Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-02-24

european LrdQe; r6ClprOCally, the East
Indian house is not allowed to sell for ex-
port to Europe The Standard produces
only one fiftieth or sixtieth of our petro-
leum, but dictates the price of all, and
refines nine-tenths Circulars are issued
at intervals bv which the price of oil is
fixed for all the cities ofthe country, ex-
cept New York, where a little COMPETE
ton survives. Such is the Indifference
of the Standard Oil company to railroad
charges that the price is made
the same for points so far ,apart as
Terre Haute, Chicago, and Keokuk.
cago, or In any other city in the New
England, Western, or Southern States,
dealing IN kerosene, whose prices are not
fixed for him by the Standard. In all
cases these prices are graded so that a
merchant in one city cannot export to an
other. Chicago, Cincinnati, or Cleve-
land is not allowed to supply the trib-
utary towns. That is done by the Stand
ard itself. which runs oil in its own tank
cars to all the principal points of distri-
button. The corpo ration has driven into
bankruptcy, or out of business, or into
union with itself, all the petroleum re-
fineries of the country except five in
New York, and few of little conse-
quence in Western Pennsylvania. No
body knows how many millions Rookie
Teller is worth. Current gossip among
his business acquaintance in Cleveland
puts his income last year at figure
second only, if second at all, to that of
Vanderbilt His partner, Samuel An
drews, the poor English day laborer, re-
tired years ago with millions Just who
the Standard Oil company are, exactly
what their capital is, and what are
their relation to the railroads, nobody
knows except in part Their officers re-
fused to testify before the
supreme court of Pennsylvania, the
late New York railroad investi-
eating committee, and committee of
Congress. The New York committee
found there was nothing to be learned
from them, and was compelled to confess
its inability to ascertain as much as it de-
sired to know s'of this mysterious organi-
Zation, whose business and transactions
are of such character that its members
declined giving history or description,
lest their testimony be used to convict
them of crime"
Their great business capacity would
have insured the managers of the Stand
ard success, but the means by which
they achieved monopoly was by conspir-
acy with the railroads. Mr.. Simon
Sterne, counsel for the merchants of
New York in the New York investiga-
ton, declared that. the relations of the
railroads to the Standard exhibited "the
most shameless perversion of the duties
of common carrier to private ends that
has taken place in the history of the
world" The Standard killed its rivals,
in brief, by getting the great trunk lines
to refuse to give them transportation.
Commodore Vanderbilt is reported to
have said that there was but one man
Rockefeller-who could dictate to him.
Whether or not Vanderbilt said it, Rookie
Teller did it. The Standard has done
everything with the Pennsylvania legis
lature, except refine it, In 1876 its or
ganization was brought before Congress,
nent member of the Standard, not men,
inquiry from behind the seat of the chair
man. Another member of the
company, who was a men,
Der of Congress, came with the
financial officer of the company before
the committee, and sustained him in his
refusal to testify about the organization,
its members, or its relations with the rail-
roads The committee never reported
The facts they suppressed must be hunted
out through newspaper articles, memoir
ais from the oil producers and refners,
records of lawsuits, reports of chambers
of commerce and of legislative mvestIga-
ting committees, and other miscellaneous
sources of information.
The contract is in print by which the
Pennsylvania railroad agreed with the
Standard, under the name of the South
improvement company, to double the
freights OH oil to everybody, but to re-
pay the Standard one dollar for every
barrel of oil it shipped, and one dollar
for every barrel any of its competitors
shipped. This contract was produced
in Congress, and was stigmatized by
Representative Conger as ''the most
damnable and startling evidence yet pro-
duced of the possibility of railroad mo-
nopoly." Ostensibly this contract was
given up, in Difference to the whirlwind
of indignation it excited. But Rookie
Teller, the manager of the Standard,
was man who could learn from defeat
He made no more tell-tale contracts that
could be printed. He effected secret ar
rangements with the Pennsylvania, the
New York Central, the Erie, and the At
lantic and GIo9 Western. What in
f1uences he used to make the railroad
managers pliable may probably be guessed
from the fact that one quarter of the
stock of the Acme Oil company, a part
ner in the Standard combination, on
which heavy monthly dividends are paid
is owned by persons whose names Rookie
Teller would never reveal, which Mr..
Archbold the president of the company,
said under oath he had not been told, and
which the supreme court of Pennsylvania
has not yet been able to find out. The
Standard succeeded in getting from Mr..
Vanderbilt free transportation for
its crude oil from the wells
in Pennsylvania one hundred and fifty
miles, to the refneries at Cleveland, and
back. This stamped out competing re-
iineries at Pittsburgh, and created much
of the raw material of the riots of July,
1877. Vanderbilt signed an agreement,
March 25, 1872, that call agreements
for the transportation of oil after this
date shall be upon a basis of perfect
equality" and ever since has given the
Standard special rates and privileges.
He has paid it back in rebates millions
of dollars, which have enabled 1t to crush
out all competitors, although many of
them, like the Octave Oil company and