Van Sweringen Testimony

If the Van Sweringen brothers, worn with testifying before the Interstate Commerce Commission on their proposed Nickel Plate merger, have repented of ever entering the railroad business, they at least give no sign of it. They are patient, courteous, frank. Counsel H. W. Anderson, representing the minority Chesapeake & Ohio stockholders, is infinitely inquisitive. Counsel Newton D. Baker for the Van Sweringens, continues to protest against a continued unlimited inquiry into the past of the present Nickel Plate. The Van Sweringens answer frankly all questions asked them. Meanwhile it is July in Washington.

O. P. Van Sweringen testified that he and his brother acquired 70,000 shares of the C. & O. from H. P. Huntington & Co. at $100 a share, and turned it in to the Nickel Plate at $80, thus pocketing a personal loss of $1,400,000 on the transaction. The remarkable Cleveland brothers then purchased 180,000 shares more through J. P. Morgan & Co.

As soon as the name of "Morgan" was heard, Mr. Anderson showed signs of special alarm--a common and popular habit beside the Potomac. He attacked the approval of the merger by the C. & O. stockholders as a "stock manipulation and a financing-rigging scheme." As to details, however, Mr. Anderson failed to specify. Just how these matters were relevant to the fairness of the Van Sweringen merger plan, he failed to state. Ex-Secretary of War Baker demanded that the scope of the inquiry in the future be limited. The I. C. C., impartial but sweltering, reserved its decision.