In 1891 Congress passed the Postal Subsidy law for paying a higher than the market rate of compensation to capitalists who would carry the mails in vessels built in America, of American materials, and manned by Americans. No contracts were made by the Post-office Department under the law for the mails between Europe and America, for there were no such capitalists and no such boats in that quarter. In May of the next year, 1892, a bill was whizzed through Congress almost without debate, in which the forms of the principal beneficiaries-to-be of the law of 1891 loomed into view. The subsidy law gave its bonus only to vessels that could fly the American flag because American built and manned. This new act exempted from these conditions the two principal steamers of the Inman, now the International, line--the _City of New York_ and the _City of Paris_--provided the company built two other steamers that fulfilled the requirements of the subsidy law. The sequel disclosed that their owners had a well-laid plan to build more than two other steamers to get the rich rewards of the subsidy law. The steamers and the company were not named. That was not needed. The bill was drawn with such limitations as to size, speed, ownership, etc., that these were the only two vessels which could come under its provisions. The bill was introduced in the House by a prominent Democrat, and in the Senate by a prominent Republican. It was passed by both Houses regardless of party distinctions. The Secretary of the Navy urged the bill upon the naval committees of Congress. He had begun to do so in his first report to Congress and subsequent communications, in which he referred by name to the vessels which were masked in this legislation. The head of the line and other owners were members of the oil combination. The president of the steamship company has been the president of the pipe-line branch of the oil trust--its largest single interest--from the time of its organization in 1881.[575] This exemption from the law was engineered through the Senate by one who had hitherto always been conspicuously strenuous in refusing to abate his opposition to admitting to American registry any ship not built in America, of American materials, by American labor, but who now had suffered some sea change. Ordinary citizens who want to get the profits of carrying the American mails must build their boats in American ship-yards; but the syndicate got members of Congress to grant them by law that which all others must earn.