Bankers in the Crosshairs: Hartford’s Feds Indict Witnesses in Billard Hearing

Washington, D.C. – In a bold move, the federal grand jury in Hartford, Connecticut, voted to indict four key witnesses who refused to testify before the Interstate Commerce Commission last Friday in the high-stakes Billard company case. The indictments, voted on April 16, 1914, were a direct response to the recalcitrance of the witnesses, who were summoned to testify about the relations between the Billard company and the New Haven railroad. The men at the center of the storm are Harry V. Whipple, president of the Merchants National Bank of New Haven; Samuel Hemingway, president of the Second National Bank of New Haven; Edward I. Field; and Samuel Morehouse, all of whom were given a taste of federal justice. Counsel Stoddard branded the resort to criminal procedure as ‘unjust, arbitrary, and tyrannical,’ but the feds were undeterred, notifying Homer Cummings that his clients would be required to submit without further conditions.