The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1894-06-06

finally forced them to give up the contest.
Until the year 1877 the Standard Oil Com
pany had worked hand in hand with the
railroads. 1t had obtained all it's privi-
leges by asking for them and by holding
out Inducements to railroad managers to
grant them 1t now commenced to die
tate terms to refractory railroad
ranies.
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company ven
tured to carry Oil not the property of the
standard terms which that company did
not approve. The latter ordered the road
to refuse to carry the product of their COM
peutors. This the railroad company de-
clined to do, and the Standard at once
withdrew it's custom The Pennsylvania
retaliated by carrying the oil of the indie
pendent refinerieS at merely nominal rates.
and even went far as to make it's rates
dependent upon the profits realized by the
shippers. A fierce freight war was thus
preciptated, in which the Erie and New
York Central supported the Standard COM
pany. The Pennsylvania road soon
forced to surrender and sign an ignomini-
GUS treaty.
The Baltimore and Ohio, which had again
commenced to carry the product of those
Pittsburg refineries which received their
crude oil through the Columbia Conduit
Company, in a similar manner forced
to reject their freights. The pipe line,
whose value thus almost entirely de-
stroyed, soon after sold to- the Stand
ard Oil Company. This company had now
almost complete monopoly of the Oil
business of the United States, and still it
was not satisfied. 1t appears that some
Of the producers of crude Oil had been in
the habit of shipping a part of their pro-
duct in spite of the advantages which the
Standard had through its rebates. To pre-
vent even these shipments, or rather to
exact another tribute from railroad stock
holders, the American Transfer Company,
one of the auxliaries of the Standard Oil
Trust in 1878, demanded and received from
the Pennsylvania road "cOnnission'' of
20 cents a barrel all shipments of pc
troleum made by any shipper. 1t had been
shown to the satisfaction of the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad Company that similar COM
missions, ranging from 20 to 35 cents bar
rel, were being paid by the New York Cen
trail and Erie roads.
When, in 1879, an effort was made to es-
tablish a pipe line from the oil regions to
the seaboard, nothing left undone by
the trunk lines to thwart the enterprise.
The new company finally succeeded in
making connection with railway which
had no part in the pool, and there was
some hope that under this arrangement
competition might at least be maintained
at some points. The Standard company
again appealed to the trunk lines to pro-
tect it against injury by competition, and
obtained from them a special rate of 20
cents per barrel, which rate even
duced to Is cents per barrel two months
later Against such rate it was impossi
Ele to compete, and after short struggle
the line found itself compelled to sell
it's works to the Standard.
To crown it's monopoly, the Standard Oil
Company finally bought of the New York
Central and Erie roads their terminal IA
cilities for the transportation of oil, and
thereby made it virtually impossible for
them to transport oil for any of its few
remaining competitors Mr.. Josiah Lom-
bard, part owner of the New York re-
fnery, stated in 1879 before the Investigate
ing committee of the legislature of New
York that in 1878 he had requested the
Erie company to transport for him 100 cars
of crude oil from Carrollton to New York;
that he had called upon Mr.. Villas, the gen.
eral freight agent of the company, in per-
son, but had never been able to obtain the
cars though the oil had been held in Car
rOllton three or four months ready to be
loaded. This gentleman also testihed that
he had found it impossible to obtain cars
from the New York Central, and that the
company's general freight agent had in
formed him that the road did not own and
could not furnish any oil cars.
After the Standard Oil Company had Sc
cured control of the various pipe lines of
the coal oil regions, it frequently lowered
the price of crude oil to such an extent
as to make it's production Improbable
1t even refused to buy oil, basing it's re-
fusal upon the ground that the railroad
companies failed to furnish cars for it's
TRANSPORTATION When the we'll owners
had their tanks filled, they had the choice
to let the oil run away, or be at the ex-
pense of closing up their wells. In one in
stance, however, when the ruse threatened
! to cause a riot several hundred cars were
brought to the wells within few hours.
The Standard Oil Trust, not satisfied with
+! the monopoly of the wholesale trade, even
| tried in places to control the retail trade
by peddling oil at private houses. This
method Of destroying competition was