The History of the Standard Oil Company/Volume 1/Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
THE OIL WAR OF 1872
IT was not until after the middle of February, 1872, that the people of the Oil Regions heard anything of the plan which was being worked out for their "good." Then an uneasy rumour began running up and down the creek. Freight rates were going up. Now an advance in a man's freight bill may ruin his business; more, it may mean the ruin of a region. Rumour said that the new rate meant just this; that is, that it more than covered the margin of profit in any branch of the oil business. The railroads were not going to apply the proposed tariffs to everybody. They had agreed to give to a company unheard of until now—the South Improvement Company—a special rate considerably lower than the new open rate. It was only a rumour and many people discredited it. Why should the railroads ruin the Oil Regions to build up a company of outsiders?
But facts began to be reported. Mr. Doane, the Cleveland shipper already quoted, told how suddenly on the 22d of February, without notice, his rate from the Oil Regions to Cleveland was put up from thirty-five cents a barrel to sixty-five cents, an advance of twenty-four dollars on a carload.[1] Mr. Josiah Lombard of the New York refining firm of Ayres, Lombard and Company was buying oil for his company at Oil City. Their refinery was running about 12,000 barrels a month. On the 19th of February the rate from Oil City to Buffalo, which had been forty cents a barrel, was raised to sixty-five cents, and a few days later the rate from Warren to New York was raised from eighty-seven cents to $2.14. Mr. Lombard was not aware of this change until his house in New York reported to him that the bills for freight were so heavy that they could not afford to ship and wanted to know what was the matter.[2]
On the morning of February 26, 1872, the oil men read in their morning papers that the rise which had been threatening had come; moreover, that all members of the South Improvement Company were exempt from the advance. At the news all oildom rushed into the streets. Nobody waited to find out his neighbour's opinion. On every lip there was but one word, and that was "conspiracy." In the vernacular of the region, it was evident that "a torpedo was filling for that scheme."
In twenty-four hours after the announcement of the increase in freight rates a mass-meeting of 3,000 excited, gesticulating oil men was gathered in the opera house at Titusville. Producers, brokers, refiners, drillers, pumpers were in the crowd. Their temper was shown by the mottoes on the banners which they carried: "Down with the conspirators"— "No compromise"—"Don't give up the ship!" Three days later as large a meeting was held at Oil City, its temper more warlike if possible ; and so it went. They organised a Petroleum Producers' Union,[3] pledged themselves to reduce their production by starting no new wells for sixty days and by shutting down on Sundays, to sell no oil to any person known to be in the South Improvement Company, but to support the creek refiners and those elsewhere who had refused to go into the combination, to boycott the offending railroads, and to build lines which they would own and control themselves. They sent a committee to the Legislature asking that the charter of the South Improvement Company be repealed, and another to Congress demanding an investigation of the whole business on the ground that it was an interference with trade. They ordered that a history of the conspiracy, giving the names of the conspirators and the designs of the company, should be prepared, and 30,00 copies sent to "judges of all courts, senators of the United States, members of Congress and of State Legislatures, and to all railroad men and prominent business men of the country, to the end that enemies of the freedom of trade may be known and shunned by all honest men."
They prepared a petition ninety-three feet long praying for a free pipe-line bill, something which they had long wanted, but which, so far, the Pennsylvania Railroad had prevented their getting, and sent it by a committee to the Legislature; and for days they kept 1,000 men ready to march on Harrisburg at a moment's notice if the Legislature showed signs of refusing their demands. In short, for weeks the whole body of oil men abandoned regular business and surged from town to town intent on destroying the "Monster," the "Forty Thieves," the "Great Anaconda," as they called the mysterious South Improvement Company. Curiously enough, it was chiefly against the combination which had secured the discrimination from the railroads—not the railroads which had granted it—that their fury was directed. They expected nothing but robbery from the railroads, they said. They were used to that; but they would not endure it from men in their own business.
When they began the fight the mass of the oil men knew nothing more of the South Improvement Company than its name and the fact that it had secured from the railroads advantages in rates which were bound to ruin all independent refiners of oil and to put all producers at its mercy. Their tempers were not improved by the discovery that it was a secret organisation, and that it had been at work under their very eyes for some weeks without their knowing it. At the first public meeting this fact came out, leading refiners of the region relating their experience with the "Anaconda." According to one of these gentlemen, J. D. Archbold—the same who afterward became vice-president of the Standard Oil Company, which office he now holds—he and his partners had heard of the scheme some months before. Alarmed by the rumour, a committee of independent refiners had attempted to investigate, but could learn nothing until they had given a promise not to reveal what was told them. When convinced that a company had been formed actually strong enough to force or persuade the railroads to give it special rates and refuse them to all persons outside, Mr. Archbold said that he and his colleagues had gone to the railway kings to remonstrate, but all to no effect. The South Improvement Company by some means had convinced the railroads that they owned the Oil Regions, producers and refiners both, and that hereafter no oil of any account would be shipped except as they shipped it. Mr. Archbold and his partners had been asked to join the company, but had refused, declaring that the whole business was iniquitous, that they would fight it to the end, and that in their fight they would have the backing of the oil men as a whole. They excused their silence up to this time by citing the pledge[4] exacted from them before they were informed of the extent and nature of the South Improvement Company.
Naturally the burning question throughout the Oil Regions, convinced as it was of the iniquity of the scheme, was, Who are the conspirators? Whether the gentlemen concerned regarded themselves in the light of "conspirators" or not, they seem from the first to have realised that it would be discreet not to be identified publicly with the scheme, and to have allowed one name alone to appear in all signed negotiations. This was the name of the president, Peter H. Watson. However anxious the members of the South Improvement Company were that Mr. Watson should combine the honours of president with the trials of scapegoat, it was impossible to keep their names concealed. The Oil City Derrick, at that time one of the most vigorous, witty, and daring newspapers in the country, began a black list at the head of its editorial columns the day after the raise in freight was announced, and it kept it there until it was believed complete. It stood finally as it appears on the opposite page.
This list was not exact, but it was enough to go on, and the oil blockade, to which the Petroleum Producers' Union had pledged itself, was now enforced against the firms listed, and as far as possible against the railroads. All of these refineries had their buyers on the creek, and although several of them were young men generally liked for their personal and business qualities, no mercy was shown them. They were refused oil by everybody, though they offered from seventy-five cents to a dollar more than the market price. They were ordered at one meeting "to desist from their nefarious business or leave the Oil Region," and when they 
JOHN D. ARCHBOLD IN 1872
Now vice-president of the Standard Oil Company. Mr. Archbold, whose home, in 1872, was in Titusville, Pennsylvania, although one of the youngest refiners of the Creek, was one of the most active and efficient in breaking up the South Improvement Company.
THE BLACK LIST.
- P. H. WATSON, PRES. S. I. CO.
- Charles Lockhart,
- W. P. Logan,
- R, S. Waring,
- A. W. Bostwick,
- W. C. Warden,
- John Rockefeller,
- Amasa Stone.
These seven are given as the Directors of the Southern Improvement Company. They are refiners or merchants of petroleum
- Atlantic & Gt. Western Railway.
- L. S. &. M. S. Railway.
- Philadelphia & Erie Railway.
- Pennsylvania Central Railway
- New York Central Railway.
- Erie Railway.
Behold "The Anaconda" in all his hideous deformity!
only violence at the opening of the war being at Franklin, where a quantity of the oil belonging to Mr. Watson was run on the ground.
The sudden uprising of the Oil Regions against the South Improvement Company did not alarm its members at first. The excitement would die out, they told one another. All that they needed to do was to keep quiet and stay out of the oil country. But the excitement did not die out. Indeed, with every day it became more intense and more wide-spread. When Mr. Watson's tanks were tapped he began to protest in letters to a friend, F. W. Mitchell, a prominent banker and oil man of Franklin. The company was misunderstood, he complained. "Have a committee of leading producers appointed," he wrote, "and we will show that the contracts with the railroads are as favourable to the producing as to other interests; that the much-denounced rebate will enhance the price of oil at the wells, and that our entire plan in operation and effect will promote every legitimate American interest in the oil trade." Mr. Mitchell urged Mr. Watson to come openly to the Oil Regions and meet the producers as a body. A mass-meeting was never a "deliberative body," Mr. Watson replied, but if a few of the leading oil men would go to Albany or New York, or any place favourable to calm investigation and deliberation, and therefore outside of the atmosphere of excitement which enveloped the oil country, he would see them. These letters were read to the producers, and a motion to appoint a committee was made. It was received with protests and jeers. Mr. Watson was afraid to come to the Oil Regions, they said. The letters were not addressed to the association, they were private—an insult to the body. "We are lowering our dignity to treat with this man Watson," declared one man. "He is free to come to these meetings if he wants to." "What is there to negotiate about?" asked another. "To open a negotiation is to concede that we are wrong. Can we go halves with these middlemen in their swindle?" "He has set a trap for us," declared another. "We cannot treat with him without guilt," and the motion was voted down.
The stopping of the oil supply finally forced the South Improvement Company to recognise the Producers' Union officially by asking that a committee of the body be appointed to confer with them on a compromise. The producers sent back a pertinent answer. They believed the South Improvement Company meant to monopolise the oil business. If that was so they could not consider a compromise with it. If they were wrong, they would be glad to be enlightened, and they asked for information. First: the charter under which the South Improvement Company was organised. Second: the articles of association. Third: the officers' names. Fourth: the contracts with the railroads which signed them. Fifth: the general plan of management. Until we know these things, the oil men declared, we can no more negotiate with you than we could sit down to negotiate with a burglar as to his privileges in our house.
The Producers' Union did not get the information they asked from the company at that time, but it was not long before they had it, and much more. The committee which they had appointed to write a history of the South Improvement Company reported on March 20, and in April the Congressional Committee appointed at the insistence of the oil men made its investigation. The former report was published broadcast, and is readily accessible to-day. The Congressional Investigation was not published officially, and no trace of its work can now be found in Washington, but while it was going on reports were made in the newspapers of the Oil Regions, and at its close the Producers' Union published in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a pamphlet called "A History of the Rise and Fall of the South Improvement Company," which contains the full testimony taken by the committee. This pamphlet is rare, the writer never having been able to find a copy save in three or four private collections. The most important part of it is the testimony of Peter H. Watson, the president, and W. G. Warden, the secretary of the South Improvement Company. It was in these documents that the oil men found full justification for the war they were carrying on and for the losses they had caused themselves and others. Nothing, indeed, could have been more damaging to a corporation than the publication of the charter of the South Im-provement Company. As its president told the Congressional Investigating Committee, when he was under examination, "this charter was a sort of clothes-horse to hang a scheme upon." As a matter of fact it was a clothes-horse big enough to hang the earth upon. It granted powers practically unlimited. There really was no exaggeration in the summary of its powers made and scattered broadcast by the irate oil men in their "History of the Rise and Fall of the South Improvement Company":[5]
The South Improvement Company can own, contract, or operate any work, business, or traffic (save only banking); may hold and transfer any kind of property, real or personal; hold and operate on any leased property (oil territory, for instance); make any kind of contract; deal in stock, securities, and funds; loan its credit, guarantee any one's paper; manipulate any industry; may seize upon the lands of other parties for railroading or any other purpose; may absorb the improvements, property or franchises of any other company, ad infinitum; may fix the fares, tolls, or freights to be charged on lines of transit operated by it, or on any business it gives to any other company or line, without limit.
Its capital stock can be expanded or "watered" at liberty; it can change its name and location at pleasure; can go anywhere and do almost anything. It is not a Pennsylvania corporation only; it can, so far as these enactments are valid, or are confirmed by other Legislatures, operate in any state or territory; its directors must be only citizens of the United States—not necessarily of Pennsylvania. It is responsible to no one; its stockholders are only liable to the amount of their stock in it; its directors, when wielding all the princely powers of the corporation, are also responsible only to the amount of their stock in it; it may control the business of the continent and hold and transfer millions of property, and yet be rotten to the core. It is responsible to no one; makes no reports of its acts or financial condition; its records and deliberations are secret; its capital illimitable; its object unknown. It can be here to-day, to-morrow away. Its domain is the whole country; its business everything. Now it is petroleum it grasps and monopolises; next year it may be iron, coal, cotton, or breadstuffs. They are landsmen granted perpetual letters of marque to prey upon all commerce everywhere.
When the course of this charter through the Pennsylvania Legislature came to be traced, it was found to be devious and uncertain. The company had been incorporated in 1871, and vested with all the "powers, privileges, duties and obligations" of an earlier company—incorporated in April, 1870—the Pennsylvania Company; both of them were children of that interesting body known as the "Tom Scott Legislature. " The act incorporating the company was not published until after the oil war; its sponsor was never known, and no votes on it are recorded. The origin of the South Improvement Company has always remained in darkness. It was one of several "improvement" companies chartered in Pennsylvania at about the same time, and enjoying the same commercial carte blanche.
Bad as the charter was in appearance, the oil men found that the contracts which the new company had made with the railroads were worse. These contracts advanced the rates of freight from the Oil Regions over 100 per cent.—an advance which more than covered the margin of profit on their business — but it was not the railroad that got the greater part of this advance; it was the South Improvement Company. Not only did it ship its own oil at fully a dollar a barrel cheaper on an average than anybody else could, but it received fully a dollar a barrel "rake-off" on every barrel its competitors shipped. It was computed and admitted by the members of the company who appeared before the investigating committee of Congress that this discrimination would have turned over to them fully $6,000,000 annually on the carrying trade. The railroads expected to receive about one and a half millions more than from the existing rates. That is, an additional cost of about $1.25 a barrel was added to crude oil, and it was computed that this would enable the refiners to advance their wholesale price at least four cents a gallon. It is hardly to be wondered at that when the oil men had before them the full text of these contracts they refused absolutely to accept the repeated assertions of the members of the South Improvement Company that their scheme was intended only for "the good of the oil business." The committee of Congress could not be persuaded to believe it either. "Your success meant the destruction of every refiner who refused for any reason to join your company, or whom you did not care to have in, and it put the producers entirely in your power. It would make a monopoly such as no set of men are fit to handle," the chairman of the committee declared. Of course Mr. Warden, the secretary of the company, protested again and again that they meant to take in all the refiners, but when he had to admit that the contracts with the railroads were not made on this condition, his protestations met with little credence. Besides, there was the damning fact that no refiners had come in except those in Cleveland, and that they with one accord testified that they had yielded to force. Not a single factory in either New York or the Oil Regions was in the combination. The fact that the producers had never been approached in any way looked very bad for the company, too. Mr. Watson affirmed and reaffirmed before the committee that it was the intention of the company to take care of the producers. "It was an essential part of this contract that the producers should join it," he declared. But no such condition was embodied in the contract. It was verbal only, and, besides, it had never been submitted to the producers themselves in any form until after the trouble in the Oil Regions began. The committee, like the oil men, insisted that under the circumstances no such verbal understanding was to be trusted.[6]
No part of the testimony before the committee made a worse impression than that showing that the chief object of the combination was to put up the price of refined oil to the consumer, though nobody had denied from the first that this was the purpose. In a circular, intended for private circulation, which appeared in the newspapers about this time explaining the objects of the South Improvement Company, this was made clear:
"The object of this combination of interests," ran the circular, "is understood to be twofold: firstly, to do away, at least in a great measure, with the excessive and undue competition now existing between the refining interest, by reason of there being a far greater refining capacity than is called for or justified by the existing petroleum-consuming requirements of the world; secondly, to avoid the heretofore undue competition between the various railroad companies transporting oil to the seaboard, by fixing a uniform rate of freight, which it is thought can be adhered to by some such arrangement as guaranteeing to each road some such percentages of the profit of the aggregate amount of oil transported, whether the particular line carries it or not. It is also asserted that a prominent feature of the combination will be to limit the production of refined petroleum to such amounts as may serve, in a great measure, to do away with the serious periodical depressions in the article. Is it also to be expected that, desiring to curtail the production of refined petroleum in this country, the railroads will not offer any additional facilities for exportation of the crude article."
A writer in the Oil City Derrick, quoted in the Cleveland Herald, March 2, 1872, said: "The ring pretend that they will make their margin out of the consumers. That is, that they will put refined up to a figure that will enable them to pay well for crude. . . . The consumers are the avowed victims, since they must pay a price which will warrant the ring in going on with their operations. And the producers' security for the price is a mere matter of discretion."
Wherever the members of the company discussed the sub-ject they put forward this object as one sufficient to justify the combination. If refined oil was put up everybody in the trade would make more money. To this end the public ought to be willing to pay more.
When Mr. Warden was under examination by the committee the chairman said to him: "Under your arrangement, the public would have been put to an additional expense of $7,500,000 a year." "What public?" said Mr. Warden. "They would have had to pay it in Europe." "But to keep up the price abroad you would have to keep up the price at home," said the chairman. Mr. Warden conceded the point: "You could not get a better price for that exported without having a better price here," he said.[7]
Mr. Watson contended that the price could be put up with benefit to the consumer. And when he was asked how, he replied: "By steadying the trade. You will notice what all those familiar with this trade know, that there are very rapid and excessive fluctuations in the oil market; that when these fluctuations take place the retail dealers are always quick to note a rise in price, but very slow to note a fall. Even if two dollars a barrel had been added to the price of oil under a steady trade, I think the price of the retail purchaser would not have been increased. That increased price would only amount to one cent a quart (four cents a gallon), and I think the price would not have been increased to the retail dealer because the fluctuations would have been avoided. That was one object to be accomplished."[8]
The committee were not convinced, however, that a scheme which began by adding four cents to the price of a gallon of oil could be to the good of the consumer. Nor did anything appear in the contracts which showed how the fluctuations in the price of oil were to be avoided. These fluctuations' were due to the rise and fall in the crude market, and that depended on the amount of crude coming from the ground. The South Improvement Company might assert that they meant to bring the producers into their scheme and persuade them to keep down the amount of production in the same way they meant to keep down refined, so that the price could be kept steadily high, but they had nothing to prove that they were sincere in the intention, nothing to prove that they had thought of the producer seriously until the trouble in the Oil Regions began. It looked very much to the committee as if the real intention of the company was to keep up the price of refined to a certain figure by limiting the output, and that there was nothing to show that it would not go up with crude though it might not go down with it! Under these circumstances it seemed as if a fluctuating market which gave a moderate average was better for the consumer than the steady high price which Mr. Watson thought so good for the public. Thirty-two cents a gallon was the ideal price they had in view, though refined had not sold for that since 1869, the average price in 1870 being 26⅜ and in 1871 24¼. The refiner who in 1871 sold his oil at 24¼ cents a gallon cleared easily fifty-two cents a barrel—a large profit on his investment,—but the refiners in the early stages of this new industry had made much larger profits. It was to perpetuate these early profits that they had gone into the South Improvement Company.
It did not take the full exposition of the objects of the South Improvement Company, brought out by the Congressional Investigating Committee, with the publication of charters and contracts, to convince the country at large that the Oil Regions were right in their opposition. From the first the sympathy of the press and the people were with the oil men. It was evident to everybody that if the railroads had made the contracts as charged (and it daily became more evident they had done so), nothing but an absolute monopoly of the whole oil business by this combination could result. It was robbery, cried the newspapers all over the land. "Under the thin guise of assisting in the development of oil-refining in Pittsburg and Cleveland," said the New York Tribune, "this corporation has simply laid its hand upon the throat of the oil traffic with a demand to 'stand and deliver.'" And if this could be done in the oil business, what was to prevent its being done in any other industry? Why should not a company be formed to control wheat or beef or iron or steel, as well as oil? If the railroads would do this for one company, why not for another? The South Improvement Company, men agreed, was a menace to the free trade of the country. If the oil men yielded now, all industries must suffer from their weakness. The railroads must be taught a lesson as well as would-be monopolists.
The oil men had no thought of yielding. With every day of the war their backbone grew stiffen The men were calmer, too, for their resistance had found a ground which seemed impregnable to them, and arguments against the South Improvement Company now took the place of denunciations. On all sides men said, This is a transportation question, and now is the time to put an end once and forever to the rebates. The sentiment against discrimination on account of amount of freight or for any other reason had been strong in the country since its beginning, and it now crystallised immediately. The country so buzzed with discussion on the duties of the railroads that reporters sent from the Eastern newspapers commented on it. Nothing was commoner, indeed, on the trains which ran the length of the region and were its real forums, than to hear a man explaining that the railways derived their existence and power from the people, that their charters were contracts with the people, that a fundamental provision of these contracts was that there should be no dis-criminating in favour of one person or one town, that such a discrimination was a violation of charter, that therefore the South Improvement Company was founded on fraud, and the courts must dissolve it if the railways did not abandon it. The Petroleum Producers' Union which had been formed to grapple with the "Monster" actually demanded interstate regulation, for in a circular sent out to newspapers and boards of trade asking their aid against the conspiracy they included this paragraph: "We urge you to exert all your influence with your representatives in Congress to support such measures offered there as will prohibit for all future time any monopoly of railroads or other transportation companies from laying embargoes upon the trade between states by a system of excessive freights or unjust discrimination against buyers or shippers in any trade by the allowance of rebates or drawbacks to any persons whatever. This is a matter of national importance, and only the most decided action can protect you and us from the scheming strength of these monopolies."
How the whole question appeared to an intelligent oil man, one, too, who had had the courage to resist in the attack on the trade in Cleveland, and who still was master of his own refinery, is shown by the following letter to the Cleveland Herald:
Eds. Herald: As I understand, the financial success of this South Improvement Company is based upon contracts made with the officers (either individually or otherwise) of all the railroads leading out of the Oil Region, by which they (the South Improvement Company) receive as a draw-back certain excess of freights, not only on every barrel of oil shipped out of the Oil Regions by or to themselves, but also on every barrel of oil shipped out of the Oil Regions by or to other refiners, or dealers, or consumers.
The first advance in freights to Cleveland has already been made, viz.: on crude oil, from forty cents to sixty-five cents per barrel. This seemingly slight advance has already caused one party that I know of to pay an excess of over $2,000. Other firms have paid larger or smaller sums, according to the quantity of oil they were compelled to have. This excess, we suppose, goes directly to swell the profits of the South Improvement Company.
This is only the beginning. The whole extent of the evil that may be done to producers, refiners, dealers and consumers, and to the public generally, if this corporation—or rather combination of corporations—is successful, is so deep and varied and far reaching, that it cannot be fully comprehended and I will not attempt it in detail, but only suggest a few inquiries.
Where will be their limits?
How high will they advance freights?
How low will they force the price of crude?
How high refined?
Will they adopt a liberal policy for producers, or will they destroy their interests and crush out the oil production entirely? Will they be liberal with dealers and consumers and adopt uniform rules with steady prices, or will they take advantage of times and circumstances and force ruinous corners upon the trade?
These and many other questions are pertinent, for clearly if they can control the shipment they can control the price of oil, and if they can control the price to the extent of twenty-five cents per barrel, they can control it entirely. If they can control it entirely, where will be their limit? Who will dictate a line of policy to them? And may not one of the greatest and most important industries of this country be destroyed and hundreds of thousands of business men be made bankrupt if this combination is successful and has the disposition to work ruin? I do not say that I think they will work ruin. They undoubtedly will attempt to make all the money they can and will pursue such a policy as in their judgment will bring them the utmost amount of profits, regardless of consequences, but what that policy will be, of course, we can not judge.
It is understood that the parties to this combination excuse themselves and their action before the public by reciting the undoubted facts in the case. They are these: that the refining of oil as a business has been of late and is now overdone; that the capacity for refining petroleum in this country exceeds the production in the ratio of three barrels to one; that the railroads have reduced freights to the lowest extreme, and were even losing money; that refiners, in spite of all their efforts, could not earn their running expenses; that the special interests of Cleveland as a refining point were in danger of being lost; and that this great business might go to other points, and the millions of dollars in refining property here be sacrificed, and thousands of men thrown out of employment; that real estate would depreciate, and that many other collateral troubles connected with the loss of this business would follow; and that now, by the consummation of the plans of this monopoly, all these evils will be avoided.
In answer to this—assuming that the refining interest of Cleveland is a unit in this corporation, that of Pittsburg another, that of New York another, and that of Philadelphia another—it follows that it is immaterial to the stockholders of the "South Improvement Company" whether the oil produced at the Oil Regions is refined by them at their works in Cleveland, or at Pittsburg, or in New York, or in Philadelphia. It would not affect their dividends at all, provided they refined the oil at the cheapest point for them to do so. That place might be Cleveland; it might be Pittsburg, or it might not be either of them; but it might be New York or Philadelphia. Therefore, so long as it is for the pecuniary advantage of this combination to refine at Cleveland they may do so, but no longer, and should it be for the interest of the combination to discontinue their works at Cleveland, what would become of the oil-refining interest at this point? That question everyone can answer. Therefore I see little weight to the argument used that this monopoly is for the benefit of Cleveland. Hence, I do not consider the special danger to Cleveland by any means as averted.
But without discussing this position, its advantages or disadvantages, as an oil-refining center—for it has both in a marked degree—on general principles I will assert that the laws of business and manufacturing interests, like the laws of supply and demand, are unchangeable, and that a prosperity such as this monopoly would bring us is a forced prosperity, consequently not permanent, but temporary and fictitious in character, and damaging in its ultimate results; and more than all this, if the refining prosperity of Cleveland could be re-established permanently by means of the success of this monopoly, we could not afford to accept it at the cost proposed, viz., that of enriching ourselves at the expense of those who are weaker, but are in power.
We have just refused to build an opera-house because we should, by using the only means we could command to do so, compromise our morality. How much more emphatically should we refuse to accept any benefits to our city which have their origin in unmitigated fraud! In the opera-house instance just cited the managers use no compulsion, no unwilling man was to be forced by them to buy a ticket and take his chances; but the South Improvement Company force every producer to take a less price for his oil without rendering him an equivalent.
They force every refiner who is in their way to prosecute his business against them as competitors at fearful odds, and perhaps at the expense of a royalty on every barrel; or to sell his works and abandon his business to the South Improvement Company at any paltry price they may dictate.
They also force every consumer of oil on this broad continent, after paying all the legitimate cost of producing, refining, and transportation on oil, to pay them also an additional tribute—for what? Absolutely nothing.
The railroad companies derive their existence and power to act under charters granted them by the citizens (through their Legislatures) of the several states in which they exist. This charter is a contract made by and between the citizens of the one part and the railroad company on the other, and both parties bind themselves alike to the faithful performance of the conditions of the contract. One of the fundamental provisions of this contract is that there shall be no discrimination shown to any individuals, or body of individuals, as to facilities or privileges of doing business with such railroad company; on the contrary, the railroad company is expressly required in all cases to charge uniform rates for the transportation of freight and passengers.
They must, if desired, carry the freight for A that they do for B, AND ALWAYS AT THE SAME PRICE. Any deviation from this stipulated condition is a wilful and fraudulent violation of their contract. If it is by means of such violations of contracts on the part of the several railroad companies connected with them that the South Improvement Company expects success, then the whole gigantic STRUCTURE IS ESTABLISHED UPON FRAUD AS A BASIS, AND IT OUGHT TO COME DOWN.
Very respectfully,
Cleveland, Ohio, March 5, 1872. F. M. Backus.
The oil men now met the very plausible reasons given by the members of the company for their combination more intelligently than at first. There were grave abuses in the business, they admitted; there was too great refining capacity; but this they argued was a natural development in a new business whose growth had been extraordinary and whose limits were by no means defined. Time and experience would regulate it. Give the refiners open and regular freights, with no favours to any one, and the stronger and better equipped would live, the others die—but give all a chance. In fact, time and energy would regulate all the evils of which they complained if there were fair play.
The oil men were not only encouraged by public opinion and by getting their minds clear on the merits of their case; they were upheld by repeated proofs of aid from all sides; even the women of the region were asking what they could do, and were offering to wear their "black velvet bonnets" all summer if necessary. Solid support came from the independent refiners and shippers in other parts of the country who were offering to stand in with them in their contest. New York was already one of the chief refining centres of 
HENRY H. ROGERS IN 1872
Now President of the National Transit Company and a director of the Standard Oil Company. The opposition to the South Improvement Company among the New York refiners was led by Mr. Rogers.
the country, and the South Improvement Company had left it entirely out of its combination. As incensed as the creek itself, the New York interests formed an association, and about the middle of March sent a committee of three, with H. H. Rogers, of Charles Pratt and Company, at its head, to Oil City, to consult with the Producers' Union. Their arrival in the Oil Regions was a matter of great satisfaction. What made the oil men most exultant, however, was their growing belief that the railroads—the crux of the whole scheme—were weakening.
However fair the great scheme may have appeared to the railroad kings in the privacy of the council chamber, it began to look dark as soon as it was dragged into the open, and signs of a scuttle soon appeared. General G. B. McClellan, president of the Atlantic and Great Western, sent to the very first mass-meeting this telegram:
New York, February 27, 1872.
Neither the Atlantic and Great Western, nor any of its officers, are interested in the South Improvement Company. Of course the policy of the road is to accommodate the petroleum interest.
G. B. McClellan.
A great applause was started, only to be stopped by the hisses of a group whose spokesman read the following:
Contract with South Improvement Company signed by George B. McClellan, president for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. I only signed it after it was signed by all the other parties.
Jay Gould.
The railroads tried in various ways to appease the oil men. They did not enforce the new rates. They had signed the contracts, they declared, only after the South Improvement Company had assured them that all the refineries and producers were to be taken in. Indeed, they seem to have realised within a fortnight that the scheme was doomed, and to have been quite ready to meet cordially a committee of oil men which went East to demand that the railroads revoke their contracts with the South Improvement Company. This committee, which was composed of twelve persons, three of them being the New York representatives already mentioned, began its work by an interview with Colonel Scott at the Colonial Hotel in Philadelphia. With evident pride the committee wrote back to the Producers' Union: "Mr. Scott, differing in this respect from the railroad representatives whom we afterwards met, notified us that he would call upon us at our hotel." An interesting account of their interview was given to the Hepburn Committee in 1879 by W. T. Scheide, one of the number:
We saw Mr. Scott on the 18th of March, 1872, in Philadelphia, and he said to us that he was very much surprised to hear of this agitation in the Oil Regions; that the object of the railroads in making this contract with the South Improvement Company was to obtain an evener to pool the freight—pool the oil freights among the different roads; that they had been cutting each other on oil freights for a number of years, and had not made any money out of it, although it was a freight they should have made money from; that they had endeavoured to make an arrangement among themselves, but had always failed; he said that they supposed that the gentlemen representing the South Improvement Company represented the petroleum trade, but as he was now convinced they did not, he would be very glad to make an arrangement with this committee, who undoubtedly did represent the petroleum trade; the committee told him that they could not make any such contract; that they had no legal authority to do so; he said that could be easily fixed, because the Legislature was then in session, and by going to Harrisburg a charter could be obtained in a very few days; the committee still said that they would not agree to any such arrangement, that they did not think the South Improvement Company's contract was a good one, and they were instructed to have it broken, and so they did not feel that they could accept a similar one, even if they had the power.
Leaving Colonel Scott the committee went on to New York, where they stayed for about a week, closely watched by the newspapers, all of which treated the "Oil War" as a national affair. Their first interview of importance in New York was with Commodore Vanderbilt, who said to them very frankly at the beginning of their talk: "I told Billy (W. H. Vanderbilt) not to have anything to do with that scheme." The committee in its report said that the Commodore fully agreed with them upon the justice of their claims, and frequently asserted his objections to any combination seeking a monopoly of other men's property and interests. He told them that if what they asked was that the railroads should fix a tariff which, while giving them a paying rate, would secure the oil men against drawbacks, rebates, or variations in the tariff, he would willingly co-operate. The Commodore ended his amiable concessions by reading the committee a letter just received from the South Improvement Company offering to co-operate with the producers and refiners or to compromise existing differences. The oil men told the Commodore emphatically that they would not treat with the South Improvement Company or with anyone interested in it nor would they recognise its existence. And this stand they kept throughout their negotiations though repeated efforts were made by the railroad men, particularly those of the Central system, to persuade them to a compromise.
At the meeting with the officials of the Erie and the Atlantic and Great Western the committee was incensed by being offered a contract similar to that of the South Improvement Company—on consideration that the original be allowed to stand. It seemed impossible to the railroad men that the oil men really meant what they said and would make no terms save on the basis of no discriminations of any kind to anybody. They evidently believed that if the committee had a chance to sign a contract as profitable as that of the South Improvement Company, all their fair talk of "fair play"—"the duty of the common carrier" — "equal chance to all in transportation"—would at once evaporate. They failed utterly at first to comprehend that the Oil War of 1872 was an uprising against an injustice, and that the moral wrong of the thing had taken so deep a hold of the oil country that the people as a whole had combined to restore right. General McClellan of the Atlantic and Great Western and Mr. Diven, one of the Erie's directors, were the only ones who gave the committee any support in their position.
The final all-important conference with the railroad men was held on March 25, at the Erie offices. Horace Clark, president of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, was chairman of this meeting, and, according to H. H. Rogers' testimony before the Hepburn Committee, in 1879, there were present, besides the oil men, Colonel Scott, General McClellan, Director Diven, William H. Vanderbilt, Mr. Stebbins, and George Hall. The meeting had not been long in session before Mr. Watson, president of the South Improvement Company, and John D. Rockefeller presented themselves for admission. Up to this time Mr. Rockefeller had kept well out of sight in the affair. He had given no interviews, offered no explanations. He had allowed the president of the company to wrestle with the excitement in his own way, but things were now in such critical shape that he came forward in a last attempt to save the organisation by which he had been able to concentrate in his own hands the refining interests of Cleveland. With Mr. Watson he knocked for admission to the council going on in the Erie offices. The oil men flatly refused to let them in. A dramatic scene followed, Mr. Clark, the chairman, protesting in agitated tones against shutting out his "life-long friend, Watson." The oil men were obdurate. They would have nothing to do with anybody concerned with the South Improvement Company. So determined were they that although Mr. Watson came in he was obliged at once to withdraw. A Times reporter who witnessed the little scene between the two supporters of the tottering company after its president was turned out of the meeting remarked sympathetically that Mr. Rockefeller soon went away, "looking pretty blue."
The acquiescence of the "railroad kings" in the refusal of the oil men to recognise representatives of the South Improvement Company was followed by an unwilling promise to break the contracts with the company. Another strong effort was made to persuade the independents to make the same contracts on condition that they shipped as much oil, but they would not hear of it. They demanded open rates, with no rebates to anyone. Horace Clark and W. H. Vanderbilt particularly stuck for this arrangement. Their opposition to the oil men's position was so strong that the latter in reporting it to the Union said: "We feel it proper to say that we are in no rise indebted to these gentlemen for any courtesy or consideration received at their hands." So well did the committee fight its battle and so strongly were they supported by the New York refiners that the railroads were finally obliged to consent to revoke the contracts and to make a new one embodying the views of the Oil Regions. The contract finally signed at this meeting by H. F. Clark for the Lake Shore road, O. H. P. Archer for the Erie, W. H. Vanderbilt for the Central, George B. McClellan for the Atlantic and Great Western, and Thomas A. Scott for the Pennsylvania, agreed that all shipping of oil should be made on "a basis of perfect equality to all shippers, producers, and refiners, and that no rebates, drawbacks, or other arrangements of any character shall be made or allowed that will give any party the slightest difference in rates or discriminations of any character whatever."[9] It was also agreed that the rates should not be liable I to change either for increase or decrease without first giving William Hasson, president of the Producers' Union, at least ninety days' notice.
The same rate was put on refined oil from Cleveland, Pitts-burg and the creek, to Eastern shipping points; that is, Mr. Rockefeller could send his oil from Cleveland to New York at $1.50 per barrel; so could his associates in Pittsburg; and this was what it cost the refiner on the creek; but the latter had this advantage: he was at the wells. Mr. Rockefeller and his Pittsburg allies were miles away, and it cost them, by the new contract, fifty cents to get a barrel of crude to their works. The Oil Regions meant that geographical position should count, that the advantages Mr. Rockefeller had by his command of the Western market and by his access to a cheap Eastward waterway should be considered as well as their own position beside the raw product.
This contract was the first effective thrust into the great bubble. Others followed in quick succession. On the 28th the railroads officially annulled their contracts with the company. About the same time the Pennsylvania Legislature repealed the charter. On March 30 the committee of oil men sent to Washington to be present during the Congressional Investigation, now about to begin, spent an hour with President Grant. They wired home that on their departure he said: "Gentlemen, I have noticed the progress of monopolies, and have long been convinced that the national government would have to interfere and protect the people against them." The President and the members of Congress of both parties continued to show interest in the investigation, and there was little or no dissent from the final judgment of the committee, given early in May, that the South Improvement Company was the "most gigantic and daring conspiracy" a free country had ever seen. This decision finished the work. The "Monster" was slain, the Oil Regions proclaimed exultantly.
And now came the question, What should they do about the blockade established against the members of the South Improvement Company? The railroads they had forgiven; should they forgive the members of the South Improvement Company? This question came up immediately on the repeal of the charter. The first severe test to which their temper was put was early in April, when the Fisher Brothers, a firm of Oil City brokers, sold some 20,000 barrels of oil to the Standard Oil Company. The moment the sale was noised a perfect uproar burst forth. Indignant telegrams came from every direction condemning the brokers. "Betrayal," "infamy," "mercenary achievement," "the most unkindest cut of all," was the gist of them. From New York, Porter and Archbold telegraphed annulling all their contracts with the guilty brokers. The Oil Exchange passed votes of censure, and the Producers' Union turned them out. A few days later it was learned that a dealer on the creek was preparing to ship 5,000 barrels to the same firm. A mob gathered about the cars and refused to let them leave. It was only by stationing a strong guard that the destruction of the oil was prevented.
But something had to be done. The cooler heads argued that the blockade, which had lasted now forty days, and from which the region had of course suffered enormous loss, should be entirely lifted. The objects for which it had been established had been accomplished—that is, the South Improvement Company had been destroyed—now let free trade be established. If anybody wanted to sell to "conspirators," it was his lookout. A long and excited meeting of men from the entire oil country was held at Oil City to discuss the question.
The president of the Petroleum Producers' Union, Captain William Hasson, in anticipation of the meeting, had sent to the officers of all the railroads which had been parties to the South Improvement Company, the following telegram:
Office Petroleum Producers' Union,
Oil City, Pennsylvania, April 4, 1872.
We are informed by parties known as members of the South Improvement Company, now representing the Standard Oil Company, who are in the market overbidding other shippers, that all contracts between the railroad companies and South
Improvement and Standard Companies are cancelled. Will you please give us official notice whether such contracts are cancelled or not? The people in mass-meeting assembled have instructed the executive committee not to sell or ship any oil to these parties until we receive such notice. Please answer at once, as we fear violence and destruction of property.
Signed William Hasson, President.
General McClellan, Horace F. Clark, Thomas A. Scott, and W. H. Vanderbilt all sent emphatic telegrams in reply, asserting that the South Improvement contracts had been cancelled and that their roads had no understanding of any nature in regard to freights with the Standard Oil Company. "The only existing arrangement is with you," telegraphed General McClellan. W. H. Vanderbilt reminded Mr. Hasson that the agreement of March 25, between the railroad companies and the joint committee of producers and refiners, was on a basis of perfect equality for all, and the inference was, how could Mr. Vanderbilt possibly make a special arrangement with the Standard? From the Standard Oil Company the following was received:
Cleveland, Ohio, April 8, 1872.
To Captain William Hasson: In answer to your telegram, this company holds no contract with the railroad companies or any of them, or with the South Improvement Company. The contracts between the South Improvement Company and the railroads have been cancelled, and I am informed you have been so advised by telegram. I state unqualifiedly that reports circulated in the Oil Region and elsewhere, that this company, or any member of it, threatened to depress oil, are false.
John D. Rockefeller, President.
After reading all the telegrams the committee submitted its report. The gist of it was that since they had official assurance that the hated contracts were cancelled, and that since they had secured from all the trunk lines a "fair rate of freight, equal to all shippers and producers, great or small, with an abolition of the system of rebates and drawbacks," the time had arrived "to open the channels of trade to all parties desiring to purchase or deal in oil on terms of equality." The report was received with "approbation and delight" and put an official end to the "Oil War."
But no number of resolutions could wipe out the memory of the forty days of terrible excitement and loss which the region had suffered. No triumph could stifle the suspicion and the bitterness which had been sown broadcast through the region. Every particle of independent manhood in these men whose very life was independent action had been outraged. Their sense of fair play, the saving force of the region in the days before law and order had been established, had been violated. These were things which could not be forgotten. There henceforth could be no trust in those who had devised a scheme which, the producers believed, was intended to rob them of their property.
It was inevitable that under the pressure of their indignation and resentment some person or persons should be fixed upon as responsible, and should be hated accordingly. Before the lifting of the embargo this responsibility had been fixed. It was the Standard Oil Company of Cleveland, so the Oil Regions decided, which was at the bottom of the business, and the "Mephistopheles of the Cleveland company," as they put it, was John D. Rockefeller. Even the Cleveland Herald acknowledged this popular judgment. "Whether justly or unjustly," the editor wrote, "Cleveland has the odium of having originated the scheme." This opinion gained ground as the days passed. The activity of the president of the Standard in New York, in trying to save the contracts with the railroads, and his constant appearance with Mr. Watson, and the fact brought out by the Congressional Investigation that a larger block of the South Improvement Company's stock was owned in the Standard than in any other firm, strengthened the belief. But what did more than anything else to fix the conviction was what they had learned of the career of the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland. Before the Oil War the company had been known simply as one of several successful firms in that city. It drove close bargains, but it paid promptly, and was considered a desirable customer. Now the Oil Regions learned for the first time of the sudden and phenomenal expansion of the company. Where there had been at the beginning of 1872 twenty-six refining firms in Cleveland, there were but six left. In three months before and during the Oil War the Standard had absorbed twenty plants. It was generally charged by the Cleveland refiners that Mr. Rockefeller had used the South Improvement scheme to persuade or compel his rivals to sell to him. "Why," cried the oil men, "the Standard Oil Company has done already in Cleveland what the South Improvement Company set out to do for the whole country, and it has done it by the same means."
By the time the blockade was raised, another unhappy conviction was fixed on the Oil Regions—the Standard Oil Company meant to carry out the plans of the exploded South Improvement Company. The promoters of the scheme were partly responsible for the report. Under the smart of their defeat they talked rather more freely than their policy of silence justified, and their remarks were quoted widely. Mr. Rockefeller was reported in the Derrick to have said to a prominent oil man of Oil City that the South Improvement Company could work under the charter of the Standard Oil Company, and to have predicted that in less than two months the gentlemen would be glad to join him. The newspapers made much of the following similar story reported by a New York correspondent:
A prominent Cleveland member of what was the South Improvement Company had said within two days: "The business now will be done by the Standard Oil Company. We have a rate of freight by water from Cleveland to New York at seventy cents. No man in the trade shall make a dollar this year. We purpose to manipulating the market as to run the price of crude on the creek as low as two and a half. We mean
to show the world that the South Improvement Company was organised for business and means business in spite of opposition. The same thing has been said in substance by the leading Philadelphia member."
"The trade here regards the Standard Oil Company as simply taking the place of the South Improvement Company and as being ready at any moment to make the same attempt to control the trade as its progenitors did," said the New York Bulletin about the middle of April. And the Cleveland Herald discussed the situation under the heading, "South Improvement Company alias Standard Oil Company." The effect of these reports in the Oil Regions was most disastrous. Their open war became a kind of guerilla opposition. Those who sold oil to the Standard were ostracised, and its president was openly scorned.
If Mr. Rockefeller had been an ordinary man the outburst of popular contempt and suspicion which suddenly poured on his head would have thwarted and crushed him. But he was no ordinary man. He had the powerful imagination to see what might be done with the oil business if it could be centered in his hands—the intelligence to analyse the problem into its elements and to find the key to control. He had the essential element of all great achievement, a steadfastness to a purpose once conceived which nothing can crush. The Oil Regions might rage, call him a conspirator, and all those who sold him oil, traitors; the railroads might withdraw their contracts and the Legislature annul his charter; undisturbed and unresting he kept at his great purpose. Even if his nature had not been such as to forbid him to abandon an enterprise in which he saw promise of vast profits, even if he had not had a mind which, stopped by a wall, burrows under or creeps around, he would nevertheless have been forced to desperate efforts to keep up his business. He had increased his refining capacity in Cleveland to 10,000 barrels on the strength of the South Improvement Company contracts. These contracts were annulled, and in their place was one signed by officials of all the oil-shipping roads refusing rebates to everybody. His geographical position was such that it cost him under these new contracts fifty cents more to get oil from the wells to New York than it did his rivals on the creek. True, he had many counterbalancing advantages—a growing Western market almost entirely in his hands, lake traffic, close proximity to all sorts of accessories to his manufacturing, but this contract put him on a level with his rivals. By his size he should have better terms than they. What did he do?
He got a rebate. Seven years later Mr. Rockefeller's partner, H. M. Flagler, was called before a commission of the Ohio State Legislature appointed to investigate railroads. He was asked for the former contracts between his company and the railroads, and among others he presented one showing that from "the first of April until the middle of November, 1872," their East-bound rate was $1.25, twenty-five cents less than that set by the agreement of March 25th, between the oil men and the railroads.[10] The discrepancy between the date Mr. Flagler gives for this contract and that of Mr. Vanderbilt's telegram to Mr. Hasson stating that his road had no contract with the Standard Oil Company, April 6, and of Mr. Rockefeller's own telegram stating he had no contracts with the railroads, April 8, the writer is unable to explain. How had Mr. Rockefeller been able to get this rebate? Simply as he had always done—by virtue of the quantity he shipped. He was able to say to Mr. Vanderbilt, I can make a contract to ship sixty car-loads of oil a day over your road—nearly 4,800 barrels; I cannot give this to you regularly unless you will make me a concession; and Mr. Vanderbilt made the concession while he was signing the contract with the oil men. Of course the rate was secret, and Mr. Rockefeller probably understood now, as he had not two months before, how essen-tial it was that he keep it secret. His task was more difficult now, for he had an enemy active, clamorous, contemptuous, whose suspicions had reached that acute point where they could believe nothing but evil of him—the producers and independent refiners of the Oil Regions. It was utterly impossible that he should ever silence this enemy, for their points of view were diametrically opposed.
They believed in independent effort—every man for himself and fair play for all. They wanted competition, loved open fight. They considered that all business should be done openly; that the railways were bound as public carriers to give equal rates; that any combination which favoured one firm or one locality at the expense of another was unjust and illegal. This belief long held by many of the oil men had been crystallised by the uprising into a common sentiment. It had become the moral code of the region.
Mr. Rockefeller's point of view was different. He believed that the "good of all" was in a combination which would control the business as the South Improvement Company proposed to control it. Such a combination would end at once all the abuses the business suffered. As rebates and special rates were essential to this control, he favoured them. Of course Mr. Rockefeller must have known that the railroad was a common carrier, and that the common law forbade discrimination. But he knew that the railroads had not obeyed the laws governing them, that they had regularly granted special rates and rebates to those who had large amounts of freight. That is, you were able to bargain with the railroads as you did with a man carrying on a strictly private business depending in no way on a public franchise. Moreover, Mr. Rockefeller probably believed that, in spite of the agreements, if he did not get rebates somebody else would; that they were for the wariest, the shrewdest, the most persistent. If somebody was to get rebates, why not he? This point of view was no uncommon one. Many men held it and felt a sort of scorn, as practical men always do for theorists, when it was contended that the shipper was as wrong in taking rates as the railroads in granting them.
Thus, on one hand there was an exaggerated sense of personal independence, on the other a firm belief in combination; on one hand a determination to root out the vicious system of rebates practised by the railway, on the other a determination to keep it alive and profit by it. Those theories which the body of oil men held as vital and fundamental Mr. Rockefeller and his associates either did not comprehend or were deaf to. This lack of comprehension by many men of what seems to other men to be the most obvious principles of justice is not rare. Many men who are widely known as good, share it. Mr. Rockefeller was "good." There was no more faithful Baptist in Cleveland than he. Every enterprise of that church he had supported liberally from his youth. He gave to its poor. He visited its sick. He wept with its suffering. Moreover, he gave unostentatiously to many outside charities of whose worthiness he was satisfied. He was simple and frugal in his habits. He never went to the theatre, never drank wine. He gave much time to the training of his children, seeking to develop in them his own habits of economy and of charity. Yet he was willing to strain every nerve to obtain for himself special and unjust privileges from the railroads which were bound to ruin every man in the oil business not sharing them with him. He was willing to array himself against the combined better sentiment of a whole industry, to oppose a popular movement aimed at righting an injustice, so revolting to one's sense of fair play as that of railroad discriminations. Religious emotion and sentiments of charity, propriety and self-denial seem to have taken the place in him of notions of justice and regard for the rights of others.
Unhampered, then, by any ethical consideration, undis-mayed by the clamour of the Oil Regions, believing firmly as ever that relief for the disorders in the oil business lay in combining and controlling the entire refining interest, this man of vast patience and foresight took up his work. That work now was to carry out some kind of a scheme which would limit the output of refined oil. He had put his competitors in Cleveland out of the way. He had secured special privileges in transportation, but there were still too many refineries at work to make it possible to put up the price of oil four cents a gallon. It was certain, too, that no scheme could be worked to do that unless the Oil Regions could be mollified. That now was Mr. Rockefeller's most important business. Just how he began is not known. It is only certain that the day after the newspapers of the Oil Regions printed the report of the Congressional Committee on Commerce denouncing the South Improvement Company as "one of the most gigantic and dangerous conspiracies ever attempted," and declaring that if it had not been checked in time it "would have resulted in the absorption and arbitrary control of trade in all the great interests of the country."[11] Mr. Rockefeller and several other members of the South Improvement Company appeared in the Oil Regions. They had come, they explained, to present a new plan of co-operation, and to show the oil men that it was to their interest to go into it. Whether they would be able to obtain by persuasion what they had failed to obtain by assault was now an interesting uncertainty.
- ↑ A History of the Rise and Fall of the South Improvement Company. Testimony of W. H. Doane, page 45.
- ↑ A History of the Rise and Fall of the South Improvement Company. Testimony of Josiah Lombard, page 57.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 8. Organisation of the Petroleum Producers' Union of 1872.
- ↑ See page 56.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 9. Charter of the South Improvement Company.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 10. Draft of contract between the South Improvement Company and producers of petroleum in the valley of the Allegheny and its tributaries. Dated January, 1872.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 11. Extracts from the testimony of W. G. Warden.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 12. Extracts from the testimony of Peter H. Watson.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 13. Contract of March 25, 1872.
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 14. Testimony of Henry M. Flagler.
- ↑ The report of the committee of Congress which investigated the South Improvement Company was not made until May 7, over a month after the organisation was destroyed by the cancelling of the contracts with the railroads.