The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-26
STATEMENT ON THE
 HARVESTER SUIT
CONTINUED FROM PAGE D

torney General, Mr. Bonaparte, at once, which he did next day. He adds that on September 21 he wrote me long memor- ardum setting forth the facts and giving his views on the general subject and that on November he notified MT. Perkins verbally in accordance with my instruc- tions that the bureaus investigation would come first
 "The letter continues:
 :" 'Of course, should the matter become one of public comment generally, this bureau could be prima facie criticised for taking so long to finish the Investigation The reason for this has been that Con gress has called for number or other reports of great magnitude and difficulty such as those of lumber, steel, etc., and the bureau had to give so much time to the prosecution of the Standard oil case that the International Harvester company investigation got sidetracked behind those other ones. We simply have done the best we could with the small force at our disposal
 MT Smith in a subsequent letter says;
 "'No report of any sort on the Inter national Harvester company was prepared by this bureau during your administra- tion At the time you went out of office. the bureau had done less than 10 per cent of the work necessary to make even a partial report on this subject. Conse- auently, of course, no report or any part thereof on Harvester had been written or drafted at that time by the bureau of corporations. I never received from you any instructions in regard to any such report except orders intended to facili- tate it's preparation and publication. Gave Perkins Papers to BOnaparte
 MT. Perkins and Commissioner smith called upon me in reference to the Har- yester trust matter at about the same time I submitted all the papers handed to me by MT. Perkins to the Attorney General and asked Commissioners smith to see the Attorney General himself, and
 asked the Attorney General not to take up the case until he had seen me. This was a request I invariably made in every case of the kind. While l was President l expected each of my cabinet officers to keep me in touch with every Important matter in his office, and l as- stunned full responsibility for what was done. In many scores of cases men or ievery description-trust magnates, la | bor leaders, public officials, private cit l izens-came to me when action either | had been taken or the possibility of taking 1t was pending, in cases in which they were interested, and asked l that look into the case personally be- | fore permitting the action to go on. In all such cases. unless l was already i thoroughly familiar with the facts. l wrote to whatever department was con Icerned, or verbally notified it's head to bring the case before me, and not to come to a decision upon the matter
 until after consultation with me. l Dozens of letters to this effect to me must have been on file in the various departments. and in addition to these
 dozens of letters, there must have been i scores of other cases in which 1 made the request verbally, often by tele- phoning where no written record eN- ists.
 Cites Another Instance
 Among other cases, for instance, l re-
 member thus seeing MT. Picrpont Nor
 gan at the time that we were beginning
 the Northern Securities suit against | him. and Mir Hill and others. and saw q number of representatives of the Standard oil people on several different 1 occasions at the time we began the suit against the Standard oil company.
 1 saw various labor leaders at the time of the proceedings against Mover and Haywood; again and again l saw men in cases that were pending. or that were about to be begun. in the depart mcnt of the interior, in the treasury de-