The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 17, 1919, Page 9

o) _table. . CONTROLLING " are in favor of the packers when they Packers on Stand Admit All Charges - J. Ogden Armour Meets Defeat Before Senate Committee on Agriculture— Packers Had Planned to Blow Trade Commrssmn Out of the Water- ;_3- B ; Washington Bureau, 2 Nonpartisan Leader ERHAPS you haven’t received that impression from the head- lines in your newspaper, but the fact is that J. Ogden Armour has admitted, on the witness sort “of collusion, combine, un- derstanding, pool and conspir- acy among the Blg Five meat packers that the federal tradé commission charged against them. Not even the presence of Levy Mayer, “lawyer to billions,” at the elbow of the beef baron through six days of his testimony and cross-examination before the house and senate committees, saved him from these fatal admissions. Two and a half days of Armour’s ordeal were taken up by the examina- tion conducted before the senate committee on agriculture by Francis J. Heney. Picture a long, high-ceiled room, with a table for the committee, witness and reporters running lengthwise at one end; the other' end of the room crowded with spectators, at least half of whom were packers’ men. Blind Senator Gore presides, at the upper end of the green Near him sits Heney, with Senators Kenyon and Norris on the one side, and Senator Page, Armour, Mayer and Senators France and Gronna on the other side of the table. A dozen federal officials interested in meat production and distribution have chairs along the wall. They lean forward, waiting foy Heney’s next question. “You say, Mr. Armour,” Heney be- gins with the friendliest tone in the world, “that the packers don’t make the price of cattle in the various mar- kets. Now, aren’t there some com- mission men who are known to you to he friendly to you in matters arising between you and the commission men, and isn’t it likely that your buyers would pass by the pens of some other commission men, and discover a better value in the cattle handled by the friendly. commission man, if they wanted to?” : COMMISSION MEN Armour hesitates, and says he is not sure he knows what Heney means. “Well,” says Heney, “just this: Your buyers can throw the balance of judgment in favor of cattle handled by /your friends among the commis- sion men. Cattle shippers discover that they get a better figure by send- ing their shipments to these friends of yours. You can control the commis- sion men. Isn’t that so?” “I think,” replies Armour, cautlous- ly, “that the strong commission men think the packers are right, and against them when they think the packers are wrong.” “Haven’t the packers discussed the question of putting their friends into office in the associations of commis- sion men and of livestock growers?” - “Well,” says Armour, “it’s only natural that we should wish to see good men at the head of these associations. I should not be sur- prised if we had made some at- tempt to see’that our friends were” elected, but we could not mfluence their decision.” Heney smiles. \ “Take Mr. DeRicqules,” he sug- gests. “He was on the market-, ing committee of the American National Livestock association, and be finally came around to < your viewpoint, didn’t he? And while he was ‘changing his view- pomt he came to Chicago, dldn’l: stand, almost every item and - rupting political life. whose brains are said to entitle him to man cents. If’s a great mistake for speclal privi ege to let one of its crowned heads out where the people can really see him. As in Europe, so long as the head is crowned, it is the wisest, most honest, most virtuous head in the realm. Ar-- meur, of course, got his crown by the “divine rlght” of inheritance, just as the kaiser did, and he” hires the good-lookmg prime minister shown above. to - handle the hard knots in fixing the prices of cattle and the prices of products to the consumers. The Leader.-takes pleasure in showing the farmers one of the men who can tell them what they can have for cattle, hogs, butter and = = - ~a number of other products. Hats off, boys, to your king!? he, and succeeded in placmg some cattle paper . at a bank in which you are largely interested, and you gave, him a letter to the National Clty bank in New York, didn’t you, recommending him to that bank, in which you are a stock- holder?” - “Yes, that’s probably so,” the witness agreed “That transaction perhaps helped him in chang- ing his viewpoint, didn’t it?” . “No, I don’t think so.” : PACIFIC COAST OPERATIONS OF TRUST The committee smiled, and Heney went on to dis- ~ cuss the Western Meat company in San Francisco, in which Armour admitted that he and Swift and probably the other three big packers hold stock. Neither Armour, Swift nor Morris have any other packing plant in California. Armour is interested in a big land project on the Sacramento river, where beans for his cannery have been raised, and he admitted having tried to buy out the Bentley cannery, perhaps the largest on the Coast. His® l —Harris & Ewing J. Ogden Armour (on the left) and his protecting attorney, Levy Mayer. The two have had a bad time in Washington, testifying before the senate committee on agriculture, as described in the story on this page. explodes the special privilege myth that its beneficiaries are men of great abil-’ ity. They depend on hired brains for running the business as well as for cor- Francis J. Heney, a man of the people, made Armour, millions a year, look more like 30 2T PAGE Nnm This story, too, aggin * stock in the Union Meat_company at Portland had been sold, and, he knew nothing of the negotiations of Arthur Meeker, vice president of Armour & Co., to go into Seattle with a packing plant. As for the recent purchase of the packing concern at Spokane by his company, Armour admijtted that he had paid a fancy price for that. “What about the new plant at Sioux City ?”’ asked Kenyon. “It’s independent, I believe,” Armour answered. “It’s Swift, if you ask me,” said Heney. “We un- derstand that there was an agreement or under- standing whereby when you went into St. Paul Swift was to go into Sioux City.” } Armour denied that. He said the two events hap- pened to take place about the same time—that was all. Then he admitted, point by point, the story of the St. Paul deal as Heney drew it forth—how St. Paul and Minneapolis business men quarreled over the location of the Armour yards between the two.cities eight or nine years ago; how Gordon of St. Paul finally came to him and begged that action be taken by the company; how Armour demanded,’ 4 and was given, a bonus of $600,000 of stock in the St. Paul Stockyards com- pany and the Stockyards bank and $400,000 in cash, which the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce arranged with Swift & Co. “You have told this committee,” said Heney, “that you went into the ownership of stockyards in these vari- ous places in order to make the yards more efficient. Was that why you went into the St. Paul yards? Wasn’t Swift operating that yard efficiently 7. “We wanted our share of stock in the St. Paul stoekyards in order to get the benefit that our going to St. Paul might bring to the stockyards,” con= fessed Armour. The St. Paul Stockyards company increased its capital stock by half a million dollars, and that stock was given free to Armour and dividends upon that stock were thenceforth paid, although not a penny had been invest- «¢d for those dividends. Armour ad- _mitted that to pay those dividends the yard charges would have to be kept up. OWNS STOCK IN ALL STOCKYARDS “At how many points where there are yards do you own stock in the = . Stockyards banks?” Heney asked. “At almost every point,” Armour answered. s And that was a fair sample of the week of “vindication.” It was a ‘week in- which~ congress saw paraded the whole gigantic list of packer activities, from the control of cattle growers’ associations to »- the control of decisions of interna- tional food councils. Armour ad- mitted the oleomargarine lobby- ing fund, raised on a percentage basis by the packers and two in- dependent concerns. He admitted the percentage. schemes under which the packers divide the cat- tle market and the hog market. He admitted the combination by which they got hold of the cotton- seed oil business. He admitted - the virtual control of butter and oleomargarine prices, the control of many hundreds of poultry buy- ing stations, and of creameries and cheese factories- in many - states, from Arizona to the East. Whenever Heney proved a joint ac- tion by the Big Five to control a par- - ticular market, or lobby against: hos-: tile legislation, or do anything else to build up a vast private monopoly; of food supply and control of food. prices in this nation, Armour; would ghbly say that it was “only natural, 7 in order to take care of our business.” “Wouldn’t that interfere with open,: : ; (Contmued on page 14) L