"I did not, personally, receive any of these bonds. . . . I never had anything to do with the distribution of any bonds. . . . I don't know anything about it."— Chairman Robert W. Stewart of the board of directors of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, in the course of testimony to the Senate Committee on Public Lands, last February. The Committee had asked him what he knew about the profits of the Continental Trading Co., which were converted into Liberty Bonds after a deal which Col. Stewart and Harry Ford Sinclair guaranteed in 1921.
"In view of the fact that the testimony in the Sinclair case is now in ... I know about the disposition of $759,500 of these bonds. . . . Parts of the profits of these [Continental Trading Co.] contracts were going to be handed to me. . . . I decided to trustee any profits that came to me. . . . With the last of the deliveries the bonds amounted to $759,500. ... 7 was simply the conduit. I never received these bonds."—Col. Robert W. Stewart to the Senate Committee on Public Lands, on April 24, answering the same question that was asked him in February.
"Your recent testimony before the Senate Committee leaves me no alternative other than to ask you to make good the promise you voluntarily gave me some weeks ago, that you would resign at my request. That request I now make."— John D. Rockefeller Jr., controller of 15% of the stock of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, in a letter to Board Chairman Stewart on April 27.
". . . A special meeting of the— stockholders of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana . . . to express themselves in regard to your suggested resignation. If this plan is to be followed, I have no doubt hat you will have the thirty-day call issued at once and that you will wish to write me that this has been done."—Stockholder Rockefeller to Board Chairman Stewart, April 30.
"/ have lost confidence in Colonel Stewart's leadership."—Mr. Rockefeller to the public, last week, when he made public his April letters to Col. Stewart.
". . . That exponent and defender of high standards in business."—Owen D. Young, introducing John D; Rockefeller Jr. at a banquet of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, in Washington last week after publication of the Rockefeller-Stewart correspondence.