But this plan never reached the public. The House bill had aroused the Sugar Trust to wrath, and all through the winter and spring of 1894 one or more of its chief officers was in Washington, besieging the Senate and the Administration. Mr. H. O. Havemeyer, the president, Theodore Havemeyer, the vice-president, and John O. Searles, secretary and treasurer, armed with samples and statistics and proofs of political influence, urged upon a worried and reluctant committee a scheme of duties which would give them at least as large a benefit as they had under the McKinley Bill. The gentlemen seem to have been able to secure the attention of all the Senators whom they thought it worth while to approach, excepting Senator Mills. Mr. Havemeyer made repeated efforts to get to him, but always failed. Finally he asked Secretary Carlisle to give him a note of introduction. He knew Senator Mills, he told the secretary, but he was a busy man and peculiar, and it was difficult to see him. Mr. Carlisle gave the note, and one evening Mr. Havemeyer presented it at the Senator’s door with his own card and that of Mr. J. R. Rickey, the inventer of the famous “gin-Rickey.” Was the Senator in, and would he see them? The answer came back. “Senator Mills is in, but he will _not_ see the gentlemen.” Nor did Mr. Havemeyer ever succeed in presenting his ideas of a sugar schedule to Senator Mills. The activities of the sugar people caused all sorts of rumors to run rife through the press, and finally when the bill was reported on the 20th of March providing a rate of about one cent a pound on raw sugar with an additional one-eighth of a cent per pound on refined, there was an immediate outcry. When later further changes were made in the schedule, making it more intricate and more advantageous to the refiners, dissatisfaction grew. “It would have been quite as appropriate and edifying,” said the _Nation_, “and quite as good policy, to have enacted that the Standard Oil Trust should receive $30,000,000 out of the public treasury during the next six months as a reward of merit, and two and one-eighth cents per gallon for all the oil they might hereafter sell in this country, as to do what is done for the sugar trust.” The ugliest rumors were afloat, talk of bribes, deals, and threats. They finally culminated in an article published in the _Philadelphia Press_ and signed “Holland” (E. J. Edwards), in which in a most circumstantial way the author declared that $500,000 had been contributed to the Democratic campaign fund by the Sugar Trust. In return pledges had been given that the Trust would be taken care of. When the House removed the duty, the Trust had reminded the Administration of its pledges. Mr. Carlisle, by Mr. Cleveland’s directions, had appeared before the sub-committee and had told them that the party was bound to satisfy the sugar interests. There were detailed descriptions of interviews between