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"The chamber . . . maintains that stockholders of corporations owe it to themselves and to the Government and to the profession of business publicly to repudiate those who misrepresent them. Such stockholders cannot accept the profits flowing from corruption and escape the moral stigma which inheres in such profits. Neither can they permit those who act for them to profit personally through corrupt corporate transactions or shield others who do."—The U. S. Chamber of Commerce in a resolution passed last week.*
The morning the Rockefeller-Stewart correspondence was published, a newspaper reporter boarded the 20th Century Limited, westbound, when it stopped at Englewood, Chicago suburb. The reporter went into the dining car and approached a brawny gentleman who sat there eating breakfast.
Reporter: "Col. Stewart?"
Stewart: "Who are you?"
Reporter: "I am a reporter."
Stewart: "Then get away from me!"
Reporter: "But, Colonel, I have been trying all night to get in touch with you to ask you about—"
Stewart: "I don't care. I won't talk to you. I won't have anything to do with you. Get away, I tell you!"
Reporter: "Your Chicago office said last night that you would talk today."
Stewart: "That's a lie! . . ."
At the terminal in Chicago, a platoon of newsgatherers surrounded Col. Stewart as he alighted. He was scowling, carrying a heavy cane.
Stewart: "Get t'hell away from me!"
Chorus: "Have you a statement to make?"
Stewart: "Nothing to say. I don't want to say a thing."
Chorus: "Will you call a meeting of the Standard Oil board?"
Stewart: "Can't you understand? I don't want to say a thing!"
Later in the day, a statement issued from the Stewart office, which is in the South Michigan Avenue building where all the Indiana Standard directors have their offices. Said Board Chairman Stewart : "Any communication from any stockholder is entitled to and shall receive from me the most careful consideration. . . .
"No meeting of stockholders or directors is contemplated."
The Springfield, Mass., Republican, Bible of conservative Republicanism, fearing that other Indiana Standard stockholders might not support Stockholder Rockefeller in ousting Col. Stewart, last week cried out in an editorial:
"You stockholders fattening on illicit profits! You organizers of robbery incorporated! You millionaire liars and perjurers! You arrogant men of power! If you would but count the cost and remember there's a day of reckoning."
*For further doings of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce last week, see p. 44.