Such was the status of the proceedings when Mr. Monnett received an anonymous communication stating that, about the time the company was ordered by the court to produce its records, a great quantity of books had been taken from the Standard's office in Cleveland and burned. An investigation was at once made by the attorney-general, and a number of witnesses examined. The fact of the burning of sixteen boxes of books from the Standard offices in Cleveland was estab lished, but these books, the officers of the company contended, were not the ones wanted by Mr. Monnett. "Then produce the ones we want," ordered the court. But, on the ground that such records might incriminate them, the officers still refused.
The fact was, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was in a very tight place, and it is difficult to see how an examination of their books could have failed to incriminate not only it, but three other of the constituent companies of the trust which held charters from the same state. These three companies were the Ohio Oil Company, which produced oil ; the Buckeye Pipe Line, which transported it; and the Solar Refining Company, which refined it. Mr. Monnett had learned enough about these organisations in the course of his investigations since Novem ber, 1897, to convince him that these companies—all of them enormously profitable—were, for all practical purposes, one and the same combination, and that they were all working with the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, and that their oper ations were in direct violation of a state anti-trust law recently passed. As soon as he had sufficient evidence he had filed peti tions against all four of them. Now, these petitions were filed about the time he demanded the books showing the earnings of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, for use in his contempt case. It was the old story of one suit being used as a shield in another. A witness cannot be made to incriminate himself.
The reasons F. B. Squire, the secretary of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, gave for refusing to produce the books as ordered by the court were as follows : 1st. Because they are demanded in an action instituted against the Standard Oil Company for contempt of court, and for the purpose of proving said company guilty of contempt in order that the penalties for contempt may be inflicted upon it and its officers; and I am informed that, to enforce their production in such a case and for such a purpose, is an unreasonable search and seizure.
2nd. Because the books disclose facts and circumstances which may be used against the Standard Oil Company, tending to prove it guilty of offences made criminal by an act of the Legislature of Ohio, passed April 59, 1898, entitled "An Act to define trusts and to provide for criminal penalties, civil damages, and the punishment of corporations," etc.
3rd. Because they disclose facts and circumstances which may be used against myself personally as an officer of said company, tending to prove me guilty of offences made criminal by the act aforesaid.* All through the winter of 1898 and 1899, up to the end of March, when the commission declared the taking of testimony closed, the wrangle over the production of the books went on. Depositions had begun to be taken at the same time in the cases against the constituent companies for violation of the anti-trust laws, and by the time the contempt case was closed in March, 1899, the exasperation of both sides had reached fever pitch. Nor did the judgment of the court quiet it, for three judges voted for finding the company guilty of contempt, and three for clearing it.
Unsatisfactory as this was, Mr. Monnett still had his anti trust suits, through which he expected and through which he did secure much further evidence that the four Standard com panies in Ohio were practically one concern so shrewdly and secretly handled that they were evading not only the laws of the state, but that policy of all states which decrees that it is unsafe to allow men to work together in industrial combina tions without charters defining their privileges, and subjecting them to reasonable examinations and publicity. Mr. Monnett's work on these suits came to an end with the expiration of his term in January, 1900, and the suits were suppressed by his successor, John M. Sheets! Unfinished as they were, they were of the greatest value in dragging into the light infor mation concerning the methods and operations of the Stand ard Oil Combination to which the public has the right, and which it must digest if it is to succeed in working out a legal harness for combinations which, like the Standard, de mand freedom to do what they like and do it secretly.