League. While speaking in behalf of his party, in the fall of
1908, he read extracts from letters written by an official of the
Standard Oil Company to various senators. The letters, it later
appeared, had been purloined from the Company's files by a
faithless employee. They caused a tremendous sensation. The
public mind had become so sensitive that the mere fact that an
intimacy existed between the most notorious of trusts and some
few United States senators--the correspondents called each other
"Dear John," "Dear Senator," etc.--was sufficient to arouse the
general wrath. The letters disclosed a keen interest on the part
of the corporation in the details of legislation, and the public
promptly took the Standard Oil Company as a type. They believed,
without demanding tangible proof, that other great corporations
were, in some sinister manner, influencing legislation.
Railroads, insurance companies, great banking concerns, vast
industrial corporations, were associated in the public mind as
"the Interests." And the United States Senate was deemed the
stronghold of the interests. A saturnalia of senatorial
muckraking now laid bare the "oligarchy," as the small group of
powerful veteran Senators who controlled the senatorial machinery
was called. It was disclosed that the centralization of
leadership in the Senate coincided with the centralization of
power in the Democratic and Republican national machines. In 1911
and 1912 a "money trust" investigation was conducted by the
Senate and a comfortable entente was revealed between a group of
bankers, insurance companies, manufacturers, and other interests,
carried on through an elaborate system of interlocking
directorates. Finally, in 1912, the Senate ordered its Committee
on Privileges and Elections to investigate campaign contributions
paid to the national campaign committees in 1904, 1908, and 1912.