Oil Works, of Rochester, New York-H. B. and C. M. Everest, father and son-sold to H. H. Rogers, J. D. Arch-bold and Ambrose McGregor of the Standard Oil Company, for $200,000, a three-fourths interest in that concern. The purchase was not made for the gentlemen in whose names it appeared, but for the Standard. Thus, when on the witness-stand J. D. Archbold was questioned as to the real ownership of the stock which had been bought in his name, the examiner wanted to know whether the purchasers represented themselves or somebody else.

The Vacuum manufactured principally lubricating oils used on harness and car wheels. It controlled several valuable patents and had been doing a prosperous business for a number of years. By the terms of the sale in 1879 the Everests remained as managers of the refinery, on a salary of $io,oooa year. They also contracted to enter into no outside oil business for ten years. The business policy of the Vacuum, including the fixing of salaries, was dictated by a board of directors made up of Messrs. Rogers, Archbold, McGregor and the two Everests. The meetings of this board were held at the office of the Standard Oil Company, in New York or in Rochester, as convenient. So far as can be inferred from the testimony, the works were well managed, the dividends large, arid the employees well treated. In i88o the salesman of the concern, J. Scott Wilson, decided to leave the Vacuum and go into business for himself. The decision seems natural, for until 1878 Mr. Wilson had carried on an independent oil business of one kind or another. He had been a partner in a refinery and understood making oils. He had been a jobber on his own account before going with the Everests, and as such had had a considerable clientele. Wilson told one of his fellow employees, Charles B. Matthews, of his decision, and asked him to go with him. Matthews had been with the Everests about the same length of time as Wilson-some two years. Previous to this engagement he had been a farmer, and his acquaintance with the Vacuum people had come about by his drilling on his farm for oil. Matthews was worth some $20,000, but he had had no experience in oil refining, for his duties at the Vacuum had been mainly looking after outside business-for instance, he had several times gone to New York to consult J. D. Archbold and H. H. Rogers concerning business matters, and particularly concerning patents owned by the Vacuum, of whose validity there was some doubt. For some time Matthews had been dissatisfied with his salary-he had asked for a raise, but had not got it-a fact which probably made him more favourable to Wilson's suggestion. The two men decided finally to form a company and to build an oil refinery at Buffalo. Wilson said on the witness-stand that he did not want to handle the Vacuum processes in the new works, but to make only the oils with which he was familiar. Matthews, however, had convinced himself that the patents which covered certain of the Vacuum processes and apparatus were invalid, and insisted that they build at

least one Vacuum still. The question of what steps the Vacuum might take to stop them was discussed, and according to Wilson's testimony Matthews remarked that he expected they would pay $100,000 or $I~o,000 to prevent their going into business. Matthews's remark was natural enough, considering the conditions under which outside refiners were forced to do business. It is probable that no man undertook any kind of independent oil business at that time, particularly oil refining, without considering the possibility of being driven to sell. The new firm needed an experienced stillman accustomed to the Vacuum processes, and early in i88i they asked one Albert Miller, a stillman in the Vacuum works, to join them. "If we have Miller," they told each other, "we can go to the customers of the Vacuum Oil Company and say to them: 'We have the same process and the same apparatus and the same oils as the Vacuum Oil Company, and we have their former superintendent, Mr. Miller, to manufacture the oils.'" Miller had been with the ~verests for several years, having worked his way up from a labourer at two dollars a day to a position where, as stillman, he was paid by the hour, and earned from $1,200 to $1,400 a year. He and his wife had been thrifty, and had several thousand dollars in property. Miller thought there was money in the new venture, and consented to join Wilson and Matthews. The three set about carrying out their plans before they notified their employers of their intention to leave -Miller going so far as to order certain iron castings needed in the construction of their works, made after patterns owned by the Evere~sts. He had these made at the foundry patronised by the Ever ests. He paid for them himself, and carried them away, presumably giving the impression that they were for his. employers. Early in March Matthews and Miller notified C. M. Everest, who was in charge, his father being in California, that they were going to leave and establish at Buffalo an inpendent oil refinery. Mr. Everest, surprised out of discretion by the news, told them plainly that although he had nothing against them personally, he should do all in his power to injure the proposed concern. He asked them where they expected to get oil, and they replied that they would get it from the Atlas Refining Company, an independent concern in Buffalo, which had its own pipe-line. "You will wake up some morning and find it is in the Standard," replied Mr. I Everest. Apparently Mr. Everest's threat had little influence on the men, for they pushed the building of the works in Buffalo as rapidly as possible. On March is they signed an agreement to carry on the proposed business for five years, each man to put in $2,000. A month later the three men, with two relatives of Matthews, organised a stock company-the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company, Limited-with a capital of $40,000. Although Miller had gone to Buffalo the first of March with Matthews and Wilson, he returned frequently to Roches-ter to see his family. On several of these visits he saw C. M. Everest, who never failed to ask about the progress of the new concern, and to warn him that the Vacuum Company would never allow it to do business. "Don't you think, Miller," Everest said to him once, "that it would be better for you to leave those men and have $20,000 deposited to your wife's credit than to go to these parties?" Miller affirms that he answered ilthat he had gone with the new firm in good faith, and thought he ought not to leave them. About two months after the new firm began building, the elder Everest, who had been in California, returned to Rochester, and soon after had several interviews with Miller. He impressed on the man, as his son had done, that the Buffalo ILubricating Works would never succeed. He told him that the Vacuum meant to bring suit against them for infringing their patents, and would get an injunction and stop the works; that Miller would lose all the money he had put in. To save himself, Everest advised Miller to come back to the Vacuum. "But that would leave them in a pretty bad fix," Miller said. "That is exactly what I want to do," replied Everest. The fear that the new concern might be ruined through the hostility of the Vacuum, and he lose his savings, seems to have preyed on Miller's mind. He took his wife into his confidence, and she, too, became alarmed. He began to neglect his work in Buffalo. He was often away at nights. Matthews began to be worried by Miller's neglect and absence, and to watch the stations to find, if possible, where he went. Miller's question now became, how could he get away from the Buffalo firm? He had signed for the company a note for $s,ooo. He was under contract for a ~rm of years. He discussed the question with the Everests, and they advised him to see his lawyer. On the seventh of June, according to H. B. Everest,* who went with him to help present the case, Miller did consult George Truesdale, a lawyer of Rochester, who had always handled his business. Mr. Truesdale afterwards told in court what occurred:

"Mr. Everest stated that Miller had left his employ, and got engaged with another oil concern in the City of Buffalo; that he desired to get back again; he wanted him to come back; and he said he supposed Miller had explained to me his situation, and the obligations he was under to the Buffalo company. I told him that he had made some statements to me about his contract with the parties in Buffalo; that he had spoken about being an endorser or party to the note made by, I think he said, Matthews and Wilson and himself, and I think another party-four or five of them had made, endorsed a note to raise money, done to start the Buffalo business, and that he had a contract or an arrangeme~ with them to go into a company at Buffalo to manufacture oil, and that he wanted to know how he could get out of that arrangement. I stated what I had said to Miller, that he would, of course, be liable on the note, if he was charged properly when it became due, and that if he wanted to get out of that arrangement my a~dvice to him had been to see if he couldn't get released; if they wouldn't release himor buy out his interest; then, if he couldn't do that, the only other way I saw was for him to leave them and take the consequences. I told him that I did not know the exact terms of his contract, but, if he had entered into a contract and violated it, I presumed there would be a liability for damages, as well as a liability for the debts of the Buffalo panty. Mr. Miller and Everest both talked on the subject, and Mr. Everest says, 'I think there is other ways for Miller to get out of it.' I told him I saw no way except either to back out or to sell out; no other honourable way. Mr. Everest says, substantially, I think, in these words: 'Suppose he should arrange the machinery so it would bust up, or smash up, what would the consequences be ?'~omething to that effect. 'Well,' I says, 'in my opinion, if it is negligently, carelessly done, not purposely done, he would be only civilly liable for damages caused by his negligence; but if it was wilfully done, there would be a further criminal liability for malicious injury to the property of the parties, the company.' Mr. Everest said he thought there wouldn't be anything only civil liability, and said that would-he referred to the fact that I had been police justice, had some experience in criminal law-and he said that he would like to have me look up the law c~efiilly on that point, and that they would see me again."

Miller's version of this interview is similar:

"I think Mr. Truesdale or myself, I am not positive which, asked the question what means I could take to get out of the company. H. B. says, 'There is a good many ways he could get Out.' Either Mr. Truesdale or myself asked him how. 'Well,' he says, 'he can cut up something or do something to injure them; something of that kind, to get out'; H. B. said this. Mr. Truesdale spoke up and said, 'You must be very careful what you do or you will lay yourself criminally liable.' Mr. Everest says to me, 'There is ways that you can get out.' I says to him, 'You wouldn:t want me to do anything, would you, to lay myself liable?' I think Mr. Truesdale spoke up and says, 'You must be very careful or you will end in state's prison,'-that is, I. There was considerable conversation I cannot just exactly remember; I have told all I recollect at present. Mr. Truesdale asked me if I had a contract with the Buffalo parties; I told him I had; 'Well,' he says, 'the best thing you can do is to stay there, then,' or something of that kind. I cannot say those were his exact words. H. B. Everest says, 'If he comes back with us, why, we will look after him.' I think Mr. Truesdale said that these men would be after me for leaving them. I think I told him the terms of the Contract. . . . Mr. Everest says, 'They will have to catch Miller before they can do anything to him; we will take care of him.' " *

In a talk with Miller a little while after this, C. M. Everest said to him: "You go back to Buffalo and construct the pipes so that they cannot make a good oil, and then, I think, if you would give them a little scare. You might scare them a little, they not knowing anything about the business, and you know how to do it." On account of Miller's neglect, the first still in the new refinery was not ready to be fired until June ~;-it was an ordinary still, as was the second one built-the third only was built for the Vacuum process. As soon as the still was ready it was filled with some 17S barrels of crude oil and a very hot fire-"inordinary hot" was the droll description of the fireman-built under it. Miller, who superintended the operations, swore at the fireman once or twice because the fire was not hot enoug4~ and then disappeared. While he was gone the brickw9rk around the still began to crack. The safety valve finally blew off, and a yellow gas or vapour escaped in such quantities that the superintendent of a neighbouring refinery came out and warned the fireman that he was endangering property. Miller was hunted up. He had the safety valve readjusted-it was thought by certain witnesses that he had it too heavily weighted-and ordered the fires to be rebuilt, hot as before. He again disappeared. In his absence the safety valve again blew off. The run of oil was found to be a failure. It was not a pleasant augury, but oil refiners are more or less hardened to explosions and no one seems to have thought much of the accident. Nobody was injured; nothing was burned, nothing but 17S barrels of oil spoiled; that, in an oil refinery, is getting off easy. On the 23d of June Miller made the transfer of property advised by the Everests, talked over things with Truesdale, and a week later left the Buffalo Works suddenly on receipt of a telegram, and joined H. B. Everest at the Union Square Hotel in New York. Here Everest advised him to telegraph his wife to move at once to Rochester lest Matthews attach their household goods, and then proposed the two go to Boston. The only event of interest at the Union Square Hotel was an entirely casual meeting with H. H. Rogers, one of the directors of the Vacuum Oil Company. Mr. Rogers seems to have had no conversation with Miller other than to remark, in leaving, that he would see him the next day if he did not go to Boston. The men did, however, go to Boston, where they registered as "H. B. Everest and friend," and where several times, at least, Everest introduced Miller under an assumed name. They junketed about for some days on what Everest tried, with indifferent success, to persuade Miller was a pleasure excursion! While they were amusing themselves, Everest hired Miller at $I,s00 a year to "do any fair job we put him at, either at Rochester or some other place." The job turned out to be a rambling one-a few weeks of semi-idleness in Boston-then nothing until September, when he undertook to supervise the drilling of a salt. well in Leroy, New York. This lasted until February, 1882; then nothing until May, when, on the advice of H. B. Everest, who had returned to California, Miller went there: "Pack up, sell your property there and come on. Come right to my house and I will help you to get a place and show you how to raise fruit and be an independent man." Miller went, the Vacuum Oil Company paying his expenses. On his arrival he was put to work in a cannery. The Everests explained that they made this arrangement because they thought it would put Miller where he could not be brought back to trouble them any more. In the meantime things were going badly with the Buffalo Lubricating Works. Miller's loss was a severe one. The men were all novices in making oil, save Wilson, and he was on the road, and they seem to have been unable to find a competent manager. The Everests soon succeeded, too, in getting Wilson out of the new firm by bringing a suit against him for damaging its business by unlawfully leaving it. The suit was withdrawn and the costs paid, when Wilson consented, in December, i88i, to leave the Buffalo Works. Wilson's loss was particularly serious, as he was a salesman of experience. The suits for infringing the Vacuum patents and processes, which Everest at the start had warned Matthews would be brought, were begun in September, 1881-four separate suits within a year. Matthews, as has been said, had convinced himself that the patents were not valid, and some time in the spring of 1882 he saw H. H. Rogers in New York concerning the suits. "I told him I had come in to talk with him about the patent litigation, or suits that were begun by the Vacuum Oil Company against my company," Matthews said in his testimony. "'Well,' he said, 'well, what about it?'-something like that. I told him that the product patent, that I well knew, was without merit, and that I knew it was without merit, and I could not see what object or good they could get out of it by bringing suit on that patent. And also the steam patent I considered was without value, and that he knew it was without value. He said ihat if one court did not sustain the. atents they would carry along up until we got enough of it-that was the substance of that talk" Matthews was evidently discouraged by the result of his talk with Mr. Rogers, for, meeting Benjamin Brewster, of the Standard Oil Company, he offered to sell the Buffalo Lubricating Works for $100,000. The offer was refused, and the suits against which Mr. Matthews protested were pushed. On the Ist of February, 1882, the. Vacuum Oil Com~any filed a complaint in the United States Circuit Court of the Northern District of New York, asking that .the Buffalo company be prevented from manufacturing lubricating oils, on'the ground that the Vacuum Oil Company had a patent covering the process of manufacturing lubricating oils. The action was regarded as unfounded by the court, and was dismissed on July i6, 1884, "the groundcause are void." April 2S, 1882, another action was commenced I by the Vacuum Oil Company against the Buffalo company I to obtain an injunction and an accounting for damages upon the ground that the Buffalo company was using anapparatus covered by a patent belonging to the Vacuum Oil Company, but this action also was dismissed March 17, 188S, upon the ground that the letters patent sued upon were "null and void." On February 23, 1883, the Vacuum Oil Company commenced still another action against the Buffalo company asking for an injunction to prevent the Buffalo company from using a label advertising "The Acme Harness Oil made by the Vacuum Process," because the Vacuum Company had long used a somewhat similar label advertising "The Vacuum Harness Oil manufactured by Va cuu~ O~il Company," but the judge in the case decided that the Vacuum Company had no more right ~o use labels than the Buffalo company. This decision has since been affirmed by the General Term of the Supreme Court. Still another action was brought against the Buffalo cbmpany April 2S, 1882, for infringing a patent on a steam process, alsoa patent upon thefire test. This action resulted in a decree sustajnii~g the fire-test patent, but declaring the steam patent void. The case was then referring to James Breck Perkins, of the Rochester bar, to decide the amount which the Buffalo company had infringed on thi's patent. Mr. Perkins on a number of different Occasions took a large amount of proof there in behalf of the Vacuum Company upon which counts claimed that it was entitled to $12,000 damages upon the accounting. The Buffalo company submitted no proof in c6ntradiction, but insisted that the whole proof showed nothing more than a p~rely technical inf ringement'of the patent, and this view was sustained by Mr. Perkins in his report which awarded six cents damages against the Buffalo company. The disappearance of Miller, the man on whom the firm and depended for superintending building and refining, the withdrawal of Wilson, with whom the enterprise had originated and on which it had staked its hopes of finding a ready market, and the series of suits for infringement of patents, suits which cost Matthews thousands of dollars as well as much embarrassment and delay, were troubles brought on him, so he believed, as the result of a deliberate attempt on the part of the Vacuum Oil Company to make good C. M. Everest's threat to do all in his power to ruin the Buffalo Lubricating Works, and, in the spring of 1883, he brought a civil suit against the Everests for $100,000. While Matthews was working up his case he learned that Miller had returned from California, that he had left the Everests because he claimed they had "not treated him right," and that he was idle in Rochester. Miller seems to have left California~c~efly because he had gotten it into his head that the information he had about tlie measures the Vacuum had taken to pr~vent the Buffalo Works carrying on their business was valuable. The first civil suit was brought to trial early in March, 1885, and it resulted in the jury giving a verdict of $20,000 to Matthews for damages. The court set the sum aside, claiming that they had proved only $4,000 in damages and that he did not sustain an award of punitive damages. Matthews's counsel now obtained a stay of proceedings and finally a new trial. Now about this time Matthews secured evidence which emboldened him to give his suit a much wider range than he had at first intended, This was the testimony of the lawyer Truesdale, quot~d above, that in his office Everest had suggested that Miller ,"arrange the machinery so that it would bust up or smash up." The explosion of June 15 was immediately construed as the result of this counsel. On the strength of this evidence Matthews instituted a second civil suit for damages of $250,000 caused by conspiracy to blow up the works of the Buffalo company, to entice away its employees, to bring unfounded suits against it, and to slander the company's product, and he added to the original defendants the thre~e other directors of the Vacuum Works - H. H. Rogers, J. D. Archbold and Ambrose McGregor - and the Standard Oil Company of New York, the Acme Oil Company of New York and the Vacuum Oil Company. Matthews seems to have argued that, as Rogers, Archbold and McGregor were directors with the Everests in the Vacuum Oil Company, they had probably been consulted by the Everests concerning Miller, and could be included in the conspiracy, and, as the Vacuum, Standard Oil Company and Acme Oil Company were all concerns in the Standard Oil Trust, they, too, could be included. He also went before the Grand Jury of Erie County in opposition to the advice of his counsel and secured there an indictment of H. H. Rogers, J. D. Archbold, Ambrose McGregor and the two Ever~sts for criminal conspiracy. The defendants succeeded in getting the indictment set aside the first time, but Matthews re-presented the case, and a second indictment was found of the same persons. It should be noted that Mr. McGregor was indicted only because he was a director of the Vacuum Works, his name not being mentioned in the evidence presented to the Grand Jury. An indictment for conspiracy of three men of such prominence as Mr. Rogers, Mr. Archbold and Mr. McGregor riveted the attention of the whole country on the coming trial. It was apparent from the first that the Standard meant to put up a big fight to have the indictment quashed. They had, indeed, set a strong machinery at work immediately to get evidence on which to bring a counter charge of conspiracy; that is, that Matthews's intentioh in starting the Buffalo Lubricating Works was never to do business, but to force the Standard to buy him out at a big price. They at once set a detective to work on the case, one item of his instructions reading: "We have reason to believe that the suit is brought for the purpose of forcing the~ Standard to purchase the works of the Buffalo Lubricating Company, and Matthews has made certain statements to that effect; would like reports of any statements or admissioris by him in relation to his objects in these suits." Under the direction of this detective, a man employed in Matthews's works for some months made daily reports of what he saw and heard there, copies of which were forwarded to the Standard office in New York. A detective was also put on Miller's track. Miller was now employed in a refinery in Corry, Pennsylvania, and here he was for a long. time under espionage. The chief expression obtained from him was by luring him into a saloon one Sunday afternoon and getting him half drunk. While in this condition, the saloon-keeper testified, he said the Buffal6 suit was a humbug, but there was money in it and that they (he and the persons who were drinking with him) might as well make it as anybody. It was on May 2, 1886, that the trial began. The array of wealth and legal learning in the Buffalo court-room during the fourteen days' case set not only the town, but the country agape. There were not only the Standard men indicted for conspiracy-H. H. Rogers, J. D. Archbold, Ambrose McGregor-but Mr. Rockefeller himself was there, quiet, steady, watchful. The hostile said the accused and their counsel were disdainful of the proceedings-nobody charged Mr. Rockefeller with disdain. With him were other strong men of the concern, William Rockefeller, Daniel O'Day, J. P. Dudley. There was a great array of legal learning-five eminent lawyers-Wilson S. Bissell, a former law partner of exPresident Cleveland; W. F. Cogswell, of Rochester, counted then one of the ablest lawyers' of the state; Theodore Bacon and F. G. Outerbridge, both of Rochester; Daniel Lockwood, famous in politics as well as law; and, of course, S. C. T. Dodd. This for the accused. For the people was the district-attorney of Erie County, George T. Quinby, with one assist-ant. For fourteen days witnesses were examined, and the above story was dragged from them by dint of questioning and cross-questioning. On May 10 the testimony for the prosecution ended, and the "people rested." The Standard lawyers immediately applied for the acquittal of Mr. Rogers, Mr. Arch-bold and Mr. McGregor, on the ground that no fact or circumstance had been proved that connected them in the slightest degree with the charge of conspiracy to lure Miller away to destroy the Buffalo Works. The district-attorney combated the proposition vigorously. These gentlemen, he contended, owned three-fourths of the Vacuum Works; they were always present at directors' meetings; it was a fair presumption that they knew what was done to persuade Miller to leave the Buffalo Works; they must have known the moneys paid him while he was doing little work. Mr. Rogers had certainly threatened Matthews that he would carry up the patent suits until the Buffalo Works got enough of it. Judge Haight, however, advised the jury to acquit Mr. Rogers, Mr. Archbold and Mr. McGregor. "The indictment charges a conspiracy," the judge said. "It also charges certain overt acts. One of the acts charged in the indictment is the enticing away from the Buffalo company of a servant. Another of the acts alleged is an attempt to blow up or destroy the Buffalo Works, and another act that of bringing false suits against the corporation. So far as the agreement or combination to entice away a servant from the Buffalo company is concerned, I have not been able to recall any evidence which shows that either of these three defendants ever knew of it, ever heard of it or ever took any part in it at all. So far as the charge of an attempt to blow up the Buffalo Works is concerned, I have been unable to recall any evidence that has been given in which either of these three defendants ever knew of it, ever heard of it, ever advised it, or ever took any part in it whatever. The only thing about which I have had any doubt was in reference to the maintaining of actions which have been brought upon patent rights which were formerly owned by the ~verests, and by the Everests transferred to the Vacuum Oil Company, and it appears that two suits were brought upon patents, and that there was another suit, a third one, in reference to a trade-mark. It appears from the evidence that upon one occasion Mr. Matthews went to New York and had a talk with Mr. Rogers, and that his conversation has already been discussed and related in your hearing. The query in my mind was as to whether or not the inference could not be drawn, from this conversation, that Rogers did know of the bringing of these actions, acquiesced ih their being brought, and in that way became a party to them; but, even conceding that the actions were brought with his knowledge and consent, I am inclined still to think that the evidence is hardly sufficient to warrant his conviction, for the reason that it does not appear that the actions were brought without probable cause; in other words, the bringing of an action and being defeated in the action is not of itself sufficient to authorise a jury to say that it was a false action. That standing alone is not sufficient to authorise a jury to say that it is a false action, but there must be shown in addition to that that there was a want of probable cause; in other words, that the party bringing the action knew and understood beforehand that he had no good cause of action. . . . I am inclined to the opinion that the evidence would not warrant his conviction upon' that ground." The acquittal of the three Standard gentlemen was followed by an application for the acquittal of the Everests, but the case with them was different. It had been proved conclusively that they threatened at the start to ruin the new concern, and that they had counselled Miller "to arrange the machinery so it would bust up or smash up"; there was a strong presumption that Miller, acting on this advice, had arranged for the explosion of June IS, though, as he claimed, he meant only to "give them a scare." The judge denied the application in their case, therefore, and the trial went on. The whole force of the defence was now thrown to proving that Matthews had gone into the Buffalo Lubricating Company merely to sell out. His offer to Mr. Brewster in 1882, his talk of making the Standard settle, were rehearsed. Two witnesses were produced also who told of seeking Matthews in 1881, after the criminal suit was brought, and of offering, on the ground that they knew the Standard defendants, to attempt to settle the affair. Matthews had told these men that if the Standard would give him $250,000 for his refinery, he would withdraw the civil suit, but that he could not touch the criminal suit, as it was in the hands of the district-attorney. The jury was not greatly influenced by the evidence produced to show that Matthews was a blackmailer. Evidently they concluded that, granting that the Everests had cause of complaint against the men for using their processes-they certainly had no just cause in the fact of the three men setting up in business for themselves-granting that the enterprise was started for blackmailing purposes-and there was no proof offered that it was-the Everests should have taken their case into the courts-not plotted the destruction of the refinery by any such underhand methods as they employed. Whatever the jury's process of reasoning, however, it is certain that on May i6 they brought in a verdict of "guilty as charged by the indictment." The most strenuous efforts were made to set the verdict aside. The judge granted a stay, and an attempt to get a new trial was made, but unsuccessfully. The sentence was stayed until May, i888. The statute provided a penalty of one year's imprisonment or $250 fine, or both. Efforts were at once made to soften the sentence. A petition signed by over forty "leading citizens" of Rochester, New York, the home of the Everests,. was sent to Judge Haight, praying him, on account of the "untarnished fidelity and integrity" of the convicted men, to make the penalty as light as the court was authorised by law to fix. Six of the jurors were induced by Standard agents to sign a paper claiming that in their belief the jury in rendermg its verdict of guilty did not mean to pronounce the Eve rests guilty of an attempt to blow up or burn the works of the Buffalo company, but guilty only of enticing Miller away, and nature than that which they depended on in the trial. This new charge makes Matthews's counsel his fel~ow conspirators, and alleges that at least two of them used important official positions to influence the verdict. In the present year (1904) the Standard's official organ, the Oil City Derrick, published a supplement containing the evidence on which this counter charge is based, and editorially accused the writer of bias in not using this material in the story of the Buffalo case which was published practically as it stands here in McClure's Magazine for March, 1904. It is true, as the Derrick claims, that through the courtesy of the Standard Oil Company this material was placed in the writer's hands before the article was published. It was not used because it was not thought it established the charge. The points brought out in the evidence published by the Derrick which are held by the Standard to establish the charge of a conspiracy between Matthews and his counsel are the following: In the first place, they declare it a conspiracy because Co4ett, who was called to the bench in January, 1884, and Hatch, who was called to the bench in January, i886, were both in consultation with their successors after they became judges. That this is true there is no doubt whatever. Mr. Moot in his full statement of his services made to the referee refers again and again to consultations with Corlett and Hatch after they had given up the case. Hatch speaks freely in his statement to the referee of counselling with Quinby and Moot.* If there was an impropriety in what he did, he certainly made no effort to conceal it, nor did the referee, the court, or the receiver, ~o whom this statement was submitted, raise any question of impropriety. The counsel which both Judge Corlett and Judge Hatch gave Quinby and Moot the recommended that the sentence, therefore, be a fine and not imp4sonment. District-Attorney Quinby offered to prove on a hearing for a new trial that the Standard's representatives used money in getting these affidavits. The result was that the two Everests were each fined $250. This sentence was made light, the judge explained, because of the civil suits brought to recover damages for the very same acts-a person could not be punished twice for the same offence. The first civil suit referred to above resulted in an award by. the jury of $20,000 to Matthews. The second civil suit was for $250,000, but before it was tried Matthews's business had become so involved by all this trouble that in January, i888, it was put into the hands of a receiver. The defendants finally offered to settle the civil suits for $85,000. The judge ordered the receiver to acept the offer, on the ground that the Everests had already been declared guilty of criminal conspiracy and had been fined, and that a person could not be puni~hed twice for the same offence! It was not until June, 1889, that the receiver filed his account of the settlement of the affairs of the Buffalo Works; Of the $85,000 paid by the Standard, Matthews seems not to have gotten a cent. The entire sum went to settle the debts of the concern and pay the lawyers. The leading claimants among the lawyers were Thomas Corlett, Edward W. Hatch and Adelbert Moot, all of Buffalo. Their claims aggregated nearly $35,000. The receiver thought these fees exorbitant, and a referee was appointed by the court to take the testimony of the claimant as to their services. The testimony was voluminous, and the upshot was that the referee cut these claims to about $22,000. The final account filed by the receiver shows that the three gentlemen finally were paid about $15,000. The large claims made by the lawyers and certain circumstances of the settlement have led the Standard, in later years, to advance a counter charge of conspiracy Matthews. They had been his counsel for years. They were obliged to give up his cases because of their election to the bench. They were debarred by their relation to the case, of course, from hearing it, but there was no reason why their knowledge and experience should not be drawn upon to a reasonable degree by the new attorneys. Certainly this is a universal practice in law courts. It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. If either judge had used his position to influence his fellow judge who heard the case there would be a just criticism, but no such intimation has ever been made, to the writer's knowledge. The second proof of conspiracy drawn from this testimony to the referee is the statements of both Hatch and Moot that they had no contracts for compensation and that they knew they would receive nothing if they lost. For instance, when Moot was examined by the referee he was asked:

Q. Did you have any contract or agreement as to how you should be compensated? A. Not the slightest. I never had such a contract in my life, except that I should be liberally paid if I succeeded. If I did not succeed, the party being poor, my work would be without compensauon. Q. Did you ever have any conversation with Matthews or with any officer of the company with reference to that? A. No, sir. I feel very clear that I never had a conversation with a single member of this company about what we should receive for our services, except to this extent: Mr. Matthews once said, in referring to or commenting on these litigations, that they were like any other independent company, as I very well knew; that if the lawyers could not keep them alive with litigation, the Standaiti would beat them-we would not get anything.

Judge Hatch in his statement said: "Matthews and I or any one for his company never had any talk with respect to compensation for services at the time of their commencement or during their rendition. I knew, however, that the payment for services was largely contingent upon the success of the litigation, and the company was not able to pay much more than the actual expenses in the event they failed to succeed, and that we would get a great compensation unless we succeeded in the actions. I think no conversation was ever had except Mr. Matthews stating that if we should succeed we should be well paid. I think he mentioned that once or twice. It is not an unusual thing for lawyers to take cases they believe just, knowing that their compensation depends on their winning. Many clients with just cases would be deprived of counsel if they had to insure a fixed compensation, for not infrequently all that a client has is involved in a suit. The practice is so common among reputable lawyers that it certainly cannot be regarded as a proof of a conspiracy, unless there is a reason to suppose that they have taken a case of whose merits they themselves are suspicious. There is absolutely no evidence that Matthews's counsel were not convinced from the first that they had a strong' case. Quinby, the district-attorney who tried the criminal case, certainly conducted it with a fire and a logic which nothing but conviction could have inspired. Moreover, it must be remembered that these attorneys never failed to convince the juries before whom they appeared of the merits of their case. Four juries, two grand juries and two petit juries gave unanimous verdicts of conspiracy against the defendants in the course of the litigation. A case backed by evidence which would convince such diversified bodies of men could hardly be called a speculation. Their claims were large, but lawyers are not proverbial for the modesty of their charges, and in the cases of Hatch and Moot, the two making the largest claims, the labour had b~n very great and had extended over long periods, as one can see who will examine the testimony published by the Derrick; and besides, exorbitant charges can hardly be construed as a proof of conspiracy. This, then, in outline, is the history of the case on which are based all charges, so far as the writer knows, that the Standard Oil Company has deliberately destroyed property to get rid of rivals. The case is of importance not only as showing to what abuses the Standard policy of making it hard for a rival to do business will lead men like the Everests, but it shows to what lengths a hostile public will go in interpreting the acts of men whom it has come to believe are lawless and relentless in pursuing their own ends. The public, particularly the oil public, has always been willing to believe the worst of the Standard Oil Company. It read into the Buffalo case deliberate arson, and charged not only the Everests, but the three co-directors, with the overt acts. They refused to recognise that no evidence of the connection of Mr. Rogers, Mr. Archbold and Mr. McGregor with the overt acts was offered, but demanded that they be convicted on presumption, and when the judge refused to do this they cursed him as a traitor. To-day, in spite of the full airing this case has had in the courts and investigations, Judge Haight is still accused of selling himself to a corporation, and Mr. Rogers is accused daily in Montana of having burned a refinery in Buffalo. As a matter of fact, no refinery was burned in Buffalo, nor was it ever proved that Mr. Rogers knew anything of the attempts the Everests made to destroy Matthews's business. The cases described in the last two chapters naturally aroused intense interest in the Oil Regions. The two in Ohio demonstrated afresh the chief grievances which the oil men had against the Standard Oil Company since 1872 that they were securing rebates on their own shipments and drawbacks on those of their competitors. The Buffalo case demonstrated that when their ordinary advantages failed to get a rival out of the way they winked at methods which a jury called criminal. It was fresh proof of what the oil men had always claimed, that the Standard Oil Company was a conspiracy! At the same time that these cases were arousing their indignation anew there occurred in Ohio an affair which gave them new evidence of their old charge that the Standard was steadily intrenching itself in state and national politics in order to direct the course of legislation to Suit itself. There had been many evidences of this, satisfactory enough to the initiated. There was no doub that the investigation of 1876 and the first bill to regulate in-terstate commerce introduced at that time had been squelched largely through the efforts of two members of Congress, one of them directly and the other indirectly interested in the Standard-these were J. N. Camden of West Virginia, head of the Camden Consolidated Oil Company, now one of the constituent companies of the Standard Oil Trust, and H. B. Payne of Ohio, the father of the treasurer of the Standard, Oliver H. Payne. It had certainly used its influence to oppose the free pipe-line bill which the independent oil men had been fighting for since the early days of the industry. In 1878 and 1879, during the prosecution of the suits against the railroads and the Standard by the Petroleum Producers' Union, there had been incessant charge of the use of political influence to secure delay. It was a matter of constant comment in Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania that the Standard was active in all elections, and that it "stood in" with every ambitious young politician, that rarely did an able young lawyer get into office who was not retained by the Standard. The company seems to have taken a hand in politics even before the days of the South Improvement Company, for Mr. Payne once said in the United States Senate that when he was a candidate for the House of RepresentativeS in 1871, "no association, no combination" in his district did more to bring about his defeat or spent so much money to accomplish it as the Standard Oil Company! But all of the examples they quoted were more or less poor in evidence. Of no one of them perhaps could they have produced satisfactory proof. Now, however, simultaneously with the three cases outlined in the last two chapters there came a case of bribery in an election which they held estalitheir charge. The case was the familiar one of the etion of H. B. Payne of Ohio to the United States Senate in January, 1884. Mr. Payne was at the time of his election the anstocrat par excellence of Cleveland, Ohio. He had birth and education, distinction of manner and mind. His fine old mansion still remains one of the most distinguished houses in a city of beautiful homes. He had been active in Democratic politics for many years-a member of the state Senate and a member of Congress, and he had been mentioned as the1 Democratic candidate for the presidency in 188o, receiving1 eighty-one votes on the first ballot. At the time of his election to the Senate he was a man seventy-four years old. Now Mr.Payne's son, Oliver H. Payne, was one of the thirteen final members of the South Improvement Company, and one of the rare Cleveland refiners who had a strong enough stomach to go into the Standard Oil Company when it swepting up the oil trade of Cleveland in 1872, and he had gathered' in his share of the spoils of that raid. Oliver Payne was proud of his father, and it was well known that he wanted to see him in the Senate of the United States, but there had been no movement to nominate him, and in 1883 he seems to ( have made up his mind to see what he could do. A United States Senator was to be elected in Ohio in November. In October a new State Legislature was chosen, and the Democratic members were instructed for one of two~ candidates for the Senate, George H. Pendleton or Genera Durbin Ward, both men of prominence and long service in the public life of the state. Mr. Payne's name was not pure convened when there sprang up at the Neil House in tioned in the canvass. Nevertheless, hardly had the Legislature Columbus an extraordinary Payne boom. Its backers were SenatorPayne's own son, Oliver H. Payne, at that time treasurer of the Standard Oil Company, and Colonel Thompson, a prominent personage in the same concern. Their lieutenants were also members of the company in one capacity or another. Large sums of money were alleged to have been circulated. There was a rumour that Oliver Payne said the election cost him $100,000. It was claimed that it could be proved that a check for $6s,000 had been cashed in Cleveland by one of the men most prominent in the Payne boom, and that the whole sum had been spent in Columbus. A perfect uproar of indignation followed the announcement of Mr. Payne's choice. All over the state the Standard Oil Company was charged with the election. The Democratic press was particularly bitter: Said the Butler County Democrat: "It was simply a question whether Pendleton, Ward, Thurman, Converse, Follert, Geddes, or any other capable and honest Dem~ crat, should receive the compliments of a seat in the Senate, or that the Standard Oil Coropany should buy the place for Henry B. Payne. It was an honest and divided Democracy against a hydra-headed dictatorship of rich men on whose banner was inscribed 'Money Talks."' The Carroll County Chronicle in commenting on the election said: "It is a great mistake to suppose Standard Oil has captured the Democratic party of Ohio. It may have captured a score or two of men elected to the Legislature, but they are not the Democracy of Ohio by a long shot. When the British got General Benedict Arnold they imagined they had captured the United States army, but it was a mistake." "The monopoly of the Standard Oil Company must be destroyed," declared the Columbus Times. "Its intrusion into political circles must be prevented. There must be no later acceptance of this outrage. Political purity and perpetuity permit no complacency. These pernicious foreign elements must be eradicated, and until they are no Democrat will enter the capitol of Ohio or of the nation. The rottenness that uncovered itself last night has not its confines in Ohio."

The comments were not confined to papers of the state. The New York Sun, under the head "Was Payne's Election Bought?" said: "The subjoined communication from a source which we always respect is worthy of more attention than is usually bestowed upon the animated expressions of those whose preferences have not been realised: "'It is now believed, and I believe, that the Standard Oil Company recently bought with money Ohio S Seat in the Senate of the United States for Mr. Payne. Now, can the social respectability of a man make such a crime respectable? Or is there to be one standard of political morality for Republicans and another for Democrats? Or are Democrats expected to condemn corruption only when practised by Republicans, and to condone, defend, and cover it up when practised by Democrats, or when it is found only in the Democratic party? In my opinion there is no danger so threatening to free institutions as the sale and purchase of political power, and nothing more to be condemned.'"

Although these charges were kept up for two years neither the Standard Oil Company, Mr. Payne, nor the Legislature which had elected him noticed them. The scandal became on~ of the issues of the next campaign and was instrumental in making the next Legislature of Ohio Republican. As soon as the new Legislature convened at the opening of i886 an investigation of the Payne case was ordered. Some fifty-five witnesses were examined, and the resulting testimony turned over to the Senate of the United States for its examination. The testimony did not prove the charge of bribery, the Ohio Legislature said, but it was of such a nature as to require the Senate's attention. The matter went to the Senate Committee on Elections, and in July, i886, a majority reported against the further investigation asked by the state of Ohio.* Against this decision two members of the committee, Senators Hoar and Frye, protested. For the time the matter rested, but only for the time. The failure to investigate rather intensified the convictions that seat was bought by the Standard Oil Company. In 1887 Mr. Payne voted against the Interstate Commerce Bill. "That is why he was put in the Senate," people said bitterly. The feeling became still more intense in i888. The question of trusts was before Congress. The Republicans had come out with an anti-trust plank in their platform; the Democrats, in response to Mr. Cleveland's message, were declaring the tariff the greatest trust-builder in existence, and calling on their opponents for reform there if they were sincere their anti-trust attitude. In this agitation the Standard Oil Company undoubtedly exerted its influence against all trust investigation and legislation. The charge became general that they were helping the Democrats. This is why they wanted a Democratic Senate. In September, i888, when a phase of the question was before the Senate, Mr. Hoar, with his genius for asking far-reaching questions, said one day: "Is there a Standard Oil Trust in this country or not? . . . If there be such a trust, is it represented in the Cabinet at this moment? Is it represented. in the Senate? Is it representcd in the councils of any important political party in the country?" It was the first time that Mr. Payne had been sufficiently aroused to reply. "There is nothing whatever to sustain the insinuation which the honourable Senator conveys. I make the.declaration nQw for the first time, and it will be the last time I shall ever take notice of it. The Standard Oil Company is a very remarkable and wonderful institution. It has acc.omplished within the last twenty years of commercial ente?pnse what no other company or association of modern times.

For three oppressive July days the Senate gave almost all of its time to a bitter debate on the report. The name of the Standard was freely used. "The Senate of the United States," said Senator Frye, "when the question comes before it as this has been presented, whether or not the great Standard Oil Company, the greatest monopoly to-day in the United States of America, a power which makes itself felt in every inch of territory in this whole republic, a power which c6ntrols business, railroads, men and things, shall also control here; whether that great body has put its hands upon a legislative body and undertaken to control, has controlled, and has elected a member of the United States Senate, that Senate, I say, cannot afford to sit silent and let not its voice be heard in an inquiry as to the truth of the allegation." The majority report was adopted, however, by a vote of forty-four to seven has accomplished, but, Mr. President, I never had a dollar's interest in that company. I never owned a dollar of its stock; I never rendered any service, and that company never rendered me any service. On the contrary, when a candidate for the other House in 1871, no institution, no association, no combination in my district did more to bring about my defeat and went to so large an expense in money to accomplish it as the Standard Oil Company. "As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of the stockholders of the Standard Oil Company are now and always have been Republicans. Within my knowledge there are but two Democrats who have ever been stockholders in that company." Farther on Mr. Payne interpolated this irrelevant remark: "Not only are the majority Republicans, but th~ey are very liberal in their philanthropic contributions to charities and benevolent works, and I venture the assertion that two gentlemen in that company have donated more money for philanthropic and for benevolent purposes than all the Republican members of the Senate put together." Mr. Payne's denial was not sufficient to silence Senator Hoar. He returned to the attack. It was a "general public belief," he declared, that the Standard Oil Company was represented in the Cabinet and Senate. He called attention to the newspapers' charge to that effect, and declared that he had received many personal letters charging that the Standard was helping the Democrats. He asked for information when he asked his question; he made no charges. Mr. Whitney was the member of Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet to whom Senator Hoar referred, and he promptly, in a public letter, disclaimed all connection with the Standard Oil Company. Mr. Hoar said he "cheerfully accepted" the denial. As for Mr. Payne, he was not satisfied, and when Mr. Payne in heat replied to him, Senator Hoar closed his lips forever in a burst of biting sarcasm.

And there the Payne case rested. It was never proved that the Standard Oil Company had contributed a cent to his election. It was never proved that his seat was bought, but the fact that, in the face of such serious charges, rehearsed constantly for four years, neither Mr. Payne nor the Standard Oil Company had done aught but keep quiet, convinced a large part of the country that the suspicion under which they rested was less damaging than the truth would be. In the minds~of great numbers this silence was a confession of guilt. The Payne case certainly aggravated greatly the popular feeling that the Standard Oil Company was using the legislative bodies of the country in its own interest.

This feeling was intensified in 1887 by a terrific battle between the oil producers and Standard forces in the Legislature of the state of Pennsylvania. Since the compromise of i88o the body of the oil producers had been taking no concerted action against the Standard. Rut their inaction was not due to reconciliation to Standard domination. As a matter of fact they were almost as bitter in 1886 as they had been in 1878, when they formed the Union which for two years fought so good a fight. The specific complaint of the oil producers at this time was that they were being "robbed" by the National T?ansit C6mpany-the big Standard pipe-line consolidation, which had secured by the series of manoeuvres already outlined the monopoly of handling and transporting crude oil. If the oil producers had been making money at this time it is quite possible that they would have paid little attention to the profits of the National Transit Company. The service they got was about as perfect as any human machine could render, and they would probably have recognised this and been willing to pay high if they too had been prosperous. But the condition of the oil producer in these days was in glaring contrast to that of Mr. Rockefeller. They had piled up oil until there were in i886 over 33,-000,000 barrels on hand. Naturally this had driven prices down. The average price for the last years had been under a dollar a barrel. In i886 it fell down to 7'Y8, and everyone said it must go lower. Embittered and discouraged, the producers fell to comparing what they were getting out of the business with what Mr. Rockefeller was getting. It was not a consoling showing. The Standard Oil Trust had from its organisation in 1882 paid dividends on its $70,000,000 capital. In spite of the extraordinary outlay for tank-building and seaboard pipe-lines made from i88i to I884-$30,000~,000 it is computed to have been-the trust paid 10 per cent in ten per cent in i886, and Standard Oil stock stood near 200 in contrast, the oil producer, in i886, is estimated to have lost about six per cent. on his expenditures, and oil property depreciated one-third in value. Something was wrong. They could not charge the Standard with the price of oil. As long as over 33,000,000 barrels in stock lay on the market it could not rise. But they could and did complain of what it cost them to handle this oil, of storage and carrying charges, of the deductions for shrinkage and for loss by fire. If the Standard had not forced out every competing line, there would have been sufficient competition to have lowered these items-which at the present prices soon ate up the value of oil. And they fell to rehearsing the raids by which the various transporting companies which had fought themselves into independent positions had been forced into combination, their chief grievances being naturally the affair of the Tidewater. In this state of mind, and incited by the Buffalo, the Payne, and the Rice cases, it was natural enough that when suddenly, at the opening of 1887, a bill evidently intended to strike a blow at the Standard was introduced into the Legislature of Pennsylvania, the oil producers rushed pell-mell to support it. The opening sentence was enough for them. It was "An act to punish corporations." * This was what they had always sought, some way to punish Mr. Rockefeller for what they believed to be a conspiracy against their interests. The way in which the Billingsley Bill, as it was called from the name of its father, proposed to punish the Standard was to make it a criminal offence to charge in excess of certain rates it fixed-ten cents a barrel for gathering and delivering oil to storing points (the current rate was twenty cents) ; one-sixtieth of one per cent. per barrel a day for storage, with no storage charge for the first thirty days (one-half of one per cent. was the current rate); one-half of one per cent. shrinkage, instead of three per cent. Besides, the bill required the Standard to go to any well on application of the owner, it made the company liable for damage, and it required it to deliver oil of like kind and quality as that received.

The enthusiasm with which the bill was greeted was cooled a little by the announcement that as it stood it was unconstitutional-acts to punish being forbidden by the constitution of the state-as well as by an immediate realisation that the prices fixed for services wete in nearly every case less than cost. The bill was immediately amended. When it came back it was at once apparent that, in spite of this preliminary hitch, a tremendous fight to carry it was being organised by the oil men. Then determination to push it grew in proportion to the Standard opposition. The Standard, indeed, realised immediately that unless a hard fight was made the bill would go through by popular clamour, and they turned their big lawyer, Mr. Dodd, against it, set their newspapers-the Oil City Derrick, Titusville Herald and Bradford Era, all of them by this time subsidised organs to argue against it, and sent Mr. Scheide, one of the ablest of their pipe-line managers, to present their side at Harrisburg. They also secured the services of a well-known young Republican member of the Legislature, Wallace Delemater, of Crawford County, one of the counties in the Oil Regions, td organise an opposition to the bill in the Legislature. In February a hearing was given the bill, Mr. Dodd presenting the Standard side. It is rare that so able a lawyer has to fight so weak a measure, and Mr. Dodd riddled it easily. As a matter of fact the Billingsley Bill was as bad as it could be. It was characterised by all sorts of constitutional, legal and practical difficulties. The pipe-line business was an interstate business, and this bill attempted to regulate it-which evidently it could not do. It could, of course, regulate Pennsylvania oil, but, by so doing, it created two classes of oil in the lines, a situation which would have been confusing and undesirable. It was evidently intended that the prices it fixed should apply to the 30,000,000 barrels of stocks on hand, but these were held under contract, and could not be touched. There were many other objections to the bill. Even Judge Heydrick, the able lawyer whom the oil men had engaged to defend it, was obliged to apologise for it at every point, and its most valiant supporter, Senator Lewis Emery, Jr., said frankly that the framer of the bill knew too little of the oil men's needs to be able to make a bill, and that this would have to be thoroughly revised. In spite of all the reasonable, indeed overwhelming, objections to the Billingsley Bill, the oil men clung to it. Mass-meetings were held nightly from one end of the region to the other, petitions flooded the Legislature, a big delegation was kept constantly in Harrisburg lobbying for it. The support was intemperate, bitter, unreasonable. In March it was intensified by the knowledge that a self-constituted committee of leading oil men were in New York treating with the Standard in regard to certain of the abuses the bill aimed to cure. These men felt that the Standard was unjust in its dealings with the oil men, excessive in its charges, and arbitrary in its service, but they felt that the confusion the Billingsley Bill would bring into the business more than offset the grievances it righted, and they had gone to Mr. Rockefeller to see if matters could not be compromised. Now nothing could have more effectually added to the warlike spirit abroad in the Oil Regions at that moment than th~ suggestion of a compromise. Their cause was being "sold." It was "compounding with felony," and when, after a three days' sitting in New York, the committee came home with an agreement from the National Transit Company, making certain concessions-as two per cent. instead of three for shrinkage, twenty-five cents a day per 1,000 barrels, instead 6f forty, f9r storage, and with a promise that certain other points should be settled by joint committees-two of the leading members were hung in effigy in Titusvillel In Apnl the final vote on the Billingsley Bill came. Harrisburg was alive with oil men determined that the bill sbould go through. The Standard was present, and if it had less of a cia que, it had more of the "sinews of war." Indeed, it was charged later by Senator Lewis Emery that the leader of the Standard forces in the Senate received $65,000 for his services-a charge which, so far as the writer knows, has never been either proved or disproved. The bill came to a vote after a passionate wrangle. It was defeated eighteen to twenty-five. A storm of violent protest from the oil men's representatives followed the defeat, and the lobbies, the hotels, and even the streets of Harrisburg were scenes in the next hours of bitter quarrels and excited gatherings. When finally the oil men withdrew from the town it was with the understanding that they were to meet two weeks later in Oil City to organise a new protective association. The protests and resolutions passed at their final gatherings foreshadowed no intention of reviving the Billingsley Bill. Indeed, the bill itself had received scant attention from them in the violent campaign over its passage which they had carried - on for three months. All their passion had been expended on the Standard. This was a question of whether the Standard Oil Company ruled the Legislature of Pennsylvania or whether the people ruled it-so declared the oil men; and when their bill was defeated they charged it was by bribery, and henceforth quoted the defeat of the Billingsley Bill along with the Payne case as proof of the corrupt power of the Standard Oil Company in politics. Their outbreak, for it was nothing else, was the culmination of their indignation and resentment at fifteen years of unfair play on the part of the ard Oil Company, of resentment at the South Improvement Company, at forced combination of refineries and pipe-lines, at railroad rebates and drawbacks, at the immediate shipment outrages, at the Tidewater defeat. It was revolt against the incessant pressure of Mr. Rockefeller's pitiless steel grip. It was bitterness at the idea that it was he who was reaping all the profit of a business in which they were taking the chief risks, and if things went on as they were that it was he who always would. Out of their burst of passion was to grow a solid determined effort, but for the moment they were defeated, and the defeat, which really was merited, was another added to their series of just and unjust complaints against Mr. Rockefeller. All of these bitter and spectacular struggles aroused intense public interest. The debate on the Interstate Commerce Bill was contemporaneous with them-the bill was passed in 1887, and had its effect. The feeling grew all over the country that whatever the merits of these specific cases, there was danger in the mysterious organisation by which such immense fortunes and such excessive power could be built up on one side of an industry, while another side steadily lost money and powe~ A new trial was coming to Mr. Rockefeller, one much more serious than any trial for overt acts, for the very nature of his great creation was to be in question. It was a hard trial, for all John D. Rockefeller asked of the world by the year 1887 was to be let alone. He had comp~eted one of' the most perfect business organisations the world has ever seen, an organisation which handled practically all of a great natural product. His factories were the most perfect and were managed with the strictest economy. He owned outright the pipe-lines which transported the crude oil. His knowledge of the consuming power of the world was accurate, and he kept his output strictly within its limit. A? the same time the great marketing machinery he. had put in operation carried on an aggressive campaign for new markets. In China, Africa, South America, as well as in remote parts of Europe and the United States, Standard agents carried refined oil. The Standard Oil Company had been organised to do business, and if ever a company did bu~siness it was this one. From Mr. Rockefeller himself, sitting all day in his den, hidden from everybody but the remarkable body of directors and heads of departments which he had "acquired" as he wiped up one refinery and one pipe-line after another, to the humblest clerk in the office of the most remote marketing agency, everybody worked. There was not a lazy bone in the organisation, nor an incompetent hand, nor a stupid head. It was a machine where everybody was kept on his mettle by an extraordinary system of competition, where success met immediate recognition, where opportunity was wide as the world's craving for a good light to cheer its hours of darkness. The machine was pervaded and stimulated by the consciousness of its own power and prosperity. It was a great thing to belong to an organisation which always got what it wanted, and which was making money as no business in the country had ever made it. What more, indeed, could Mr. Rockefeller ask than to be let alone? And why not let him alone? He had the ability to keep together the wide-spread interests he had acquired-not only to keep them together, but to unify and develop them; why not let him alone? Many people even in the Oil Regions were inclined to do so, some because they feared him-rumour said Mr. Rockefeller was vindictive and never forgot opposition; others because they were canny and foresaw that they might want his help one day; still others because criticism of success is an ungracious business and arouses a suspicion that the critic may be envious or bitter. But there were a few people, as there always are, whom no cowardice, no self-interest, no fear of public opinion could keep quiet, and these people insistently urged that the Standard Oil Company was a menace to the commerce of the country. We have been and are being wronged, they repeated. We have a right to do an independent business. Interference to drive us out is conspiracy. Let Mr. Rockefeller succeed in the oil business and he will attack other industries; he will have imitators. In fifty years a handful of men will own the country. Mr. Rockefeller handled his critics with a skill bordering on genius. He ignored them. To see them, to answer them, called attention to them. He was too busy to answer them. "We do not talk much~we saw wood." This attitude of serene indifference is supremely wise. It belittles the critic and it gives the outsider who watches the game a feeling that a serenity so high must come from an impregnable position. There is no question but many a mouth opened to testify against the Standard Oil Company has been closed by Mr. Rockefeller's policy of silence. Only the few irreconcilables withstood his sphinx-like attitude, and yearly, from the compromising of 1880, these warnings and accusations were louder and more fierce. Probably the greatest trial Mr. Rockefeller has ever had has come from the persistency with which the few malcontents kept him before the public. They interfered with two of his great principles-"hide the prof-its" and "say nothing." It was they who had ruined the South Improvement Company; it was they who had indicted him -for conspiracy and compelled him to compromise in i88o. It was they who now, after the splendid pipe-line organisation was completed and his market machinery was in order, -kept up their agitation and their cursing. Their work began to tell. The feeling grew that the Standard Oil Company, or Trust, as it was by this time generally called, must be looked into. Even those who, dazzled by Mr. Rockefeller's achievement, were inclined to overlook its ethical side and to refuse to consider to what aggregation of power and abuse it might lead, began to feel that it would be quite as well to have the matter thrashed out, to have it settled once for all, whether the thing had been so bad in its making and was so dangerous in its tendencies as the "oil-shriekers" pretended. In the House of Representatives, when the question of ordering an investigation of trusts by the Committee on Manufactures was up in 1887, the liveliest concern was shown as to whether the Standard Oil Company, "the most important case of all, would escape. More than one member asked to be assured before consenting to the investigation that the Standard would be put on the rack. The same interest was shown in the Senate of New York State, where an investigation was ordered for February, i888. It was certain indeed now that Mr. Rockefeller would not be allowed much longer to work in the dark. He was to be dragged into the open, much as he might deplore it, to explain what his trust really was, to prove to a suspicious and hostile public that he had a right to exist.

There was no characteristic of Mr. Rockefeller and his great corporation which from the beginning had been more exasperating to the oil world than the secrecy with which operations were conducted. The plan of the South Improvement Company had only been revealed to those who signed an agreement to keep secret all transactions they might have with it. The purchase in 1874 and 1875 by the Standard Oil Company of Lockhart, Frew and Company of Pittsburg, of Warden, Frew and Company of Philadelphia, and of Charles Pratt and Company of New York was so thoroughly concealed that Mr. Rockefeller, five years after it occurred, dared make an affidavit that it had never occurred! * Men who entered into running arrangements with Mr. Rockefeller were cautioned "not to tell their wives," and correspondence between them and the Standard Oil Compny was carried on under assumed names I Whenever the subject of the relations between the various companies came up in a lawsuit or an investigation, a candid and straightforward answer as always avoided by both Mr. Rockefeller and the 3' men known to be associated with him in some way. For instance, in 1879, when H. H. Rogers was before the Hepburn Committee, an effort was made to find out what relation the firm of Charles Pratt and Company, of which he was a member, sustained to the Standard Oil Company. Mr. Rogers's testimony was a masterpiece of good-natured evasion,* and all that the examiners could get, though they returned again and again to the inquiry, was that Charles Pratt and Company worked "in harmony" with the Standard Oil Company. When ex-Governor Nash of Ohio was investigating the relations of the Cleveland and Marietta Railroad and the National Transit Company, try his best he could not find out anything definite. In his report Mr. Nash said: "I have purposely referred to the parties who entered into this arrangement with Receiver Pease and his freight agent, J. E. Terry, as the parties represented by O'Day and Scheide, for the reason that I have not been able to ascertain who or what the parties are." That they were officers of the National Transit Company he had evidence, but what relation had the National Transit Company to the Standard Oil Company? Was it a part of it? Mr. Nash was unable, to find from Mr. O'Day, closely as he might question him. In the Buffalo case, when John D. Rockefeller was on the stand, he was put through a questioning in regard to the relations of the persons concerned in the suit to the Standard Oil Trust, whose existence he admitted. Mr. Rockefeller answered all the questions his lawyers Would allow, but at the end the plaintiffs had gained little or nothing, and there was a strong impression, from the attitude of his lawyers rather than from that of Mr. Rockefeller, that an eff~rt was making to conceal the nature of the agreement or charter or whatever it was under which the companies involved were working. Naturally enough this attitude inspired resentment and aggravated the feeling that this secrecy meant evil-doing. When the epidemic of trust investigation broke out in i888, and the Standard Oil Trust was brought up for examination, there was a general public demand to have the matter cleared up. The first investigation of importance took place in February, i888, in~New Ydrk City, and by the direction of the Senate of New York State. A list of more than a score of trusts was in the hands of the committee, and, with the limited time at their disposal, it was certain that they could not look into more than half a dozen. There seems to have been no hesitation about including the Standard Oil Trust. "This is the original trust," wrote the committee. "Its success has been the incentive to the formation f all other trusts or combinations. It is the type of a system which has spread like a disease through the commercial system of this country." There were several things the committee wanted to know about the Standard Oil Trust, and its president was summoned for examination. (i) What was it? Was it an organisation recognised by any law of the land? Long ago men had decided that partnerships, corporations, companies, in which men united to do business, must be regulated by law and subjected to a certain amount of publicity, if the public good was to be protected. Was the Standard Oil Trust within or without the law? By the testimony of its own members, in other years the Standard Combination controlled from eighty to ninety per cent. of the oil business of the country. Was this supremacy -~due in any measure to special privileges, such as discrimination in railroad rates? (3) Was its power used to manipulate production and prices and to prevent men outside entering the oil business? It was to learn these things that the commission summoned Mr. Rockefeller. Flanked by Joseph H. Choate, present Ambassador to the Court of King Edward and the most eminent lawyer of the day, and S. C. T. Dodd, a no less able if a less well-known lawyer, Mr. Rockefeller submitted himself to his questioners. In no case where he has appeared on the stand can his skill as a witness be studied to better advantage. With a wealth of polite phrase~"You are very good," "I beg with all respect"-Mr. Rockefeller bowed himself to the will of the committee. With an air of eager frankness he told them nothing he did not wish them to know. The committee had a desire to begin at the beginning. It evidently had heard that a short-lived organisation, called the South Improvement Company, had given Mr. Rockefeller his whip-hand in the oil business as far back as 1872, enabling him in three months' time to raise his daily capacity as a refiner from 1,500 to 10,000 barrels, and so they asked Mr. Rockefeller: Q. There was such a company? A. I have heard of such a company. ~. Were you not in it? A. I was not.* It is a perfectly well-known fact that Mr. Rockefeller owned iBo shares in the South Improvement Company, of which he was a director; that, when a public uprising caused the destruction of the company, he was one of the two men who tried to save it; also that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was the only concern which profited by the short-lived conspiracy. Another staggering bit of testimony concerned railroad rates. Asked if there had been any arrangements by which the trust or the companies controlled by it got transportation any cheaper rates than was allowed to the general public, Rockefeller answered: "No, sir." As a matter of fact, the three great oil-carrying systems of the country-the Central, Erie and Pennsylvania-had all of them, for much of the period between 1872 and i888, granted to Mr. Rockefeller rebates calculated to keep freight rates down for the Standard Oil Company and up for its competitors. Contracts and agreements to this effect are easily accessible to any one caring to investigate the quality of Mr. Rockefeller's "no." "No," said Mr. Rockefeller, "we have had no better rates than our neighbours," and then, with that lack of the sense of humour which, ethical qualities aside, is his chief limitation, he hastened to add: "But, if I may be allowed, we have found repeated instances where other parties had secured lower rates than we had." Later in the day the committee, which seems to have known something of Mr. Rockefeller's former contracts with the railroads, returned to the subject, and the following colloquy, worthy of the study of all witnesses interested in how not to tell what you know, took place:

Has not some company or companies embraced within this trust enjoyed ftom railroads more favourable freight rates than those rates accorded to refineries not in the trust? A. I do not recall anything of that kind. Q. You have heard of such things? A'. I have heard much in the papers about it. Q. W~s there not such an allegation as that in the litigation or controversy recently disposed of by the Interstate Commerce Commission, Mr. Rice's suit; was not there a charge in Mr. Rice's petition that companies embraced within your trust enjoyed from railroad companies more favourable freight rates? A. I think Mr. Rice made such a claim; yes, sir. Q. Di~ not the commission find that claim true? A. I think the return of the commission is a matter of record; I could not give it. Q. You don't know it; you haven't seen that they did so find? A. It is a matter of record. Q. Haven't you read that the Interstate Commerce Commission did find that charge to bc true? A. No, sir; I don't think I could say that. I read that they made a decision, but I am really unable to say what that decision was. Q. You did not feel interested enough in the litigation to see what the decision was? A. I felt an interest in the litigation; I don't mean to say that I did not feel an interest in It.

Q. Do you mean to say that you don't know what the deci~on was? that you did not read to see what the decision was? A. I don't say that; I know that the Interstate Commerce Commission had made a decision; the decision is quite a comprehensive one, but it is questionable whether it could he said that that decision in all its features results as I understand you to claim. Q. You don't so understand it? Will you say, as a matter of fact, that none of the companies embraced within this trust have enjoyed more favourable freight rates than the companies outside of your trust? Will you say, as a matter of fact, th~ it is not so? A. I stated in my testimony this morning that I had known of instances where companies altogether outside of the trust had enjoyed more favourable freights than companies in this trust; and I am not able to state that there may not have been arrang~ ments for freight on the part of companies within this trust as favourable as, or more favourable than, other freight arrangements; but, in reply to that, nothing peculiar in respect to the companies in this association; I suppose they make the best freight arrangements they can." *

The committee had a vague idea that refineries outside of the Standard Combination had had a hard time to ~ive, and asked if the trust had sought in any way to make the operations of outsiders so unprofitable that they would either have to come in or go out of the business. "They have not; no, sir, they have not," replied Mr. Rockefeller. "And they have lived on good terms with their competitors?" "They have, and have to-day very pleasant relations with those gentlemen." It would have been interesting to have heard the comments of a number of gentlemen trying to carry on an independent business in i888 on that answer: of the refiners in Oil City and Titusville, at that time preparing to carry their troubles to the Interstate Commerce Commission; of George Rice and others at Marietta, Ohio; of H. H. Campbell, of the Bear Creek Refining Company at Pittsburg; of Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle at Cleveland. If all of Mr. Rockefeller's testimony had been of the nature of the above, the investigation would have been worth little to the people who demanded it. But when it came to the questions which, after all, it was most essential to have answered at that moment, Mr. Rockefeller, after some skirmishing, gave the committee as frank testimony as is on record from him. The information wanted was in regard to the organisation of the Standard Oil Trust. As pointed out in a previous chapter, there had been some kind of an agreement adopted in 1882, binding together the varied interests which controlled the oil business. But what it was, where it was kept, by what authority it lived, nobody knew. For six years it had succeeded in hiding itself. What was the understanding which had made a trust of a company? The committee asked to know. Mr. Rockefeller and his counsel were the soul of amiability under the demand. They had only one request, and Mr. Choate made it persuasively: '~If the committee please," he said, "I do not arise to make an objection to a request of the committee; we~think that it is very proper that the committee should be made acquainted with this document and everything pertaining to it in order to advise them as to the nature and operation of this trust; at the same time, there are private interests ana controversies involved which might be seriously prejudiced by a public exposition of its details, and therefore, in producing it, we, without asking the committee to make any promise or to commit themselves at all, request that while they make whatever use of it they please, it shall not be in all its details made a matter of public record or exhibition unless in their final judgment, after consideration of the matter, they shall consider it necessary. There are very important private interests involved that ought not, under the guise of a public investigation, to be interfered with."

The committee examined the document and concluded to include it in its report.* Like all great things, it was simplicity itself-an agreement which anybody could understand, by which some fifty persons holding controlling interests in corporations, joint stock associations, and partnerships of different states, placed all their stock in the hands of nine trustees, receiving in return trust certificates. These nine trustees themselves owned a majority of the stock and had complete control of all the property. Mr. Rockefeller, when questioned, stated that one of the trustees was a responsible officer in almost every refinery or organisation in the trust; that the trustees, as a body, knew by reports and correspondence, and by frequent consultation in New York with active promoters of each concern, just how the business was going on. "We all know how the business goes," said Mr. Rockefeller;. "we get reports once in thirty days showing what it has cost for everything." IThe trustees evidently ran the e~tire great combination under the agreement. But consider the anomaly of the situation. Thirty-nine corporations, each of them having a legal existence, obliged by the law~~s of the state creating it to limit its operations to certain lines and to make certain reports, had turned over their affairs to an organisation having no legal existence, independent of all authority, able to do anything it wanted anywhere; and to this point working in absolute darkness. Under their agreement, which was unrecognised by the state, a few men had united to do things which no incorporated company could do. It was a situation as puzzling as it was new. The committee in reporting on what it discovered did nothing to solve the puzzle. It simply sounded a warning:

"The actual value of property in the trust control at the present time is not less than one hundred and forty-eight millions of dollars, according to the testimony of the trust's president before your committee. This sum in the hands of nine men, energetic, intelligent, and aggressiv~and the trustees themselves, as has been said, own a majority of the stock of the trust which absolutely controls the one hundred and forty-eight millions of dollars-is one of the most active and possibly the most formidable moneyed power on this continent. Its influence reaches into every state and is felt in remote villages, and the products of its refineries seek a market in almost every seaport on the globe. When it is remembered that all this vast wealth is the growth of about twenty years, that this property has more than doubled in value in six years, and that with this increase the trust has made aggregate dividends during that period of over fifty millions of dollars, the people may well look with apprehension at such rapid development and centralisation of wealth wholly independent of legal control, and anxiously seek out means to modify, if not to prevent, the natural consequence of the device producing it, a device of late invention, namely, the aggregation of great corporations into partnerships with unbounded resources and a field of operations quite as extended as its resources. So much for the nature of the Standard Oil Trust. The committee regret that they are not able to make a more complete and satisfactory report as to the method of its operations and its effect upon public interests. "The brevity of the time within which the investigation was required to be made rendered it impossible for your committee to do more than examine the persons most prominent in the management of its affairs. Its cause was thus presented to the most favourable light possible, and it is only fair to conclude that nothing was left unsaid by them that could be said in its favour. No witness came forward to accuse it of the great offences commonly laid to its charge. No proofs were made of its rapacity or of the greed with which it lays hold of every competitive industry, except such as might be drawn from the fact that it is the almost sole occupant of the field of oil operations, from which it has driven nearly every competitor. No witness appeared to prove its power over railroad and transportation companies and to wring from already impoverished lines better terms than other shippers, except such as might be drawn fmm the admission of its officers, made with hesitation, that this wealth and the amount of its business enabled it to obtain better terms than its poorer competitors." *

The New York Senate made its investigation of trusts in February, 1888. In March the Committee on Manufactures of the House of Representatives began a similar inquiry. This committee, like the earlier one, made the Standard its principal subject. Fully 1,000 pages of a report of I,S00 pages are devoted to Mr. Rockefeller's creation-five times the space given to the Sugar Trust, ten times that given to the Whiskey Trust. The testimony was wide in range. Indeed, from the volume alone, a pretty complete historY of the Standard Oil Company up to 1888 could be written. Here are found the South Improvement Company charter and contracts in full. Here is Mr. Cassatt's testimony, taken in the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. the Pennsylvania Railroad, showing the character of the rebates the Standard Combination was able to secure from the railroads at that time. Here is a partial history of the growth of the Standard pipelines. Many personal histories of refiners driven out of business by the conditions brought about by railroad discriminationS; full accounts of the war of the producing element on the Standard; all of the testimony in the Buffalo case, where two refiners were found guilty of conspiring to ruin an iridependent refining concern; the reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission in the cases of George Rice; and much interesting explanation of various matters by leading Standard Oil officials appear in the report. Mr. Rockefeller was on the stand, and one item of his testimony affords a curious comparison. On the 28th of February, when before the New York Senate committee, Mr. Rockefeller was asked if he was not a member of the South Improvement Company. "I was not," he replied. On the 3oth of the April following, when before the House Committee, the following colloquy took place: Q. I want the names particularly of gentlemen who either now or in the past have been interested with you gentlemen who were in the South Improvement Company? A. I think they were 0. T. Waring, W. P. Logan, John Logan, W. G. Warden, Q. H. Payne, H. M. Flagler, William Rockefeller, J A. Bostwick, and-myself.

It was in this investigation that Henry M. Flagler gave explanatiohs of various operations of the Standard, which have been quoted in the course of this narrative, notably explanations of the South Improvement Company, of the ten-cent rebate secured from all the railroads in '87S, of the purchase of the Empire Transportation Company, of the rebate on other people's shipments enjoyed in 1878 by the American Transfer Company. Some of Mr. Flagler's testimony in this investigation compares as curiously with affidavits of his made in 1880 as does that of his great chief. For instance, in 1880 Mr. Flagler swore that "the Standard Oil Company owns and operates its refineries at Cleveland, Ohio, and also a refinery at Bayonne in the state of New Jersey. That at no other place in the United States does the said Standard Oil Company own, operate, or control any refinery or refineries." ~ But in this investigation the following colloquy took place: Q. When did the Standard Company of Ohio first enter into an alliance with other refineries? A. If you mean (by) a~ alliance, Mr. Gowen, I should say never. Q. I am only endeavouring to aid your friends in getting at what they want. Here, I notice, they propose to prove by you-I will give it in this way-that on account of the disastrous condition of the refining business, the Standard, on October IS, 1874, entered into an alliance with a number of Pittsburg refineries. A. That is more correctly stated by saying that the Standard Oil Company purchas~d the refineries owned by the parties in Pittsburg. Q. Who wete they? A. Lockhart, Frew and Company, I think, was the company. Wait a moment. It was the Standard Oil Company of Pittsl,urg, it being a corporation, and Warden, Frew and Company, of Philadelphia, and, I should say, Charles Pratt and Company, of New York. Q. Any others? A. That is all. Q. All those gentlemen, Warden, Frew and Company, and the Standard Oil Company of Pittsburg, Charles Pratt and Company, of New York, are now associated with you as parties interested in the present Oil Trust? A. They are stockholders. The property formerly owned by them was at that time purchased by the Standard Oil Company. Q. When you speak of purchasing their interest, you do not exclude them from their interest? They united with you and remained as your associates in the business? A. If it was not from the fact that ours was a corporation, we might call it a copartnership. Q. They hecoming interested in ycurs, and you in theirs? A. Yes, sir. Q. And you simply used your name to represent the joint ownership, as it was a corporation? A. Yes, sir.*

Full as the testimony on the Standard Oil Trust gathered by the Federal committee of 1888 is, its report touched but one point, and that was its organisation. To the committee it seemed that the agreement under which the trust operated was such as to make it exempt from the anti-trust legislation which was then contemplated by Congress. The legislation proposed was directed against "combinations to fix the price or regulate the production of merchandise or commerce." Now a mass of testimony had been presented showing that, from the starting-point of the Standard's history with the South Improvement Company, its aim has been to regulate the output of refined oil so as to fix the price, but this testimony, the committee saw clearly enough, did not apply to the trust which it was investigating. For-so swore the trustees-they 'had nothing to do with the business operations of the separate concerns. They simply held the stock of the various corporations, exercised their right as stockholders, received and distributed the dividends. Each company did its own business in its own way. The trustees were not responsible for it. There was something humorous to those familiar with the oil world, in the idea of J. D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, J. D. Arch-bold, Henry H. Rogers, Charles Pratt, H. M. Flagler, Benjamin Brewster, W. H. Tilford and 0. B. Jennings, having nothing to do, as trustees of the Standard Oil Trust, but to receive and divide dividends, engrossing and interesting a task as that undoubtedly was. But, as a matter of fact, nothing else could be settled on them by anything in the testimony. For instance, in 1887 there was an alliance formed between the Oil Producers' Protective Association and the Standard for limiting the production of crude oil (a movement of which we shall hear more later). This certainly was in restraint of trade. But, on examination, the committee found the contract had been signed by the Standard Oil Company of New York. The trustees had nothing to do with it! Taking up, point by point, the conditions of which the oil producers complained, not one of them could be fixed on ?he trust'. It had made no agreements, signed no contracts, kept no books. It had no legal existence. It was a force powerful as gravitation and as intangible. You could argue its existence from its effects, but you could never prove it. You could no more grasp it than you could an ee~l. Certainly the Committee on Manufactures was justified in confining its report to pointing out the fact that the Standard Oil Trust agreement was a shrewd and slippery device for evading responsibility. And there the investigations of 1888 ended. There had been much noise over them, and for what good? So asked the discontented oil public. It simply had secured the form of an agreement which could no more be touched by legislation than human greed. It was characteristic that the oil public, intent on immediate remedies, should be discouraged. If they had applied to , their cause the same patience and foresight Mr. Rockefeller did to his, they would have realised that, as a matter of fact, a respectable first step had been taken toward their real goal, a goal which has not by any means been reached-that is, a legal form of organisation for corporations doing interstate business which would enable the public to know promptly if they were securing special privileges or were restricting trade. This first step was in securing the. famous trust agreement. That was now in the hands of people. given to thinking about things, and something came of it, even more quickly than the philosophical observer of public events might expect, and in this wise: In 1887 there was elected to the attorney-generalship of Ohio a lawyer, something under forty years of age, named David K. Watson. Two years later Mr. Watson was a candidate for re-election. One day, while busy with his campaign, he came out of his office in the state-house on the public square in Columbus, and, crossing the street, stopped, as he often did, at a book-shop to look over new publications. He happened there on a small yellow leatherette volume entitled "Trusts." It was written by William W. Cook, of the New York bar, and cost fifty cents. Mr. Watson bought the book and spent the evening reading it. At the end he found the Standard Oil Trust agreement. It was the first time he had ever seen it. He read it carefully and saw at once that, if it was a bona fide agreement, the Standard Qil Company of Ohio was and had been for seven years violating the laws of the state of Ohio by taking the affairs of the company from the directors and placing them in the hands of trustees, nearly all of whom were non-residents of the state. M.r Watson knew on the instant that, if this were a bona fide agreement and he were re-elected attorney-general of Ohio, it would be his duty to bring an action against the Standard Oil Company of the state. He laid the little book away until he knew the result of the election. A few weeks later Mr. Watson was re-elected attorneygeneral. He at once began a search into the authenticity of the documents in Mr. Cook's little volume. He sent for the reports of the investigations by the committees of 'the New York Senate and of Congress. He read the testimony w6rd for word. But he still doubted the correctness of the document,that, even if it were in the main correct, there might be some loophole by which the Standard Oil Company could escape. Now, in reading the report of the House investiga- -Mr. Watson had been particularly impressed with the clearness and directness of the questions put by one of the members of the investigating committee, Mr. Buchanan, of New Jersey. He accordingly went to Washington, inquired from a friend if Mr. Buchanan could be relied upon, and, receiving the assurance of his high character, sought an interview with him. "Was the Standard trust agreement as published in the comrnittee's report . "Yes," said Mr. Buchanan. "But why do you ask?" "Because if it is," replied Mr. Watson, "I believe the Standard Oil Company of Ohio has violated the laws of the state, and on my return to Columbus I shall file an action in qua warranto against it in the Supreme Court of the state." "You would not dare do that, would you?" exclaimed Mr. Buchanan. "I was young then," Mr. Watson told the writer in describing this interview, "and I supposed it was expected of a public officer to perform his duty. So I explained to Mr. Buchanan that there was a statute in Ohio which required an attorney-genera~ to bring suit against any corporation which he had reason to believe was violating the laws of the state; that I had no personal feeling against the Standard Oil Company, but I meant to enforce the law against it as I would against any other company which I believed to be violating the law." "I admire your courage," said Mr. Buchanan, "but I would not do it." On May 8, 1890, Mr. Watson filed his petition in the Supreme Court of Ohio.* The petition averred that, in violation of the law of Ohio, the Standard Oil Company had entered into an agreement by which it had transferred 34,993 shares out of 3;,ooo to the trustees of the Standard Oil Trust, most of whom were non-residents of the state; that it was these trustees who chose the board of directors of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, and directed its policy, and prayed that, on account of this violation of law, the company should be ~tadjudged to have forfeited and surrendered its corporate rights, privileges, powers and franchises, and that it be ousted and excluded therefrom, and that it be dissolved." The petition came on the trust like a thunderbolt. There had been already more or less erratic and ill-advised anti-trust legislation in various states, but it had been framed in ignorance of the actual organisation of the trust, and carried out with a crude notion that the trust, in spite of the fact that it was already thoroughly intrenched in the business life of the country, could be destroyed by a hostile act of a Legislature. Mr. Watson's suit was something very different. It was an application of recognised laws to admitted facts. It brought the Standard Oil Company face to face with several legal propositions it did not like to meet. After a long delay an answer was filed by the Standard. To Mr. Watson's joy, the one thing he feared-the denial of the correctness of the agreement-made no part of this answer. It admitted the agreement, but it denied that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was a party to it. The agreement was signed by the individual stockholders of the Standard Oil Company, not by the company in its corporate capacity. The Standard Oil Company of Ohio had nothing to do with the Standard Oil Trust. True, certain of its stockholders had turned over their stock to the nine trustees, but the company did its business as before, discharging all its duties as its charter required. This was the essential point of the defendant's answer. This, and the claim that if the court should hold that the action of the stockholders in becoming parties to the agreement in their individual capacity was a corporate act of the Standard Oil Company, even then the charter should not be forfeited, since the law barred an act committed more than five years before a petition was filed. Anticipating that the trust would get together a strong array of counsel to defend its attacked member, Mr. Watson retained his personal and professional friend, John W. Warrington, an eminent lawyer of Cincinnati, to assist him. They were opposed by Joseph H. Choate, S. C. T. Dodd and Virgil P. Kline of Cleveland. But, while the preparation for the argument of the case was going on, the courageous young attorney-general was beset on all sides for an explanation. Jvhy had he brought the suit? What was the influence which had controlled him? Men in power took him aside to question him, incapable, evidently, of believing thaf an attorney-general could be produced in Ohio who would bring a suit solely because he believed it was his duty. Some suggested that some big interest, hostile to the Standard, was behind him; others said the suit was suggested by Senator Sherman, then interested in his anti-trust bill. Along with this speculation came the strong and subtle reraining pressure a great corporation is sure to exert when its ambitions are interfered with. From all sides came powerful persuasion that the suit be~dropped. Mr. Watson has never made public the details of this influence in any documentary way, but the accounts he at the time gave different friends of it led to so much gossip in Ohio that in 1899 the attorney-general of the,~state, F. S. Monnett, made detailed charges of six deliberate attempts to bribe Mr. Watson to withdraw the suits.* But one bit of documentary proof of the efforts to reach tlie attorney~general ever reached the public-thatcame out without his knowledge or consent, Mr. Watson claims, seven years after the suit was brought. It is interesting enough as evidence of the character of the pressure Mr. Rockefeller can set in motion when he will. Among Mr. Rockefeller's Ohio friends was the late Marcus A. Hanna, who was even then a strpng factor in the Republican party of the state. A few months after the suit was brought he wrote Mr. Watson a letter of remonstrance. Many of Mr. Watson's friends saw this letter at the:time and felt deep indignation over its contents. In 1897, when Mr. Hanna was a candidate for the United States Senate, an enterprising newspaper man of Ohio recalled that during 1890 it was common gossip in Ohio that Mr. Hanna had written the attorney-general a letter asking him to withdraw his. suit against the Standard Oil Company. The correspondent sought~Mr. Watson, who, so he avers, let him read the letter through, although he refused to allow him to copy it for publication. "No one could read it and ever forget it," said the correspondent; but to reinforc~ himself he sought persons who were associated with Mr. Wat son at the time-yes, they remembered the letter perfectly. Certain of them said that they could never forget some of its expressions. Between them they pieced up the following portions of the letter which they declared correct and which the correspondent published in the New York World for August II, 1897:

"I noticed some time ago that you had brought Suit to take away the charter of the Standard Oil Company. I intended at the rime to write you about it, but it slipped my memory. A few days ago while in New York I met a friend, John D. Rockefeller, and he called my attention to the fact that you had brought the suit, but did not ask me to influence you in any way."

Having secured this much, the correspondent, thinking it possible Mr. Watson might have answered Mr. Hanna's letter, undertook a bit of original investigation. He sought the files of the attorney-general's official correspondence for 1890, and the following is what he found. This letter certainly is evidence enough of the sort of letter Mr. Hanna had written even if the above restoration is not absolutely accurate:

HON. MARK HANNA, December 13, 1890.

Cleveland, Ohio. My dear Sir:-Your communication of the 21st ult. came to hand. The delay in answering it has been caused largely by my being ill for several days. I did not intend that bringing the action to which you refer in your letter should be an attack on my ~art on "organised capital," for I am aware that great business transactions require union and concentration of moneyed interests, and fully appreciate what has been done in that direction, yet I cannot but feel that I am justified in bringing the suit ~nst the Standard Oil Company, and believe that there are many things relating the case which, if you understood, would cause you to entertain different views onceming it and my relation to it. Let me impress one thing on you with special 'articularity, and you may depend absolutely on its truthfulness. Senator Sherman n&er suggested or encouraged this suit, either directly or indirectly. This must be understood in its broadest sense. The report probably arose from the fact that the action was brought s.h~rtly after the Senator made his great speech in support his anti-trust hill. You will hardly receive my statement with favour, I fear, but lam alone responsible for the action. No one encouraged me to bring it or knew that it would be brought until I determined to do so, and it is unfair to other persons to charge them with suggesting it or encouraging it. With the highest appreciation of your perso nal friendship, I am, with great respect, Truly yours, DAVID K. WATSON. played in the Senatorial campaign of 1897 is familiar to those who follow politics. It was kept standing for days in black-faced capitals at the head of the opposition newspapers in Ohio, and remained a potent weapon in the hands of Mr. Hanna's enemies to the time of his death. Whatever the pressure Mr. Watson encountered, it had no effect on his purpose. He quietly went ahead, presented his brief, and, when the time came, he and Mr. Warrington argued the case. The following proposition from the brief presented by Mr. Watson and Mr. Warrington show tersely the line of their argument:

"Where the manifest object of an agreement is to unite corporations, parmership~ and individuals into, or include them in a common enterprise, and control them through an agency unknown to the law of their creation, and all the officers, directors and stockholders of such corporations sign the agreement, and, in furtherance of its provisions, transfer their stock to such agency, permit the corporate executive agencies to make such transfers on the corporate books, submit without objection to the domination of the agency to which the stock is so trahsferred in the selection of directors and officers, and in the management of the corporate affairs and business suffer the corporate earnings to go to such agency and be placed and mingled with the earnings of the other parties in the combination so created, and, after deductions for uses of the combination, be divided as part of such common earnings amdng the persons interested, in such case the corporations become and are~)r at least will be treated by the courts as-parties to such agreement and actors in its performance, although their corporate names are withheld therefrom. Such proceedings constitute actual corporate conduct, if not formal corporate action, on the part of each corporation. "An agreement is in violation of law and void which in effect creates a partnership between corporations, or where its probable operation and effect-much more where its inevitable tendency-is to create a substantial monopoly, or is in restraint of trade or otherwise injurious to the public. " Joseph H. Choate appeared for the defence. The most eminent lawyer in the country, his argument must have been anxiously awaited by Mr. Watson. Curiously enough, as it seems to the non-legal mind, Mr. Choate began his plea by a prayer for mercy. Whatever the sins of the Standard Oil company of Ohio, pleaded Mr. Choate, do not take away its charter. Mr. Choate then proceeded with a strong argument in which he claimed "absolute innocence and absolute merit ~ for everything wc have done within the scope of the mattersbrought before the court by these pleadings." The argument did not convince the court of the innocence of the Standard in the questions at issue. The court showed, out of the mouth of the trust agreement itself, that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was "managed in the interest of the Standard Oil Trust-irrespective of what might be its duties to the people of the state from which it derives its corporate I life." The court gave as its opinion that an act of a majority of the stockholders of a corporation affects the property of a company in the same way that a resolution by the board of directors affects it. "By this agreement," said the court, "mdi~ rcctly; it is true, but none the less effectually, the defendant is c6ntrolled ana managed by the Standard Oil Trust, an association with its principal place of business in New York City, and organised for a purpose contrary to the policy of our laws. Its object was to establish a virtual monopoly of the business of producing petroleum, and of manufacturing, refining and dealing in it and all its products, throughout the entire country, and by which it might not merely control the production, but the price, at its pleasure. All such associations are contrary to the policy of our state and void.

"Much has been said in favour of the objects of the Standard Oil Trust and what it has accomplished. It may be true that it has improved the quality and cheapened the cost of petroleum and its products to the consumer. But such is not one of the usual or general results of a monopoly; and it is the policy of the law to regard, not what may, but what usually happens. Experience shows that it is not wise to trust human cupidity where it has the opportunity to aggrandise itself at the expense of others. The claim of having cheapened the price to the consumer is the usual pretext on which monopolies of this kind are defended." * From all this the court decided the Standard Oil Company deserved punishment. The charter was not taken away-the statute of limitations being advanced as a reason for this leniency, although, as Mr. Watson and Mr. Warrington showed, the statute of limitations could hardly be pleaded in this case, when the state had been kept in ignorance by the concealment of the agreement. The company was allowed to live, but it was ousted from the privilege of entering into the~trust agreement, from the power of recognising the transfer of the stock, and from the power of permitting the trustees to control its affairs. It was also ordered to pay the costs of the action. The judgment of the court was not rendered until March 2, 1892, almost two years after the filing of the petition. As soon as it was received Virgil P. Kline, the chief counsel of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, went to New York for consultation with the trustees. Five days later he wrote to Judge Spear, the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, saying: "Decisive steps will be taken 'at once not only to release the Standard Oil Company from any relations to the trust, but to terminate the entire trust." But there were "practical difficulties" in the task. The company pleaded for a "temporary recognition," and he asked an interview where he could explain the situation. This was granted, and on the i6th of March Mr. Kline explained to the judges in chambers, to Mr. Watson, and to his successor in office, the situation of the company. The trustees had all but seven shares of its stock. Trust certificates had been issued for these ten years before. The Standard Oil Company did not know who held these certificates, and could only know through the trustees, therefore the trust certificates must be transferred back, the owners hunted up, and each one induced to make an exchange. A system must be devised for doing this. Anybody could see this would take time. The court was friendly in the matter, and Chief Justice Spear gave to Mr. Kline an informal note gr~nting an extension. "The court is not disposed to change its order at this time," the chief justice wrote, "but, so long as those in control appear to be engaged, as now, in an honest effort to dissever the relations of the company with the trust, and liquidate and wind up the affairs of the trust, the court Will not be disposed to interfere." Thus time was gained. While Mr. Kline was securing time, the trustees were pushing a' liquidation scheme. On March ii the following notice was mailed to all holders of Standard Oil Trust certificates, and was published in a newspaper in each state where a Standard Oil Company had been organised: The meeting was held as called. Mr. Rockefeller was in the chair, and Mr. Dodd, who had drawn the trust agreement, now presented the resolution which was to dissolve it. The remarks with which Mr. Dodd introduced his resolution denied every point which the courts had charged against the combination.It is probable that Mr. Dodd had foreseen from the first just such an attack on his agreement as had come, for he had put into that instrument a paragraph providing for a dissolution, and it was in accordance with that article that the trust was now dissolved. The trustees were to continue to exist-under a new name: "Liquidating trustees." The property they had to take care of was vastly in excess of what it had been ten years before. Then the capital of the thirty-nine constituent companies was $70,000,000. These companies had been ':ombined until they had been reduced to twenty, and their ':ombined capital was now $102,233,700.t Property of about ,~$2O,000,000 in excess of the capital was held by the trustees. Mr. Dodd's resolution provided for the division of this property, and for the transfer of the trust certificates back to the corporations to which they belonged. The individual holders of the trust certificates were to get in exchange a proportionate are in each of'the twenty companies. "A will not get stock in one corporation and B in another; each will get his due proportion in the stocks of all," said Mr. Dodd. All of tbi3 change would make no difference with the management f affairs. Mr. Dodd assured the stockholders: "Your intere~ts will be the same as now. The various corporations will coiitinue to do the same business as heretofore; and your proportion of the earnings will not be changed." The trustees went about liquidating at once, but it was not until the following November that the immense number of certificates held by them personally were exchanged. The process followed can be easily illustrated by Mr. Rockefeller's case. When the trust was ordered dissolved Mr. Rockefeller held 2S6,8S4 of the 972,S00 shares of Standard Oil Trust which were out. He turned over to an attorney an assignment of this amount, with instructions to secure from each of twenty companies in the trust stock certificates for the portion belonging to him. The corporate stocks were turned~ over to Mr. Rockefeller, and the assignment of certificate, a properly framed and numbered document, was turned over to the liquidating trustees. This assignment of legal title, for all practical purposes, was the same thing as the trust certificate. It enabled the trustees to collect dividends from the various companies and pay them just as they had before. The documents showing the formal procedure in the case of Mr. Rockefeller's stocks are printed in the Appendix.* At the end of the first year, after the dissolution of the trust, 477,881 shares were uncancelled. At the end of the second year it was the same; at the end of the third, 477,881 were still out. At the end of the fourth, 477,881. The dissolution of the trust seemed to have come to a stand-still. Mr. Dodd was right; things were going on as they did before; dividends were issued exactly as before. Nor was there any indication of an intention on the part of the liquidating trustees to change this state '~of things. If the monopolistic power of the Standard Oil Trust was to be broken, it was evidently not to be by any order of dissolution by the courts. Something more powerful than the courts was at work, however. The spirit of individualism was beginning to reassert itself in the oil industry-a new war for independence had been begun, was indeed well under way even before the state of Ohio made the dissolution of the trust necessary. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER'S one irreconcilable enemy in the oil business has always been~the oil producer. There is no doubt that Mr. Rockefeller has sincerely deplored this. And well he might, for he learned in his first great raid on the industry in 1872 that the producers aroused and united made a powerful and dangerous foe. No doubt, if it had been practical, Mr. Rockefeller would have begun at the start to take over oil production as he did oil refineries and pipe-lines, and thus would have gotten his enemy out of the way; but during the first fifteen years of his work it was not practical. The oil fields were too vast and undefined. It not being practical to own the oil fields, and yet essential that those who did own them, and of whose oil he aspired to be the only buyer, should be kept sufficiently satisfied not to interfere with his domination or to attempt to handle the oil for themselves, Mr. Rockefeller, whenever he ad the chance, sought to persuade the producers to do what would have done had he owned the oil fields-that was, keep the~supply of crude oil short. "The dear people," he said once when asked by an investigating committee if his monopoly of oil refining and oil transportation had not prevented the producer from getting ~is full share of the profits-"the dear people," he said, "if they had produced less oil than they wanted, would have ~ot their full price; no combination in the world could have prevented that, if they had produced less oil than the world K required." * It is quite possible that if Mr. Rockefeller had been able to convert the majority of the producing body to this theory, and the supply of crude oil producers would have forgotten consequently high, the oil producers would have forgotten their resentment at his early raids and would have relapsed into indifference toward his control. Material prosperity is usually benumbing in its effects. There always has been a f~ctor in the ~reat game playing in the Oil Regions, however, which not even Mr. Rockefeller could match. Nature has been in the oil game, and she has taken pains to prevent the only situation which would have enabled Mr. Rocke~feller to reconcile the oil producers. Again and again when it seemed as if the limits of oil prdduction were Set, and when Mr Rockefeller and his colleagues must have believed that they would soon have the industry sufficiently well in hand to pay the producers a satisfactory price for crude oil, their calculations~have been upset by the discovery of a great deposlt of oil which flooded the market and put down the prices. This happened so often between Mr. Rockefeller's first public appearance in the business and the time when he comhis control of transportation, refineries and markets, that the yearly production of crude oil had risen from five and a half million barrels to thirty million barrels, and instead of a half million barrels above ground in stocks there were in 1883 over thirty-five million barrels, in 1884 nearly thirty-seven million, in i88~ thirty-three and a half million. The low price for crude which these vast stocks caused, the high charges for gathering, transporting and storing, all services out of which the Standard was making big profits, the fact that the profit on refined oil steadily increased in these years-the result of the overthrow of independent refiners and pipe-lines-while the profit on crude steadily diminished, were facts which the oil producers brooded over incessantly, and the more bitterly because they felt they could do nothing to help themselves. Every enterprise looking to relief which they had undertaken had, for one reason or another, failed. They had no faith that relief was possible. IThe Standard would never allow any outside interest to get a foothold. It was the bitterness which this convictiQn caused which was at the bottom of the outburst over the Billingsley Bill described in Chapter XIII. The Billingsley Bill was defeated, as it deserved to be, but the work done was by no means lost. For the first time since i88o the Oil Regions were aroused to concerted action. The support of the Billingsley Bill had been a spontaneous movement, a passionate, unorIganised revolt against the tyranny of the Standard, but it served to bring into action rnen who for six long years had been saying it was no use to resist, that Mr. Rockefeller's grip was too strong to be loosened. It revived their confidence in united action and steeled them to a determination to take hold of the industry and force into it again a fair competition in handling oil. On the very night after the defeat of the bill (April 28, 1887) the oil men who had gathered in Harrisburg.to support the measure, angry and sore as they were, arranged to call an early meeting in Oil City and organise. The meeting was held. It was large, and it was followed by others. In a very short time 2,000 oil men were enrolled in a Producers' Protective Association, and thirty-six local assemblies were holding regular meetings throughout the region. There were several important points about the new association, aside from the enthusiasm and determination which animated it: (i) It was a secret order. (2) Its membership was composed entirely of persons outside of and opposed to the Standard Oil Trust, one of its by-laws reading: "No person connected with the Standard Oil Company or any of its allies, as partners, stockholders, or employees, and friendly thereto, shall be elected to membership; and members becoming such shall be liable to expulsion." (3) It proposed "to defend the industry against the aggregations of m6nopolistic transporters, refiners, buyers and sellers" by handling its own oil. Hardly had the Producers' Protective Association been organised before Mr. Rockefeller had an Opportunity to try bis plan for conciliation. An independent movement ha~ been started in the summer of 1887 by certain large producers in favour of a general "shut-down," its object, of course, being to decrease the oil stocks. The president of the Producers' Association, Thomas W. Phillips, who at that time was the largest individual producer in the oil country, his production averaging not less than 6,000 barrels a day, was called into consultation with the leaders of the "shut-down" movement. M~. Phillips promptly told the gentlemen inter-ested that he would not join in such an undertaking unless tbe Standard went into it. He pointed out that the Standard owned a large proportion of the 30,000,000 barrels of oil above ground. They had bought it at low prices. If the production was shut down prices would go up and the Standard would reap largely on the oil they owned. The producers would, as usual, be standing all the loss. The upshot of the cduncil was that the Producers' Protective Association took hold of the shut-down movement, its represe~tative seeking an interview with the Standard officials as to their willingness to share in the cost of reducing the production. Here was a chance for Mr. Rockefeller to apply his theory of handling the oil producers-conciliate them when possible-encourage them in limiting their production. The oil men's representatives were met half-way, and an interesting and curious plan was worked out; the producers were to agree to limit their production by 17,Soo barrels a day. They were to do this by shutting down their producing wells a part or all of the time and by doing no fresh drilling for a year. If they would do this the Standard agreed tQ sell the association 5,000,000 barrels of~oil at sixty-two cents, and let them carry it at the usual rates as long as they wanted to. Whatever advance in price came from the shut-in movement the producers were to have on ~eir oil, and it was to be shared by them according to the amount each shut in his production. Mr. Phillips, before agreeing to this arrangement, demanded that provision be made for the workingmen who would be thrown out of employment by the shut-down, and he proposed that the association set aside for their benefit 1,000,000 barrels of the oil bought from the Standard, and that the Standard set aside another million; all the profits above sixty-two cents and the carrymg charges on the 2,000,000 barrels were to go to the workingmen. A memorandum covering the above points of the agreement was drawn up, and it was accepted by the two interests represented.* Mr. Rockefeller's reason for signing the contract he gave . What was the inducement for the Standard Oil Trust to enter into such agreement as that? A. The inducement was for the purpose of accomplishing a harmonious feeling as between the interests of the Standard Oil Trust and the producers of petroleum; 'here was great distress throughout the oil~producing region; as an instance of that distress there was an outcry that our interest was getting a return, that theirs was not in the business, and we did not know, as a matter of fact, that the oil~producing interest W~e abnormally depressed, and we felt it to be to the interests of the American oil industry that a reasonable price should be had by the producer for the crude material, ~nd we wanted to co~operate to that end. Q. By advancing the price of the crude material you necessarily advance the price of the refined? A. Yes, sir.*

The shut-down went into effect the first of November, 1887. The effect on stocks and the market was immediate-stocks fell off at the rate of a million barrels a month, and prices rose by January, i888, some twenty cents. But at the end of the year; though oil was higher and stocks considerably less, the benefits of the shut-down had not been conspicuous enough to produce that "harmonious feeling" Mr. Rockefeller so much desired; not sufficient to distract the minds of the producers from the idea they had in forming their association, and that was a co-operative enterprise for taking care of their own oil. Throughout i888 and 1889 two sGhemes, known as the Co-operative Oil Company, Limited, and the United Oil Company, Limited, were under consideration. By the~end of the latter year it looked as if some-thing could be done with the second, and it was turned over by the executive board of the association to a special cornmittee, of~which H. L. Taylor, of the Union Oil Company, 'one of the largest and oldest producing concerns of the Oil Regions, was chairman. How Mr. Taylor had succeeded in getting into the Producers' Protective Association it is hard to say, for it was he and his partner, Mr. Satterfield, who in 1883 had tried to throw the Tidewater Pipe Line into the hands of the Standard Oil Company, and who, when that unworthy scheme failed, had sold their stock to the Standard, thus giving that company its first holdings in the Tidewater.* The independents had forgotten or overlooked this fact, for Taylor was a member of the Producers' Protective Association and prominent in its councils. The special committee, of which Mr. Taylor was chairman, went actively to work. Lawyers were employed to consider the safest form of organisation for a company doing an interstate pipe-line business and carrying on refineries. Certain German capitalists, owners of tank-steamers and interested in foreign marketing agencies, were brought into the scheme. Things were going well, when suddenly the committee found the chairr~an cooling toward the enterpflse-. Then came the rumour that Mr. Taylor and his partners-Mr. Satterfield and J. L. and J. C. McKinney--had sold the Union Oil Company' to the Standard. A meeting of the executive board was at once called, Messrs. Taylor and J. L. McKinney both being present. They acknowledged the truth of the report and were promptly informed their resignations would be accepted. The rumour of the secret desertion of strong members of the Producers' Protective Association, while holding positions of trust, soon spread through the Oil Regions. It was a staggering blow. It took from them one of the largest single interests represented. It deprived them of men of ability on whom they had depended. It introduced a fear of treachery ~' from others. It brought them face to face with a new and ' serious element in the oil problem-the Standard as an oil producer. Up to 1887, the year of the organisatron of the Producers' Protective Association, Mr. Rockefeller had not aken his great combination into oil production to any exand wisely enough from his point of view. It was aless in which there were great risks, and as long as he could control the output by being its only buyer, why should he take them? Now, however, the situation was changing. A number of sure fields had been developed-Bradford, Ohio, West Virginia. Their value was depressed by overproduction. Mr. Rockefeller had money to invest. The producers were threatening to disturb his control by a co-operative scheme.- It was certain that he had not yet produced a "harmonious feeling." It was not sure he would. If he failed in that they might one day even shut off his supply of oil, as they had done in 1872, and Mr. Rockefeller, with great foresight, determined to become a producer. In 1887 he went into Ohio fields.. Soon after he began quietly to buy into West Virginia. When he learned, in 1890, from Mr. Taylor and his partners, that a co-operative company of producers was on foot, he naturally enough concluded that the best way to dismember it was to buy out the largest interest in it. The Union Oil Company saw the advantage of being a member of the Standard Oil Trust, and sold. In this one year, 1890, over 40,000 shares of Standard Oil Trust certificates were issued to oil-producing companies,* as follows. There was general consternation in producing circles, and if there had not been a number of men in the organisation who realised that the life of the independent effort was at stake, and who turned all their strength to saving it, the association w6uld undoubtedly have gone to pieces. Chief among these men were Lewis Emery, Jr., and C. P. Collins, of Bradford, Pennsylvania; J. W. Lee and David Kirk, of Pittsburg; A. D. Wood, of Warren; Michael Mu~hy, of Philadelphia; Rufus Scott, of Wellsville; J. B. Aiken, of Washington; R. J. Straight, of Bradford; Roger Sherman and M. W. Quick, of Titusville. They urged an immediate meeting of the General Assembly, at which a plan for cooperative action should be adopted and at once put into force. On January 28, 1891, the General Assembly convened at co-operative plan which the executive board had worked out, lull and its destruction by the desertion of the Union Oil Cornpany, came out. It was at once evident that, instead of dis heartening the Assenibly, it was going to harden their determination and spur them to action; that they would not leave Warren until they had something to work on. The session

lasted three days, and before finally adjourning it had

adopted a drastic plan, framed by a committee of nine, of

which Mr. Quick was chairman. This plan aimed, so the

resolution adopted by the Assembly stated, to cut off the

supplies of the producers' oil from the Standard Trust! This

was to be accomplished by forming a limited. partnership,

whose subscribers should all be trusted members of the Pro

ducers' Prdtective Association (only persons having no affili

ation with the Standard Oil Company were members of the.

Producers' Protective Association, it will be remembered),

and which should aim to take care of the crude oil from the

wells of the producers who went into the movement, furnish

it local transportation, and find a market for it either by

building independent refineries or by alliance with those~

already in existence. The was immediate. In a few weeks over 1,000 pro5 had subscribed to the new company, which was at once organised as the Producers' Oil Company, Limited, its being $600,000. out it is one thing to organise a company, and another to business. Where were they to begin? Where to set foot? The only thing of which they were sure was a supply of oil, and in order to take care of that they began opera'iOflS by putting up four iron tanks at Coraopolis, Pennsylnear the rich McDonald oil field. But they must have market for it, and their first effort was to ship it abroad. At Bayonne, New Jersey, on the border of the territory Dccupied by the Standard's great plant, stands an independent refinery, the Columbia Oil Company. The Columbia has erminal privileges," that is, a place on the water-front fr~)ni which it can ship oil-an almost impossible privilege secure around New York harbour. The Producers' Oil :ompany now obtained from Hugh King, the president of Columbia, the use of his terminal. They at once had fifty ink-cars built, and prepared to ship their crude oil, but the iarket was against them, stocks were increasing, prices The railroad charged a price so high for running cars that there was no profit, and the fifty tank-cars never used in that trade. A futile effort to use their oil as fuel.jn Pittsburg occupied their attention for a but it amounted to nothing. It was becoming clearer that they must refine their oil. The way opened to this toward the end of their first year. In and around Oil City and Titusville there had grown since i88i a number of independent oil refineries. They come into being as a direct result of the compromise

made in i88o between the producers and the Pen~sylvari Railroad, a clause of which stipulated that thereafter rail road rates should be open and equal to all shippers. Th~ Pennsylvania seems to have intended at first to live up i) this agreement, and it encouraged refiners in both the ()~~ Regions and Philadelphia to establish works. At first ~ had gone very well. There were economies in refining near the point where the oil was produced, and so long as the young independents had a low rate to seaboard for their export oil they prospered. But in i88~ things began change. In that year the Standard Pipe Line made a pooling arrangement with the Pennsylvania Railroad, by whi( rates from the Oil Regions were raised to fifty-two cents barrel, an advance of seventeen cents a barrel over what they had been getting, and in return for this raise the Standard agreed to give the railroad twenty-six per cent. of all oil shipped Eastward, or pay them for what they did not get. This advance put the independents at a great disadvantag( In September, i888, another advance came. Rates on oil in barrels were raised to sixty-six cents, while rates on oil tanks were not raised. The explanation was evident. The rail road owned no tank-cars, but rented them from the Stan Oil Company. It refused to furnish these tank-cars to thc independents, but forced them to ship in barrels, and floW advanced the price on oil in barrels. This second advance was more than the refiners could live under, and they bined and took their case to the Interstate Commerce Commission, a hearing being given them in Titusville in May~ 1889. No decision had as yet been rendered, and they in meantime were having a more and more trying life, and their exasperation against the Standard was mg with each week. When, therefore, the representatives -the Producers' Oil Company proposed ~a league with independent refiners they were cordially welcomed.We have oil in tanks at Coraopolis, said the producers, plenty of it, but we have no market. If we build a pipe-line our tanks to Oil City and Titusville and give you pip-age at fifteen cents a barrel, five cents less than the Standard ~harges, will you enter into an agreement with us to take ~ur oil for five years? The refiners saw at once the possible ~uture in such an arrangement, and in a short time they had gone individually into a company to be called the Producers' and Refiners' Company, with a capital of $2s0,000, of which the Producers' Oil Company held $160,000, and whose object was the laying of a pipe-line from the fields in which the producers were interested to the refineries at Oil City and Titusville. The new plan was carried out with the greatest secrecy and promptness. Before the Standard men in the region realised what was going on, a right of way was secured and the pipe was going down. On January 8, 1893, the first oil was run. Here, then, was the first link in a practical cooperative enterprise-independent producers and refiners of oil joined by a pipe-line of which they were the owners. While this enterprise was being carried out in Western Pennsylvania, in the northern part of the state a still more ambitious; independent project was under way, nothing less than a double pipe-line, one for refined and the other for ~rude oil, from the Oil Regions to the sea. This plan had originated with Lewis Emery, Jr., one of the most implacable and intelligent opponents Mr. Rockefeller's pretensions have ever met. Mr. Emery sympathised with the idea that there was no way for the producer to get his share of ~he profits in the oil business except by handling the product entirely himself. In his judgment a pipe-line to the seaboard was the first important link in such an attempt, and in 1891, on his own responsibility, he set out to see what hopes there were of securing a right of way. The Columbia Oil Company, through whom the Producers and Refiners were exporting, favoured such a scheme. It was certain mar' producers would go into it; but on all sides there was mud scepticism about the Standard allowing a line to go through. Mr. Emery's first idea was a line from Bradford to Williams-port, on the Reading road. He consulted the railroad officials. They would be glad of the freight, they told him, and a preliminary contract' was drawn up. The contract was never completed. Mr. Emery returned to find out why. "1f we give you this contract," the Reading officials told Mr. Emery, "we shall disturb our relations with the Standard Oil Trust. We cannot do it." Turning from the Reading, he projected a new route, a pipe-line from Bradford to the New York, Ontario and Western Railway near Hancock, New York, thence by rail to the Hudson River, and from there by water to New York harbour. The New York, Ontario and Western officials welcomed the proposal. It gave them a new and valuable freight. But the pipes must cross the Erie road near both its ter: minals. Mr. Emery saw the president of the road. "Yes," the president told him, "we are disposed to assist all progress. Go ahead." Thus encouraged, he sent his men into the field to get the right of way. They had made a good beginning before the project was known, but as soon as it was rumoured there appeared promptly on the route surveyed a number of men known to be Standard employees. They, too, wanted a right of way, the same as Mr. Emery wanted. They bought strips of land across his route, they bought up mortgages on farms where rights had already been acquired, and, mortgage in hand, compelled farmers to give them rights. It was an incessant harassing by men who never used the rights acquired-who did not want them save to hinder the independent project This sort of hindrance by the Standard was certain, whatever route was taken, and Mr. Emery went ahead undismayed, and in September, 1892, organised his company-the United States Pipe Line Com with a capital of $600,000. Among the incorporators e representatives of the independents' interests, both in w York and in the Oil Regions, and much of the stock Was soon placed in the hands of the men who were interested in the independent concerns described above. It looked very much as if the United States Pipe Line were to be laid. Now, the strength of the Standard Oil Trust had always been due to its control of transportation. An independent pipe-line, especially to the seaboard, was considered rightly as a much more serious menace to its power than an independent refinery. The United States Pipe Line could not be allowed, and prompt and drastic measures were taken to hinder its work. There is no space here for an account of the wearisome obstructive litigation which confronted the company, for the constant interference, even by force, which followed them for months. It culminated when an attempt was made to join the pipes laid to each side of the Erie tracks near Hancock, New York, the Eastern terof the pipe-line. Mr. Emery, relying on the promise of the Erie's president to allow a crossing, sent his men to railway to connect the pipes. Hardly had they arrived there descended on them a force of seventy-five railrad men armed for war. These men took possession of the ritory at the end of the pipes and intrenched themselves attack. The pipe-line men camped near by for threemonths, but they never attempted to join the pipes. Mr. Emery had concluded, on investigation, that the Erie officials, like the Reading, had found that it would be unwise to dis turb their relations with the Standard, and while his men were keeping attention fixed on that point he was executing a flank movement, securing a right of way from a point seventy miles back to Wilkesbarre, on the Jersey Central. This new movement was executed with such celerity that by June, 1893, the United States Pipe Line had a crude I. i8o miles long connecting the Bradford oil fields withfriendly railway, and a refined line 250 miles long connecting the independent refiners of Oil City, Titusville, Warren and Bradford with the same railway. With the completion of the refined line a question of vital importance was to be settled: Could refined oil be pumped that distance without deteriorating? The Standard had insisted loudly that it could not. When the day came to make the experiment an anxious set of men gathered at the Wilkesbarre terminal. They feared particularly that the oil would lose colour, but, to their amazement, not only was the colour kept, but it was found on experiment that the fire test was actually raised by the extra agitation the oil had undergone in the long churning through the pipes. A new advance had been made in the oil industry-the most substantial and revolutionary since the day the Tidewater demonstrated that Crude oil could be pumped over the mountains. This new discovery, it is well to note, was not the work of the Standard Oil Trust, but it was accomplished in the face of their ridicule and opposition by men driven to find some way to escape from their hard dealings. The success of the United States refined line aroused the greatest enthusiasm among the independent interests. It gave them access to the seaboard, and there was immediate talk of a closer union between them. Why should the Producers' and Refiners' Pipe Lines not be sold to the United States Line and completed to Bradford? By the spring of 1894 the project seemed certain of realisation. The new movement was serious. Let this consolidation take place, and the producers had exactly what they had set out in 1887 to build up-a complete machine for handling the oil they produced. As the undertaking grew in solidity and completeness, the war upon it grew more systematic and determined. It took two main lines-discrediting the enter-in the eyes of stockholders so that they would sell the to Standard buyers, the object being, of course, to get control of the companies; cutting the refined market until the refiners in the alliance should fail, or, becoming discouraged, sell. The work of discrediting the enterprise was turned over to the Standard organs in the Oil Regions, chief among which is the Oil City Derrick. Since i88~ the editor of this interesting sheet has been a picturesque Irishman, Patrick C. Boyle by name. Mr. Boyle's position as editor and proprietor of the Derrick is due to the generosity of the Standard Oil Trust, and he has discharged his allegiance to his benefactor with a zeal which, if it has not always contributed t() the enlightenment of the Oil Regions, has, materially, to its gaiety. Mr. Boyle now turned all his extraordinary power of vituperatiori on three of the independents whose activity was particularly offensive to him-Mr. Emery, Mr. Wood and Mr. Lee-and he went so far that each of the three gentlemen finally sued him for libel. They all got judgments. In Mr. Emery's case, Mr. Boyle, after signing a bond of $5,000 to keep the peace-which bond he was obliged later to pay, with half as much more in costs-published the following retraction:

TO THE PUBLIC

For many years past there have appeared in the editorial and news columns of the Oil City Derrick various articles reflecting on the business, social and political character and integrity of Lewis Emery, Jr. P. C. Boyle, the editor of the Derrick, was indicted and convicted for the publicaton of certain of such articles, and civil suit for damages was instituted by Mr. Emery against P. C. Boyle for damages for such publications. The litigation has now been adjusted, and Mr. Boyle voluntarily retracts in toto all matters and things which he has said derogatory to the character, standing, or rusponsibility of Lewis Emery, Jr., published by him or under his direction in the past. It is a satisfaction to the writer to be able to help gratify Mr. Boyle's laudable desire to have this document well circulated! Although the greater part of the Oil Regions never took Mr. Boyle himself seriously, the conviction that his attacks

were inspired, that this was the Standard's way of saying to the producers that their enterprise would not be allowed to live, gave a sinister look to what he said. More damaging still was the quiet confidence with which the solid men of the Standard smiled at the independent effort. What were their puny hundreds compared to the millions of the trust?

What was a band of scattered "oil-shriekers" against the cold-blooded deliberation of Mr. Rockefeller's solid phalanx? The oil men were conscious enough of the inadequacy of their capital and their organisation, but they hung on, many of them because their blood was up, and they preferred spending their last cent to yielding; others on the principle which Mr. Phillips confesses held him, "that God sometimes chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty"; or that "one might chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight." The efforts which the Standard made to discredit the in-dependent companies and their leaders were accompanied by a persistent, though quiet, attempt of Standard agents to buy in all the stock in the Producers' Oil Company and the United States Pipe Lines which timid, indifferent, or financially embarrassed stockholders could be induced to give up. The movement began to be rumoured and caused no little uneasiness in independent circles. How much would the ~ndard get? What would they do with it? They were ion to find out. Before the use to be made of the stock developed, how-ever, the Standard turned against the independents the most powerful and cruel weapon it wields-its control of the markets. The refiners were to be driven from the combination. The extent to which cutting was carried on for two years, beginning with the fall of 1893, is clear from a comparison of prices. In January of 1893 crude oil was selling at s3½ cents a barrel and refined oil for export at S~33 cents a gallon. Throughout the year the price of crude advanced until in December it was 78/38 cents. Refined, on the contrary, fell, and it was actually eighteen points lower in December than it had been twelve months before. Throughout 1894 the Standard kept refined oil down; the average price of the year was S~'9 cents a gallon, in face of the average crude market of 833A cents *~lower than in January, 1893, with trude at s3½ cents a barrel! This much for the New York end of the export business. In Germany, where the export oil of the independents all Went, it being handled there by one dealer, Herr Poth, whose d~.pot was Mannheim, on the Rhine, prices were cut at every point which the in dependent oil reached. It was a matter of life and death to keep the foreign market they had developed, and for twenty months the independent refiners met the demand of their export agents and foreign dealers for lower prices with cut cargoes. For twenty months they lostville refiners as low as 1.98 cents a gallon. The Lewis Emeiv works at Bradford sold one cargo at 1.07 cents net, and many at or below two cents. Had it not been for the unic)I~ with pipe-lines such prices would have been impossible, but all through the struggle in the market the United StatLs Pipe Line and the Producers' and Refiners' lines carried oil at cost or below. The pipe-lines were heavily in debt to the Reading Iron Works, but that company stood by them valiantly, extending their notes until the struggle was over and the pipe-lines able to meet them.

Such a situation could not go on forever, evidently. It little had come apparently to be a question of how long the refiner had money to lose, and, as month after month the independent in sight, the courage of a few began to ooze. Finally, late in 1894, a committee of the Western refiners, consisting of John Fertig of Titusville, H. P. Burwald of Titusville arid S.W. Ramage of Oil City, went to New York to consult the Standard. Is there no hope of a better market? Is there any chance for us? None whatever, they were told, except to sell. We will buy the refineries and the stock of the independent concerns, but that is all we can do. The committee came home to report. The situation was hopeless, they said, and, as for them, they should sell. As they represented three of the largest concerns in the Union, and all carried stock in the allied enterprises, their withdrawal seemed at the moment a death-blow. It was a glum and beaten bodyof men which listened to the report, surrender written in every line of their faces. Now Mr. Lee and Mr.Wood, two active men of the Producers Oil Company, had been invited to the meeting of the They realised fully that if the refiners pulled out of theUnion now, the independent effort would in all probago to pieces, and before a vote to sell could be taken Mr. Lee was on his feet. In an impassioned speech he pleaded for one more effort. He pointed out the fact that the abnormal condition of the oil market could not remain, that crude 3oil was steadily rising, and that no monopoly could permanently hold down a manufactured product in the face of the ~rising raw product. The Standard had done this for nearly two years-but it was contrary to the laws of nature that they do it for two years more. He told them that already conditions were better in Germany; that Mr. Emery had recently gone with Herr Poth, their foreign buyer, to 9everal members of the German government, and presented to them the discrimination in prices of oil practised in the empire, oil from one and a half to three cents higher on the Elbe than on the Rhine, at points where freights were the same. He told the refiners of the interest that had been taken the government in their case, and how they said, "Go home, gentlemen, and this shall stop," and that it had stopped criminal underselling can be checked in Germany, Mr. Lee argued, we can keep our market. He reminded the rethat it was not merely a business they were establish-it wa~ a cause they were defending-the right of men work in their own way without unlawful interference. he honour not only of themselves but of the Oil Regions as at stake. They were struggling for great principles were deni6nstrating that pluck, patience, and energy brains can conquer any combination that ability and inscrupulousness can devise. "Do not give in," pleaded Mr. lice. "Hold on, and we will go to the producers, lay yourbefore them, and raise money to keep up the fight." Aroused by his plea, all of the refiners, excepting Messrs,Fertig, Burwald and Ramage, who had seen the Standar' decided to make another effort if the producers would h them out. In the next few days the leading men of the mdc pendent alliance worked with fury to call the Oil Region~ into a mass-meeting. The'y travelled from assembly to assembly exhorting to acti6n; they circulated dodgers announcing the gathering, and finally, in January, 189S, ran special trains to Butler, the rallying place. There was no lack of enthusiasm and blunt talk at the Butler mass-meeting. All the bitterness and determination of the region poured forth against the Standa?d, and when a resolution was offered by David Kirk, one of the most active and forceful of the independents, to raise money to form a new company, to be call~ the Pure Oil Company, its immediate object being to take care of the refiners in the tight place where they were, went through with a whoop, and in a few moments $75,000 had been subscribed. A few days later this sum was ra1~ to $200,000. The objects of the company, as set forth in its prospectu issued at this time, were: To maintain and uphold the inherent right to do business, the right to transpo and market the producer's own product, and his right to the just reward of his la~ and capital invested.

Another clause of the prospectus is interesting: To prevent any interference of that monopoly which has obtained control of tll' 0i1 business, the voting power of one-half of the stock of the Pure Oil Company placed by the owners in the hands of five champions of this tight of independenl who are bound by the terms of a permanent trust bond to vote only for such ma and measures as shall forever make this company INDEPENDENT, so that no sale of interest will carry with them any power to jeopardise the policy or existence of di company, or the investments of its remaining members.

The Pure Oil Company had been organised none too soon It was but a few months after it was well under way behurried meeting of the independents was called in New 'ork. With scared faces the members learned that the Gerdealer, who for four years had been handling ninety cent. of their export oil, had sold to the Standard marketing concern, the Deutsche-Amerikanische Company. Consternation was great. The independents had depended on the loyalty of Herr Poth as they did on that of each other. He had been enlisted in their cause by Mr. Emery, who, with ~the tragic earnestness which had characterised his entire struggle for independence, had asked him for an oath of and, hand on his heart, Herr Poth had pledged his In every respect he had served them loyally. His deseron was inexplicable and disheartening. Later they learned truth, that Herr Poth had been informed, by what he upposed to be reliable authority, that the American inde~dent interests had sold to the Standard. Believing that would cut off his supply, he had turned over his concern the Deutsche-Amerikanische. A few weeks later Herr oth died suddenly. The story goes in independent circles when he learned the truth he literajly died of grief, ~lieving he had perjured himself. Herr Poth's sale left the independents in serious shape. They had cargoes of oil ready for Europe and no tankage I Europe to take it-nobody there to sell it. A meeting was once called in Pittsburg to raise money, and in a few days 4r. Emery and Mr. Murphy went abroad, and, as quickly LS such work could be done, they secured privileges in Ham-and Rotterdam to erect tanks and establish marketing rations. The Fu'~re Oil Company was in Europe. Once more e independents had been driven to depend on themselves, once more they had proved sufficient to the emergency. kjt~war was by no means over. With the establishment of the Pure Oil Company came the foreshadowing of a still closer of the companies. At all hazards this was to be prevented. The Standard determined to play the stock of the Producers' Oil Company, Limited, and the United States Pill Line, which it had been picking up quietly. Already one attempt had been made to get into the concern through one of the most conspicuous and successful producers of the oil' country-Col6nel John J. Carter, of Titusville, the president of the Carter Oil Company. Colonel Carter owned 300 shares of the stock of the Producers' Oil Company, Limited, and had been elected a member on it; according to the rules governing limited partnership ip Pennsylvania, a stockholder must be elected to membership before he can vote his stock. In February, 1894, when ~ union of the pipe-lines had first been voted, he suddenl~ appeared in court and got an injunction against the sale. In the hearings on the injunction there came out a fact in gard to Colonel Carter which aroused a storm of wrath against him among the independents. The Standard Oil Company owned sixty per cent. of the Carter Oil Company! A harder fact was to be digested. On April I I, 1894, the company met in Warren, Pennsylvania. Colonel Carter ~ present and voted not only his 300 shares, but 13,013 Where had he got them? There was but one conclusion, an it proved to be true-the 13,013 belonged to the Standard Oil Company. They had been loaned to Mr. Carter; there was a form of transfer, but no sale, not even a price having been decided on-evidently in the hope that he, with a few other stockholders who were disaffected, would control the meeting and prevent the union of the pipe-lines. The attem~ failed, for the Carter-Standard faction succeeded in g together only 21,848 shares, while the independents helE 30,S60. The bitterness over this attack aroused terrible excitement. More than one member of the Warren meeting shouted "traitor" at Colonel Carter, and when the news o what happened reached the Producers' Protective Associa[173] There were several interviews between Mr. Archbold, Mr;Rogers and Mr. Carter. They wanted to know how he ~posed to run the Producers' Oil Company if he obtained majority of the stock. "If I run that pipe-line," Mr. Car-reports himself as saying, "I am going to run it accord-to law and business principles. Any man that wants oil me, and has the money to pay for it, shall have it." "Will you let Mr. Emery have some oil if he wants it?" Mr. Rogers. "Yes, I will." "And all the outside re~rs?" "Yes, I will. I shall make no discrimination against outside refiner and in favour of the Standard Oil Comor v~ce versa." Fhe Standard Oil seems to have been convinced that olonel Carter was their friend-they probably never had d6ubt of their ability to manage him, and it is evident om the Colonel's testimony that he never had any doubt Ut his own ability to manage both independents and Standard-and the sale was made at 100, Colonel Carter giving his check for $297,640 on the Seaboard Bank. Stock in hand, Colonel Carter went back to the Oil Regions to take possession. It was not so easy as he anticipated. The' secretary refused to transfer the stock. He sought the president, Mr. Lee. What took place Colonel Carter himself told later on the witness-stand:

"Senator Lee and myself retired to my room in the hotel and we had quite a pr~ litninary conversation on the situation and in regard to the Producers' Pipe Line. ~'li~n I stated to him my owne~hip of the majority of the stock of the Producers' Oil Company, Limited, and stated furthermore that I purchased it from the National TransitCompany; that my desirewas to st~p all contention on the part ofthe producers and myself, to run the business on a business principle, so that the stock belonging to the vanous members and myself might pay something, instead of dragging its slow length along as it had been for the past six years. I told him, furthermore, that I was perfectly willing that he should elect what portion of the directors that his stock wotild warrant him, and I would elect those that I could. The Senator replied then: 4You propose to take charge of the association?' 'Yes,' I said; 'I did.' The Senator then statttl emphatically that I could not do it; he would not permit it; if he had to spend the whole capital of the company he would resist it. . . . He gave me to understand emphatically that there was not anything except the management of the company by himself and his associates that would be tolerated, and 1 told him then 1 was sorry that I would have to go into court and determine my righta in court. That was about all, but it is only fair, furthermore, to say that at the time the Senator was rather warm, and I presume I was warm in the collar myself. I stated to him plainly that if there was any attempt to eject me from a legally constituted meeting in which I was 'hers, I would resist it if I killed the man that attempted to put me out."

Mr. Carter's cool announcement that he meant to run the company "from a business stand-point, and not from the standpoint of a gadfly"-there seems to be a doubt about its being the producers who had played the part of the gadfly~xasperated the independents to the last degree, and in June, 1896, they met the colonel in court. His ownership of a majority of the company's stock was admitted, but it was urged by the independents that the Producers' Oil Company was a limited partnership, and that under the Pennsylvania law no one owning stock can become a member without being elected by a majority in number and value of the interests. Colonel Carter had been elected member on only 300 shares. Both the lower and supreme courts sustained the independents, and Colonel Carter found himself an owner of a majority of the concern 5 stock without the right of control. Under those circumstances neither he nor the Standard wanted the stock, and the company bought it below par. The winning of the Carter case gave encouragement that a similar suit brought by the Standard pipe-lines against the United States Pipe Line might fail. As already noted, the Standard began to buy into that company as soon as it was under way, and by the summer of 1895 they had collected 2,613 shares. In August of that year the annual meeting of the company was held, and the agent of the Standard Oil Company who had been buying the stock, J. C. McDowell, presented himself prepared to vote. He was stopped at the door~by Michael Murphy, the present president of the Pure Oil Company, and told emphatically that they considered that he was sent there by the Standard Oil Company to spy on their actions; that, legal or illegal, they would throw him out if he crossed the threshold. Mr. Murphy is well known to be a man of his word, and as he was backed by young and athletic independent stockholders, Mr. McDowell discreetly withdrew. Naturally a suit followed, but this time the independents lost. The United States Pipe Line, being a corporation, was obliged to recognise the Standard interest in the concern and eventually to allow them a director on its board. The humiliation and disgust over this result shook the independents' interests to their foundation. There perhaps was never a period of more heart-breaking discouragement for many of the men than when they saw their dearest hopes frustrated, and a Standard representative in their councils. This defeat came, too, when they were smarting under a con.