tribe; when it was not lying to tell an untruth to strangers. The men who first declared that all these were simply, clearly and sharply murder, theft and lying were burned or hanged in their day, but have become prophets and are now revered. As troublesome no doubt will be the pathway of those who declare and prove that the methods of modern business, as exemplified in the careers of its most eminently successful practitioners, are still those of lying, theft, murder.—Henry Demarest Lloyd, page 184, Life of Henry Demarest Lloyd, by Caro Lloyd, Vol. I.
I have had word from several friends in the East about an invitation issued by the Oil Trust people to a number of eminent divines to investigate the truth of charges against them, especially those contained in my book (Wealth Against Commonwealth). It has been suggested I attend. I am ready to do so. I have been thinking of ways by which the Oil Trust could be made to break its silence. I will meet Mr. Rockefeller anywhere and at any time before these ministers to consider these "charges," stipulating only that the unreversed findings of the courts, state and federal, civil and criminal, and of the Interstate Commerce Commission, as given in my book, be accepted in the investigation as conclusive as to the facts covered by them unless the Oil Trust can show that they, the findings, are incorrectly reported by me. The investigating committee, as I understand it, is to sit in the building of the Trust, where it is promised all the facilities of the office shall be put at the service of the inquiry. Leading members of the Trust have testified under oath that it kept no books and that the records of the proceedings of the managing directors are destroyed after their meetings. See the testimony before the New York Senate Committee, 1888, pp. 455, 576, 577, 589, and before Congress, 1888, pp. 391-2. The proper place to investigate is among the public records of the very numerous judicial and legislative investigations; but if the ministers are willing to go to the headquarters of the Trust, I am.—Page 213, Ibid.
The company was unwilling that Lloyd be present and the conference never took place: Page 214, Ibid.
Ida Tarbell Shows the Rockefellers as Crooks—Mr. Rockefeller secured an alliance with railroads to drive out rivals. For fifteen years he received rebates of varying amounts on at least the greater part of his shipments and for at least a portion of that time he collected drawbacks on the oil other people shipped; at the same time he worked with the railroads to prevent other people getting oil to manufacture, or if they got it he worked with the railroads to prevent the shipment of the product. If it reached a dealer, he did his utmost to bully or wheedle him, to counter mand his order. If he failed in that he under sold until the dealer, losing on his purchase, was glad enough thereafter to buy of Mr. Rockefeller.
There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated; no athletic field where men must not start fair. Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair. Business played in this way loses all its sportsmanlike qualities. It is fit only for tricksters.
The bitterness against the Standard Oil Company in many parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio is such that a verdict from a jury on the merits of the evidence is almost impossible. A case in point occurred a few years ago in the Bradford field. An oil producer was discovered stealing oil from the National Transit Company. He had tapped the main line and for at least two years had run a small but steady stream of Standard oil into his private tank. Finally the thieving pipe was discovered, and the owner of it, after acknowledging his guilt, was brought to trial. The jury gave a verdict of not guilty! They seemed to feel that though the guilt was acknowledged, there probably was a Standard trick concealed some where. Anyway it was the Standard Oil Company and it deserved to be stolen from! The writer has frequently heard men, whose own business was conducted with scrupulous fairness, say in cases of similar stealing that they would never condemn a man who stole from the Standard! Of course, such a state of feeling undermines the whole moral nature of a community.
The moral effect of directly practicing many Standard Oil methods is obvious. For example, take the whole system devised by Mr. Rockefeller for keeping track of independent business.
There are practices which corrupt every man who has a hand in them. One of the most deplorable things about it is that most of the work is done by youngsters. The freight clerk who reports the independent oil shipments for a fee of five or ten dollars a month is probably a young man, learning his first lessons in corporate morality. If he happens to sit in Mr. Rockefeller's church on Sundays, through what sort of a haze will he receive the teachings? There is something alarming to those who believe that commerce should be a peaceful pursuit, and who believe that the moral law holds good throughout the entire range of human relations, in knowing that so large a body of young men in this country are consciously or unconsciously growing up with the idea that business is war and that morals have nothing to do with its practice.—History of the Standard Oil Company.
[Paragraph breaks added, photographs-except those of Rockefellers and Walsh-added.]
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