In a private conference which followed between Representative Payne and Representative Hopkins, the former said, as Mr. Hopkins relates: "What he objected to in my resolution was the creation of a special committee; but if I would again offer it and ask that it be referred to the Committee of Commerce he would not object. I thought perhaps there was something reasonable in his objection. A special committee would probably require a clerk, which would be an expense. He looked to me so like a frugal Democrat, who had great confidence in the regular order of established committees and did not want the country to be taxed for clerks attending to the business of special committees--I say that he so impressed me that, as the record will show, I adopted his suggestion." When the Committee of Commerce to which the investigation was accordingly referred began its investigation, a member of the oil combination, not then, as later, a member of the Senate, took his seat by the ear of the chairman, who was from his State, "presiding," as the oil producers said in a public appeal, "behind the seat of the chairman."[558] The financial officer of the oil combination was called as a witness, but refused to answer the questions of the committee as to the operations of the company or its relations with the railroads. The vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad also refused to answer questions. On the plea of needing time to decide how to compel these witnesses to answer, the committee let the railroad vice-president go until he should be recalled. But the committee never decided, and the witnesses were never recalled. The committee never reported to Congress, made no complaint of the contempt of its witnesses, and the investigation of 1876, like that of 1872, came to a mute and inglorious end. When Representative Hopkins applied to the clerk of the committee for the testimony, he was told, to his amazement, that it could not be found. "Judge Reagan," he relates,[559] "who was a stanch friend of the bill"--for the regulation of the railroads--"and very earnest for the investigation, and who at the time was a member of the committee, told me that it had been stolen."[560]