Anticipating that the trust would get together a strong array of counsel to defend its attacked member, Mr. Watson re tained his personal and professional friend, John W. War rington, an eminent lawyer of Cincinnati, to assist him. They were opposed by Joseph H. Choate, S. C. T. Dodd and Virgil P. Kline of Cleveland.
But, while the preparation for the argument of the case was going on, the courageous young attorney-general was beset on all sides for an explanation. Why had he brought the suit? What was the influence which had controlled him? Men in power took him aside to question him, incapable, evidently, of believing that an attorney-general could be produced in Ohio who would bring a suit solely because he believed it was his duty. Some suggested that some big interest, hostile to the Standard, was behind him; others said the suit was suggested by Senator Sherman, then interested in his anti-trust bill. Along with this speculation came the strong and subtle re straining pressure a great corporation is sure to exert when its ambitions are interfered with. From all sides came power ful persuasion that the suit be dropped. Mr. Watson has never made public the details of this influence in any documentary way, but the accounts he at the time gave different friends of it led to so much gossip in Ohio that in 1899 the attorney general of the state, F. S. Monnett, made detailed charges of six deliberate attempts to bribe Mr. Watson to withdraw the suits.* But one bit of documentary proof of the efforts to reach the attorney-general ever reached the public—that came out without his knowledge or consent, Mr. Watson claims, seven years after the suit was brought. It is interest ing enough as evidence of the character of the pressure Mr. Rockefeller can set in motion when he will. Among Mr. Rockefeller's Ohio friends was the late Marcus A. Hanna, who was even then a strong factor in the Republican party of the state. A few months after the suit was brought he wrote Mr. Watson a letter of remonstrance. Many of Mr. Watson's friends saw this letter at the time and felt deep indignation over its contents. In 1897, when Mr. Hanna was a candidate for the United States Senate, an enterprising newspaper man of Ohio recalled that during 1890 it was common gossip in Ohio that Mr. Hanna had written the attorney-general a letter asking him to withdraw his suit against the Standard Oil Company. The correspondent sought Mr. Watson, who, so
he avers, let him read the letter through, although he refused to allow him to copy it for publication. "No one could read it and ever forget it," said the correspondent; but to reinforce himself he sought persons who were associated with Mr. Wat son at the time—yes, they remembered the letter perfectly. Certain of them said that they could never forget some of its expressions. Between them they pieced up the following portions of the letter which they declared correct and which the correspondent published in the New York World for August II, 1897: "I noticed some time ago that you had brought suit to take away the charter of the Standard Oil Company. I intended at the time to write you about it, but it slipped my memory. A few days ago while in New York I met a friend, John D. Rockefeller, and he called my attention to the fact that you had brought the suit, but did not ask me to influence you in any way." "I have always considered you in the line of political promotion," said Hanna, and then went on to intimate that unless the suit against the Standard was withdiawn, Watson would be the object of vengeance by the corporation and its friends forever after. As if to clinch his threat and argument, Hanna wrote: "You have been in poli tics long enough to know that no man in public office owes the public anything." The letter concluded with a reference to the present Secretary of State, John Sherman. Hanna wrote: " I understood that Senator Sherman inspired and instigated this suit. If this is so I will take occasion to talk to him sharply when I see him." The letter was written on the typewriter and letter-heads of Hanna's business office in Cleveland.
Having secured this much, the correspondent, thinking it possible Mr. Watson might have answered Mr. Hanna's let ter, undertook a bit of original investigation. He sought the files of the attorney-general's official correspondence for 189o, and the following is what he found. This letter certainly is evidence enough of the sort of letter Mr. Hanna had written even if the above restoration is not absolutely accurate: The part which the terse phrase attributed to Mr. Hanna,