The Rise and Progress of
group of men, above, all others, proved best able to extort such favors, no one has satisfactorily explained. Corruption of the railway officials has been vaguely suggested; but it has not been shown whence this group of men had the means to suborn the railways, and no writer has been able to point to a piece of precise evidence, found by any court or investigating committee in the United States, which proved such subornation of railway officials, though it is not inconceivable that some evidence may exist. Congressional and legislative committees, on the other hand, and the more cautious writers on trusts, have been equally put to it to find in those acts of the railways which eventually made the Standard Oil Company supreme any self-interested motives. The fact of the discrimination in freight rates seems to account for the supremacy of the Standard Oil Company. But why those refiners identified with the Standard Oil Company, instead of
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