Q. And you, as one of the contractors, would not stand to that arrangement?-A. No, sir. Q. You made your own bid?—A. Yes, sir. Q. And your bid was made in good faith, and you made $1,000 on it? A. Yes, sir. Q. And when you told this other man Boone that he was acting corruptly, he got down on his knees and begged for mercy?—A. No; that was Callan. I charged this thing upon Boone, and he went in and withdrew Callan's bid, showing that he had put in two bids—his own and another. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Did not Callan give security on his bid?-A. No, sir. By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE: Q. How came it to be considered, then ?—A. Because it was a failedup route, and the law did not require security. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. The law did not require you to give security?-A. No, sir. By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE: Q. Now, don't you think that that whole transaction as you state it, unexplained, squinted towards a conspiracy?—A. Well, that is the reason I wanted to go to this man (Mr. Ker) and tell him the facts, but I could not get to him. He was away above me-as inaccessible as the Autocrat of all the Russias. Q. How long have you been a contractor?-A. Twelve or fifteen years. Q. Have you followed that business exclusively?-A. Yes. Q. You are now a mail contractor?-A. Yes, sir. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1884, I have carried the mails three million miles, and for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1883, I carried the mails two and a half million miles; counting the whole amount of travel, steamboat, railway, and all. Q. How many routes have you got ?—A. Nearly 500. Q. At the present time ?-A. Yes. Q. Do you work them yourself?-A. Some of them. I sublet some. Q. What proportion do you work?-A. Very few. Q. As a rule you sublet?-A. I sublet, of course; and my service I think has been carried with as little trouble to the Government as any, or with less trouble than that of any other contractor or set of contractors. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. How much do your receipts from the Government aggregate!A. My gross pay I should say is about $160,000. Q. On all the routes ?-A. Yes, sir; I should say so. I don't know the amount exactly, but I guess it is about that. Q. What are your earnings on the sublettings?-A. On several routes I am losing heavily. Q. Not on the subletting?-A. Yes, on the subletting. There is one route in Arizona on which I lose $1,000 a year, and one in Kansas on which I lose $500 a year— Q. (Interposing.) Those routes you work yourself?-A. No, sir; I could not stock them. I have not got means enough to stock them. Q. Then, on those routes on which you lose, you pay a man a pre mium for taking them off your hands?-A. I make a contract with a man to do the service for so much money, and when pay day comes he is paid. Q. Where you sublet, you turn over the contract?-A. No, I do not turn over the contract. The Government does not release me. I am held on my contract. Q. Just explain this subletting.-A. I will. I go out into a town, either myself or my agent, and I find a man there who is out of business and who has got some stock and is hard up and looking for something to do, and I make the best bargain I can with him. Q. During the last five years have you made a contract with any man for mail service where you have paid him more than you have received from the Government?-A. Unfortunately a great many. I pay Emerson at Dodge City $500 more per annum than I get for the service, and on the route from Navajo Springs to Springfield, Ariz., I get $5,500 a year, and I pay $6,000 and odd. That is the situation so far as that is concerned. There is one point more that I want to state here that incensed me, and I think Mr. Ker will admit that I had a right to be incensed at it. That is, his proposition to Judge Key that if I should give them some points on Mr. French, that then my matter should be dropped-even the whole $5,000 that they had demanded. Mr. VAN ALSTYNE. Oh, no; that was not it. By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE: Q. Don't you know that it was your duty as a good citizen, if you possessed any knowledge of criminal acts on the part of any officer of this Government, to communicate it?-A. It was my duty, and I should most certainly do so. Q. Then all there is about this thing is, that you were surprised that Mr. Ker should suppose that you possessed knowledge of corrupt acts to which you were supposed to be a party?-A. No, sir; pardon me for correcting you, but that is not it. The case is this, that after a demand for a payment from me of $5,000 which I was supposed to owe the Government, there should be a proposition to waive that, provided I would give the Government some points on Mr. French. Q. You understood that to be the proposition?-A. Yes, sir; and I so understand it now. Q. Didn't you hear Mr. Key say that when he made his second statement to Mr. Ker, Mr. Ker said, "That is not what I mean," or "That is not it"?-A. Well, but I want to say―― Q. (Interrupting.) That if you were one of the gang, you would not disclose?-A. No, sir. Excuse me; I don't want any such reflections as that cast upon me. I repudiate that most emphatically. Mr. VAN ALSTYNE. The repudiation is all right. If you were oue of the gang The WITNESS (interrupting). I have not said so. I say this, that I do not know, and never have known, of one solitary thing against John L. French, and I believe him to be as pure as the sun itself; and you can't find a man, from Mr. Lyman clear down to the bootblacks in the Post-Office Department, that will not admit that he is as pure as the sunlight. Mr. VAN ALSTYNE. That is a matter that I know nothing of. The WITNESS. Of course not. I stated yesterday to Mr. Springer voluntarily and of my own accord, that at the second interview which Judge Key had with Mr. Ker, Mr. Ker proposed to have me come there and divulge something against Mr. French, as the condition upon which this whole business against me should be swept away. Mr. VAN ALSTYNE. And you were very indignant at that. The WITNESs. I was, sir. By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE: Q. Why didn't you say to Mr. Ker, "I could not if I would; I don't know anything."-A. I couldn't reach Mr. Ker; he was as high as the sun; he couldn't be reached. Q. That was because he thought you were going to stick to your friends.-A. I don't know what the reason was. Mr. Key was very much annoyed. I think the reason of Mr. Ker's conduct was that he got up cross that morning; that is my opinion about it. I have not directly or indirectly reflected upon anybody, but I have been a target for years for the most malicious and unfounded charges. All my conduct has been open and subject to examination. Here is this contract division, at the head of which is Nr. Lyman, and which was presided over at the time these matters were up by Mr. French, who was acting as second assistant. Under the head of that division is a vast retinue of clerks. Then, there is the inspection division, also with a large retinue of employés to inspect all this service. Then, after that comes the auditor to look after these matters. Q. Yes, but the authorities outside of the Post-Office Department were finding more fault at that time with the men in charge of the service than with the people outside who trafficked with them.-A. Then, why on earth did they assail me? Can you tell me why it is that newspapers will go on and publish charge after charge against a man without the slightest foundation in fact? Mr. VAN ALSTYNE. I don't know anything about that. The WITNESS. Well, it touches me in a point where I have suffered. I have been greatly wronged, and have been a great sufferer, both in my business and in my character. Adjourned. WASHINGTON, June 25, 1884. WILLIAM A. COOK, again appeared before the committee and testified as follows: The chairman called on Mr. Cook and stated it would be necessary for him to be brief. The WITNESS. Mr. Chairman, I addressed to this committee, some time since, a letter, which, for the sake of brevity, I will now read: WASHINGTON, D. C., May 7, 1884. GENTLEMEN: At the conclusion of my testimony in March last, I requested that I might be recalled before your committee in the event that any essential part of my statements should be assailed by any other witnesses. This has been done chiefly by expressions of "belief," and narratives of alleged declarations of dead men, blended with the pretended utterances of a few living, These, however, involve my professional and official character and conduct, in connection with "the star route cases, and it is not proper that the various assertions allowed to be made from "the witness stand" should go uncontradicted or unexplained. Neither the committee nor the public shall be allowed to be misled or deceived. Besides, I have additional papers, and, I may add, facts, which, with a view to a fair and impartial investigation and correct conclusions, should be laid before the committee. I trust that I have too much respect for the committee to appear before it to indulge in mere vituperation, or to even attempt to occupy its time with impertinent and irrelevent matter. My numerous engagements require all my time; but I will arrange my business so as to be able to appear before the committee any day next week. Very respectfully, WILLIAM A. COOK, To the Committee of the House of Representatives on Expenditures of the Department of Justice. I presume that letter was in some way overlooked. The CHAIRMAN. No, sir; I notified your messenger that I would inform you when you could be heard, and this is the first opportunity that we have had to give you a hearing. The WITNESS. Very well. Now, in deference to your statement, Mr. Chairman, as to the limited time of the committee, I presume that I had better confine what I have to say to matters which may be regarded as personal, and omit for the present the additional facts that I have in reference to the case, as they would extend the investigation manifestly beyond the time that is under your control at present. Hereafter, I presume, I can present those facts in some form to the committee. Now in the first place, Mr. Bliss saw fit to state to this committee that in my office on a certain occasion I referred to Mr. Kellogg and said, in substance, that he was a client of mine and should be protected. No such statement was ever made to Mr. Bliss in my office or any where else by me. It is a studied, deliberate falsehood, a pure invention. Mr. Kellogg was not then a client of mine. His case in the Spofford-Kellogg contest in the Senate was conducted on his side by Messrs. Wilson and Shellabarger. The statement attributed to me by Mr. Bliss could not have been made, and never was made. At that time there had been nothing brought to my attention in relation to Mr. Kellogg in connection with the star-route cases, nor was I aware that any accusation existed against him, and I had strong reason to believe otherwise. With regard to the papers that have been mentioned as in my possession, in order that I may be brief, I will refer to the letter I addressed to the Attorney-General and annex it to my testimony. In reference to those papers Mr. Bliss said, in a letter which I have in my possession, that they were of no consequence to anybody. In fact, they were mere general abstracts of no value, except, perhaps, to some extent, to an attorney in the preparation of his case. It was strongly intimated that the defendants obtained papers from me. They never obtained, directly or indirectly, any paper from me. If they obtained any papers improperly, those papers were probably obtained through the action of Mr. Bliss and Mr. Woodward, by whom the safes were locked up, and charge taken of the papers, so that no one else could have any access to the papers, or could allow a single one of them to go out of the Post-Office Department. Mrs. Gregg never copied any of the papers for me. I perhaps may pass, with this general statement, from Mr. Bliss to Mr. Woodward. There is not one statement made by Mr. Bliss in any way reflecting upon me that has the slighest foundation in fact. The explanation of Mr. Bliss's conduct is unquestionably this: That after the death of President Garfield, and after he ascertained that he could have full control of the star-route cases, he desired to exclude from it every one over whom he could not have control, so that they might be conducted according to his own conceptions and purposes, and in doing that he took in with him one man-Mr. Woodward. It is said by Mr. Bliss that I desired the appointment of district attorney. That is an absolute falsehood. His statements to me were that President Arthur had selected a friend of his for the position, and in a little while would ap point him. I never desired the position nor intimated to him that I did. It is equally false that I furnished him the name of Mr. Cole, my partner, as a candidate. I furnished him one name only, and that was the name of Mr. A. C. Bradley; no one else. Mr. Woodward has said, among other things, that one Lilley stated that I received, in connection with what are called the Brott and Lilley indictments, $250. The statement is placed by Mr. Woodward in the mouth of a dead man. Its value the committee can determine. It has no foundation whatever in fact. I never received any money in that matter. Mr. Brott disappeared, it was supposed at the time, with the co-operation of Mr. Wood'ward; whether correctly or not I do not know. It is certain he opposed the finding of the indictment and subpoenaing of witnesses. When I took the case up before the United States commissioner, he was not present. It was the purpose then to depend in part upon Brott to secure the indictment against Lilley. Failing to have him present, or to secure his attendance, I at once arranged to secure indictments against both Brott and Lilley. They were found, but have not been tried up to this time. It has been said that those indictments depended on the testimony of Brott. It is not true. When I left the Department of Justice, letters which had passed between Brott and Lilley, containing evidence of guilt, were in possession of the Post-Office Department, and copies of those I can procure. By Mr. VAN ALSTYNE: Q. Of letters of both parties?-A. The correspondence between Brott and Lilley clearly implied that if the one was guilty the other was also, and I have never had any doubt of the ability of the Government to convict one or both those parties, independent of the testimony of Brott. We are accustomed to speak kindly of the dead, but there are, perhaps, occasions which require us to speak otherwise. There was no man capable of doing improper acts more freely than Mr. Lilley. He became the frequent associate of Mr. Woodward, in the office where we had our papers; so much so that before I resigned, whenever I approached that office to obtain information, or to procure papers, Mr. Lilley was present as an obstacle, and I could make no inquiries, nor procure any informa tion. Mr. Woodward was accustomed to visit at his house, and the two were much together. This was the Lilley that the testimony shows was concerned in procuring contracts and other matters in the Sixth Auditer's Office-not the indicted Lilley; but his father. Q. What business had he ostensibly at the office, so far as you could learn?-A. None whatever. The rule established by Mr. Gibson and myself was that no one should be admitted into that office except employés or officers of the Government. Q. Then Lilley was there as a privileged character?-A. Yes, sir. Q. By reason of the indulgence of some one?—A. By reason of the indulgence of some one. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. He was an attorney for the contractors?-A. Yes, sir; a sort of general attorney, not merely in settling up their accounts, but in procuring contracts-using influence for that purpose. I have now authority to say to you what I had not authority to say before, that at least |