The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-10-29

there were some competitors who per- sisted in staying In the game
 It must be said for the Havemeyers that they always did their sugar renn- ing more economically than the other fellows, and SO were able to make more money and to undersell their competi- tors. ~
 Apparently they had these latter on the run in 1887, for when the general plan of consolidation was proposed the only refineries not coming in were two in Philadelphia. one in Boston, three In New orleans, one in St. Louis (out not running), and two in San Francisco. The Matthiessens, the Warehouses. the Mollers. the Siercks, the Dicks. the Meyers. the Harrisons and the Oxnards | hurried to get in out of the wet as soon as they could.
 The reader may be reminded, by the way, that it was an Oxnard, who, on behalf of the beet sugar interests, fought President Roosevelt's Cuban re- cIprocity scheme so hard few years ago. and that one of the Harrisons. Philadelphia man, arter putting his su- gar business into the trust, became provost of the University of Pennsyl- vania, post which he still holds; that he has contributed heavily of his su- gar profits ever since to the support of the university and that his niece.
  American girl slated to take over German title through marriage.
 4 The sugar combination caused great excitement, It was in the form of real trust, with eleven trustees, who is- sued $75,oo0,000 worth of trust certih- cates in exchange for the stock of the old companies.
 The refineries not coming in soon be- gan to feel the effect of a competition stiffer than any they had ever had be- fore to stand up against. Some or them couldn't do 1t, and had to shut down. Here and there, owing to in- creased economy of trust production, refineries which had been taken into the trust shut down also; executive and selling forces were reduced to decrease competitive expenses, and thousands of workers had to seek new ways of earn ing living.
 The trust went into the business of importing it's own sugar. too. and this played havoc with the importing trade. All the classes mentioned as adversely affected soon united in one general protest and, besides, some stockhold- CTS in the companies taken over ob- jected bitterly to the new scheme; the gross result was one of the widest antitrust outcries in all the history of industrial combinations:
 Suits of many sorts were begun, and there were investiga- tions under both Federal and New York State laws. Almost with one accord the newspapers jumped hard upon the trust and all It's members, and for several years their life must have been one long nightmare.
 It was at this time that John E. Parsons and John E. Searles, the latter known widely for many years as Deacon Searles. the Sunday school man." became important personal fac- tors in the sugar situation. It has always been said that Searles planned the trust and that Parsons drew the charter Certainly. both were general ly played more heavily in the antitrust newspaper special heads" than any of the Havemeyers, Parsons being the trusts general counsel and Searles sec- retary.
 Next to good old John" Arbuckle and gruh old Claus Spreckles, Searies and Parsons were probably the most pictu- request of all the men mixed up in the sugar situation in the eighties and the nineties. Both were very thin, but there their resemblance ceased. Par sons was and, thought pretty well along in years by this time. still Is typical New York lawyer; cold. shrewd and calculating, often in the old days made the subject of the cartoonists wit because of personal eccentricities, but always inspiring a wholesome respect
 Searles. born in Westchester County, near New York, the son of Methodist minister. looked himself the very pict- ure of country parson, except that his clothing was always of the finest text ure. There was a brother. Robert Searles, who went into the manufac- ture of a patent remedy which he call ed anthlophorus, and sold so success fully that he was rich when he came to die, but John E., went into the ship ping business in New Haven in the sixties. and in some way was brought into contact with the Havemeyers.
 They added him to their forces in 1882 and made exceedingly good use of his industry, his shrewdness and his exceptional executive ability. They paid him well too: so well that he be- came a millionaire and was able to figure as a moneyed supporter of evan gelical Christianity being a sturdy pill lar of the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn. and the organizer of no end of Sunday schools.
 At the height of his career if was always Secretary Searles and his Sugar Trust" that the papers abused when they described the "horrors of the reflnertes"-for the Havemeyers had long since concentrated their sugar houses in Williamsburg, part of Brooklyn, where it was alleged that half-naked. foreign born laborers, known only by numbers. were allowed to toll and die in hellish degrees Of heat" It was Searles, too, who was held up to scorn because of the alleged low wages paid to the sugar workmen' Searles, too. was the star sugar witness before the Lexow committees antitrust
 investigation under the State law, and' by rights. Searles was expected 10
 be big figure in the trust to the very end.
 But he wasn't He was forced out
 in 1899, some say because he specu- lated in sugar stock and had too many outside interests
 Freed from his duties as secretary