"While your rejection of the offer was just what was expected from you, considering your official and personal standing, yet I realize that you have done more than simply reject the offer. You so conducted the affair as to place the guilty party, it is hoped, in a position in which he will be punished for this violation of law. The proposition was not only to attempt to corrupt an honest officer of the Government, but was to induce you, by the offer of a large sum of money, to commit a most heinous and inhuman act." No attempt was made by the representatives of the Trust before the committee to deny this testimony. They simply disclaimed any responsibility for what their associate and employé had done. "Whatever there was in that," testified the president of the Whiskey Trust, "was with the former secretary of this company, if there be anything of it."[27] The Trust increased the number of plants under its control from "nearly eighty" to eighty-one or eighty-two, the number reported by the investigation of Congress in 1893. Its annual production was then 50,000,000 gallons; about 7,500,000 gallons of it alcohol, 42,500,000 spirits. It is evident, says the report, that the company will soon have within its grasp the entire trade, and be able to dictate prices to consumers at pleasure. "How do you account for spirits going up and corn going down at the same time in two or three instances?" the treasurer was asked. "Simply because the distillers were getting in a position whereby they ran less than their capacity."[28] The experience of mankind has always found, as Lord Coke pointed out, that monopoly adulterates.