Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/187

 after. As if to clinch his threat and argument, Hanna wrote: "You have been in politics long enough to know that no man in public office owes the public anything."

The letter concluded with a reference to the present Secretary of State, John Sherman. Hanna wrote: "I understood that Senator Sherman inspired and instigated this suit. If this is so I will take occasion to talk to him sharply when I see him."

The letter was written on the typewriter and letter-heads of Hanna's business office in Cleveland.

Having secured this much, the correspondent, thinking it possible Mr. Watson might have answered Mr. Hanna's letter, undertook a bit of original investigation. He sought the files of the attorney-general's official correspondence for 1890, and the following is what he found. This letter certainly is evidence enough of the sort of letter Mr. Hanna had written even if the above restoration is not absolutely accurate: