USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 36
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He loaned his good name as an expectant factor to float this huge mass of electric and speculative fiction in the moneyed centers of the country. The methods employed to attain the ends in view was gravely questioned by the national legislature, and on the 26th of February, 1886, the house adopted the fol- lowing preamble and resolution :
" WHEREAS, Grave charges have been made, and are con- stantly being made, by the leading press of the country, reflect- ing upon the integrity and official action of certain officers of the government. Therefore, be it
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" Resolved, That a select committee, consisting of nine members of this house, be appointed, and, when so appointed, said committee is hereby directed, at as early a day as possible, to make inquiry into any expenditures upon the part of the government, incurred relative to the rights of the Bell and Pan-Electric Telephone Companies to priority of patents. said inquiry to include all organizations and companies which have . sprung from the Pan-Electric Telephone Company, or for any other purpose ; and also to make full inquiry into the issuance of stock known as the Pan-Electric telephone stock, or any stock of any other company, companies or organization spring- ing out of the Pan-Electric Telephone Company, to any per- son or persons connected, at the time of such issuance, with either the legislative, judicial or executive departments of the government of the United States, to whom, when, where and in what amounts, and for what consideration in money, service or influence, said stock, if any, was delivered." * *
To briefly explain : Doctor J. W. Rogers, in February, 1883, formed the Pan-Electric Telephone Company, based on a pat- ent obtained by his son, J. Harris Rogers, as the inventor of an instrument to transmit sound by electricity, which is claimed to be a palpable infringement on a prior patent to Bell, which is the property of and is used by the Bell Telephone Company, a corporation worth many millions of money. The first par- ties to the Pan-Electric were Senators Garland and Harris, Representatives Young and Atkins, and General Joseph E. Johnston, whom Doctor Rogers calls " Pan-Electric statesmen."
Doctor Rogers issued $5,000,000 of paper stock, without any cash foundation, and gave each of the statesmen named $500,000 in stock, without any money consideration, and to other parties he gave sums varying in amount, aggregating out of the original block of stock, $3,500,000 in gifts. The Pan- Electric Telephone Company was the fruitful mother of sub- sidiary corporations. The banking capital of the statesmen not having been exhausted by the first take, they each absorbed $500,000 more, "for the use of their names." A branch company, located at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, with $5,000,000 of paper stock, like the others, found unsus-
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pecting patrons. Colonel R. F. Looney of Memphis exchanged a portion of his unrivaled genius for a block of $860,000 of stock. But let these gentlemen speak for themselves; they were before the congressional committee, and their statements in their own behalf are of record, from which we copy the fol- lowing extracts :
Mr. Garland states, that "it was simply an association of five or six very impecunious men, who wanted to better their condition." Yes !
Mr. Rogers testifies: " The object of the thing was, as I have stated, to bank on their names and general reputation, and upon my son's genius." And at page 41 he says : "We wanted that class of men, otherwise we could not sell the stock."
To the interrogatory : " Did Mr. Looney pay you any money for his interest ?" Ans. "No, sir; it was Mr. Looney's genius that I banked on, as I banked on those other gentlemen's names." YES.
" In proportion to the amount of political or moral influence that stockholders have, will they give value to the stock, and that was the thing I was aiming at." " They all paid in the same way." He gave Hon. H. D. Money, M. C., $60,000 stock in two of the companies, and says, page 55: " He paid me just as those other gentlemen in the senate paid me, by letting me use his name."
Some effort was made by Doctor Rogers and son to enlist other members of congress. Mr. Garland gave them the fol- lowing letter of introduction :
UNITED STATES SENATE, January 18, 1884.
DEAR SIRS AND FRIENDS - Permit me to introduce to you, Messrs. J. W. Rogers & Son, accomplished and scientific gen- tlemen, of this city, who desire to speak with you on some busi- ness. Please show them all proper attention, and command me when you will.
Your friend, A. H. GARLAND.
Hons. S. S. Cox and A. S. HEWITT.
From Mr. Garland's testimony, it appears that this letter was given to influence the selection of young Rogers as electrician for the capitol, and to aid in putting the Pan-Electric tele-
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phone in the capitol to promote the private interest of the company. But the sequel don't show that it was designed or limited to this mild way of putting it. Doctor Rogers had further designs on these gentlemen, as well as other members of congress, which are shadowed in the following letters to him, returning blocks of Pan-Electric stock he had offered to give them.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE, WASHINGTON, D. C., } January 13, 1884.
DEAR MR. ROGERS - Presuming on what you have already . written me, and not having received your poem, and not un- derstanding the nature of the shares which you send me, I am bothered, and can only solve the problem by sending you back the shares, which I inclose herein. I don't suppose they are good for any thing, or you would not be sending them around so fluently.
Yours with respect, S. S. Cox.
Lewis Beach, a member of congress, returned on the 11th of January, 1884, one hundred shares of Postal Telegraph stock, sent to him as a gift by Doctor Rogers, with this explanation : " I cannot accept any thing for which I have not paid, and I most assuredly would not hold stock in a corporation which is seek- ing legislation of a body of which I am a member." Mr. Ran- dall of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Carlisle of Kentucky, were each offered a block of $100,000 stock, for " such occasional ser- vices as you may find convenient to render," and each declined the gratuity. Before the collapse came, $34,000 worth of local righits were sold, and the remainder, after deducting expenses, was divided as dividends between Mr. Garland and associates. The Pan-Electric Company stated, in a widely circulated pam- phlet, " it is confidently predicted that the stock will ultimately go greatly above par."
Mr. Garland, as a stockholder and the great law officer of the Pan-Electric Company, charged with a knowledge of all the law and facts necessary to its existence and honest dealing, is gravely charged with the suppression of both, by the
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minority (four to five), coupled with vehement presump- tions, based on known facts, legitimating the conclusion, and nothing but ignorance of both law and fact, based on neglect of the high duties he owed the company, can mitigate or extenuate the gravity of the charge. As to the palpable infringement of the Pan-Electric on the Bell Telephone Com- pany spoken of, and so strongly insisted on as involving every - element of vitality necessary to the existence of the Pan-Elec- tric, Mr. Garland gave the following deliberate opinion to Mr. Myers of Memphis, who, as a capitalist, was making inquiry, with a view to investing in Pan-Electric stock.
WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 5, 1884.
DEAR SIR - In reply to your question propounded in the note hereto attached, I beg to say that I have given the subject re- fered to much attention (italic author's), and have closely exam- ined several opinions delivered by different courts in controver- sies between the Bell Telephone Company and Dolbear, Spencer, Ghegan and others, and I am clearly of opinion that the Pan- Electric, named by you, in nowise infringes the Bell telephone."
Mr. Garland, on the witness stand before the investigating committee, states : " I stated, at the time I wrote that, that they had better employ what we call an expert lawyer in those mat- ters, and have him examine and report npon it. My impression is they did employ Mr. Marble. I was unwilling that they should take my opinion on a matter of that kind and act upon it. I had never had a patent case before." If you told the Pan-Electric stockholders this, Mr. Garland, why did you not deal equally as frankly with Mr. Myers, that he might, on your advice, guard his purse, as that was his sole object in con- sulting you? You tell your company one thing, and im- press Mr. Myers with altogether different convictions as to the same thing, if he accorded your opinion the conclusion its language imports.
Mr. Marble, the expert alluded to by Mr. Garland, on the 24th of February, 1884, gave the Pan-Electric his opinion, in writ- ing, as to the infringement alluded to. "Infringements are of two classes, generic and specific. The device covered by the Rogers patent is a speaking telephone, by which articulate
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sounds are transmitted electrically by means of an undulating current of electricity." The principle or method on which the instrument operates is covered broadly by the patent of Mr. Bell. (Italies the author's,) "So long, therefore, as that patent is sustained by the courts, the invention of Mr. Rogers will be subordinate thereto." Is it within the range of respectable probability to conclude that the great law officer of the cor- poration did not know this opinion had been given, and that it was pigeon-holed, and kept from making the circuit of the vast regions where his opinions to the contrary had been indus- triously circulated ? He tells the committee in effect that the opinion of an expert is worth much more than his own, and that he had advised the Pan-Electric adventurers not to rely on his opinion. All rational acts have fixed designs as their ulti- mate. The worthless opinion of the great lawyer, upheld and sustained as it was by the high character for integrity and great legal attainments, at that time accorded Mr. Garland by the people of the United States, was artfully designed and well calculated to mislead the public and float the huge mass of five millions of worthless stock. But the expert, wise and sound opinion of Mr. Marble was calculated to consign it to the bottom of the financial ocean, where the gentle hand of resurrection could never reach it, until after the great obstacle mentioned by Mr. Marble was removed.
These luminous facts, brought to light by a congressional committee, throw a resistless flood of light on the dark back- ground, and enable us to take in a panoramic view of the Pan- Electric comedy. Common honesty and fair dealing would have dictated a halt in the industrious effort of the "Pan- Electric statesmen " to flood the market with the stock of the company until the substance of legal foundation supplanted the fraudulent and delusive shadow on which it rested. But there was no halt in their vigilant effort to get rid of the stock ; to the accomplishment of which, high official position was resorted to, for the purpose of enabling them to subordi- nate the courts of the United States in this effort to levy and enforce tribute from the Bell Telephone Company. No artful, no specious disguise can retire this fact from the sight of a man of common capacity. That sterling old democratic sena-
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tor from Missouri, George G. Vest, appeared before the con- gressional committee and stated, that in June, 1884, he pur- chased a block of Pan-Electric stock, amounting to one hundred shares, for $1,000, which he paid to Isham G. Harris, a senator from Tennessee (one of Doctor Rogers' Pan-Electric states- men); that, before he purchased it, he personally inquired of Senators Harris and Garland as to whether there was any con- flict between the Rogers patent and the Bell telephone, and that they assured him they were certain there was no conflict -that Senator Garland told him he had given a written opin- ion to that effect ; and that neither Garland or Harris told him any thing about Marble's opinion to the contrary.
This opinion of Marble's was rendered about four months before the transaction which took in the $1,000 from Senator Vest. In the spring of 1885, Doctor Adams, another expert, advised the Pan-Electric people that the Rogers patent unques-
tionably infringed on the Bell patent. From all the volumin- ous record of the investigation discloses, it appears that the Pan-Electric gentlemen were unable to get the opinion of any- body but their co-stockholder, Garland, to the effect that their patent was not a palpable fraud on the Bell patent. Casey Young, another one of the Pan-Electric statesmen, who " got in on the ground floor" of the Pan-Electric enterprise, as early as Angust, 1883, seemed to be impressed with the conviction that the Rogers patent is an infringement on the Bell patent. On August 21 of that year he wrote to Doctor Rogers, the father of Harry, the inventor, as follows: "If Harry can, by any possibility, invent any kind of a telephone system that will not be a palpable infringement of any existing patent, we can start in on a small scale and dictate terms to Gould." Much harsh criticism, founded on facts and vehement pre- sumptions which have never been satisfactorily explained, has been indulged, both in and out of congress, and within, as well as without, democratic circles, because the name and power of the United States was improperly lent by the department of justice to the Pan-Electric adventurers for improper purposes, whilst Mr. Garland was at the head of that department. And the evasions resorted to by him and his friends to ward off the culpability attached to that act is regarded as unworthy the high station from which it proceeds.
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The record of the investigation discloses the fact that the power of the United States, inherent in her courts, was invoked to aid in the accomplishment of questionable private ends in forcing the wealthy Bell Telephone Company to share its great pecuniary resources with the Pan-Electric people under the thin guise of a compromise. Prior to this, abortive efforts to compromise with the incorrigible Bell Company had been made by the Pan-Electric people. In several instances injunctions had been granted, at the suit of the latter against the former, and the situation was becoming alarming and desperate, and what the physicians denominate heroic remedies were required to prevent congestion and paralysis in body, and all the branches of the Pan-Electric industry. Another application for the iron lance of an injunction at the suit of the Bell Company was pend- ing in Baltimore, and had been set down for hearing on the 15th of September, 1885. Mr. Garland, as the head of the depart- ment of justice, because of his great personal interest in the mat- ter, had refused to grant or act on the application of his com- pany for leave to sue in the name of the United States, but this obstacle was easy to overcome. The attorney-general went to Hominy Hill to enjoy his vacation in the fall, and John Goode, his solicitor-general during his ominous vacation, became ex-officio head of the department, clothed with the necessary official power to protect the half million of stock owned by his chief in the desperate Pan-Electric, and he issued the execu- tive ukase, lending the name of the United States.to that end. But Mr. Goode, although he acted in precipitate and alarming haste in the very urgent matter, without taking time to investi- gate the great interests and legal principles involved, told the committee he did not know his chief was interested in the Pan-Electric.
Perhaps he merely meant the information did not come to him through red-tape official channels. If he did not know it, his act and the fact of his chief's interest were singular coincidences, and to believe him requires a great stretch of sim- ple credulity, which ought to be forever banished from farther invasion of high official station. To believe in the rectitude of these methods and the truth of the asseverations of parties laboring to escape the odium of official turpitude, would be to
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embrace improbabilities as the strongest ground of support. Mr. Goode went farther in the manifestation of zeal to serve the pressing demands of the corporation, flaunting fictitious millions at its mast-head. He appointed Mr. Casey Young (who held a block of stock equal to that of Mr. Garland) as special counsel to represent the United States in prosecuting the Bell Telephone Company in the interest of the Pan-Elec- tric jobbers. Doctor Rogers and his son, Harry, both state to the committee, that Casey Young told them it was understood with Mr. Garland that the matter would take this course, and, in the light of subsequent events, they are powerfully corroborated, and are entitled to belief as against the uncorroborated denials of those who are fencing to shield their names from odium and exposure. General Joseph E. Johnson, the president of the Pan-Electric Company, in his own graphic language, tells the painful story (like the plain, old, honest soldier) of the great pressure then bearing down, like an avalanche, on the company. He says : " The Baltimore case came on for hearing on the 15th of September. I could get nothing about the government suit. I was forced to the defense of the Baltimore hearing, and the government suit, as a matter of course, would be a prodig- ious relief to us, and, therefore, I was naturally very anxious to have it brought. (Italics the author's.) My time got down so close I had to communicate by telegraph. I believe I got assurance, in the early part of September, that the bill was being filed. My pressure was for the bill to be filed as soon as possible, so I could get a certified copy of it, to use in Balti- more ; I got it the morning of the 15th of September, as I went into court, so I barely had time to read it before I went into court. I had no doubt if the United States intervened, it would probably prevent the court from granting a preliminary injunction. You perceive that a preliminary injunction would come down on me with only fifteen days' notice, and shut up my business ; and my belief was, that if I could get a copy of that bill in the government suit at Memphis, I could stop the issue of the preliminary injunction in my case at Baltimore."
,Honest old soldier with no subtilty to hide well-formed de- signs; he had no idea, at the time he poured this distressing story in the ears of the committee, of the number of cats he
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was turning loose in the Pan-Electric parlors. The court at Baltimore paid no attention to the government suit at Mem- phis, and granted the deathly injunction.
On the 3d of August, 1885, Colonel Looney of Memphis, who had exchanged some of his genius for $860,000 of stock, and who was engaged in active efforts to shove it on the market as fast as possible, at a fabulous discount, writes to Doctor Rogers as follows: "Harris, I think, will make another effort to sell to the Bell Company." On the 7th of September, Mr. Young wrote Harry Rogers : " We have secured all we ex- pected or wished, and we will soon proceed to utilize, but noth- ing must be said about it for a little while yet." (Italics the author's.) On the 11th of September, 1885, the renowned Colonel R. F. Looney wrote to Doctor Rogers : "Your letter received. I am making a desperate effort to sell some stock, but have failed up to this moment, but will still continue my efforts. The last bill filed against the Bell Company, with the approval and consent of the department of justice, will cer- tainly wake up and startle the Bell people. It is a regular cyclone, but too late, I fear, to do much good." (Italics the author's.) Prophetic Robert ! The cyclone struck and sundered the Pan-Electric ship. When the attorney-general returned from his vacation to Washington, in the fall of 1885, the president called on his cabinet minister for an explanation, which he gave, ostensibly to his satisfaction, but the facts de- veloped by the congressional investigation since do not satisfy the American people. But the president caused the suit brought at Memphis against the Bell Company to be dismissed in October, 1885. The report signed by the partisan majority of five to four vindicates the gentlemen under fire with a distinct avowal as to the limit and scope of inquiry as follows : " We do not con- sider that we have any right or power to make any finding upon any matter not in some way connected with the official acts or behavior of the several gentlemen named. We do not mean to intimate that there was any thing in their private con- duct which was even of doubtful propriety." A heavy coat of political whitewash, thrown over a cabinet minister by a parti- sun vote, in the face of this testimony, will have, and deserves little consideration in making up the verdict of the American
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people. The minority report, signed by four members, gravely censures the gentlemen under investigation, and they state the proof on which their convictions are founded. A heavy coat of whitewash is the last resort of questioned integrity ; and if applied to St. Paul would ruin him.
BLAKELY DECATUR TURNER, LITTLE ROCK.
Blakely Decatur Turner was born in North Carolina, Jan- uary 26, 1824. His parents removed to Haywood county, west Tennessee, in 1829, where he grew up, and was pre- pared at the schools of the county to enter college. He ac- quired a thorough academical education at Granville College, Ohio. After leaving college he taught school several years at the male academy in Brownsville, Tennessee. He read the best law writers at intervals, when not engaged in other pur- suits, and was admitted to the bar in west Tennessee in 1853. He practiced two years at Brownsville, Haywood county, and in the fall of 1855 located at Searcy, White county, Arkansas, where he remained until he accepted the office of reporter of the supreme court decisions, in 1879, when he moved to Little Rock. Brother Turner has always ranked high as a lawyer, and has always sustained the enviable reputation of being a man of unquestioned probity and the purest morals. He was never a candidate for office in his life, and would not now be our reporter but for an unfortunate impediment to his speech, the result of disease in the vocal organs, which impairs his ef- ficiency in the nisi prius courts. He belongs to an old colonial family of good repute, and is related to ex-Governor Branch of North Carolina.
HON. CHARLES A. LEWERS, LOGAN COUNTY.
Hon. Charles A. Lewers was born on his father's farm in Panola county, Mississippi, January 3, 1855, and was raised and labored on the farm until he was seventeen years old. He was educated in the English branches at the common schools of the country, and never took an academic or collegiate course. He read law at Senatobia, Mississippi, for two years under the direction of a firm of competent attorneys, and was there ad- mitted to the bar in the fall of 1876, and practiced his profes-
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sion at Senatobia until the spring of 1879, when he moved to Paris, Logan county, Arkansas, where he has since remained in the active practice of his profession. In 1884 he was nomi- nated by the democratic party to the office of prosecuting at- torney for the twelfth judicial district, composed of the counties of Sebastian, Crawford, Scott and Logan, and was elected to the responsible office by a very large majority. In 1886 the democratic party nominated him again, and he was elected by more than two thousand majority. Mr. Lewers' ancestors emi- grated from Ireland in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and settled in South Carolina, and to him they have imparted all the warm, generous and sanguine impulses characteristic of the Celtic race. His paternal grandfather, Samuel A. Lewers, was an eminent Presbyterian divine, was a soldier under Gene- ral Jackson in the war of 1812, and participated in the battle of the 8th of January, 1815. He is a vigilant prosecutor, a good, companionable friend, and has a kind word for all. Everybody likes to shake Charley's hand.
HON. U. M. ROSE, LITTLE ROCK.
Judge Rose was born in Marion county, Kentucky, March 5, 1834, and was left an orphan at the age of thirteen. His father was an eminent physician and left a handsome estate, but it was absorbed by incumbrances and the emasculating machinery of a probate court, leaving the young man uneducated and nothing but the vigor of his native mind and energies with. which to commence the battle of life at that early age. The superficial world judges such conjunction of stern facts in early youth as great misfortune, but blessings in this life often come in dis- guise. To the robust and vigorous youth, poverty and ambi- tion are noble and powerful stimulants, and almost certain guides and passports up the rugged mountain. If Judge Rose inherited poverty, he also inherited an honorable ambi- tion - its noble master. Away beyond the clouds which cut off superficial vision, we read in " the bright lexicon of his youth " high and honorable ambition, worth more to a well-balanced and organized mind than all the banks in the world. To such foundations as these, and with such ambition, poverty in youth is a gentle handmaid, and a powerful factor for
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