The times., 1899-06-18

the railway companies publicly contracted
to do for the South Improvement COM
pany in 1872, that the railway companies
have since secretly and persistently done
for the benefit of the Standard Oil people,
as | will prove to you. Prove too in the
face of the facts that whenever any OF the
Standard Oil Company's people or their
agents, or the railway people who knew
the facts, have been subpoenaed TO testify
that they have almost invariably refused
to answer, shielding themselves behind
that provision of law which provides that
you shall not force a man to testify to that
which will convict him OF a crime. The
men who developed the oil regions of
Pennsylvania were OF the best families or
the Republic. The ancestors of many OF
them helped to win our independence as
nation, and when the provisions of the
contract of the South improvement Com
| pany became known, II created such fu
rore in the oil regions as has seldom been
seen"
| The witness then told of the fight be-
| fore the Legislature made by the people.
BY the evidence in the case of the
| Standard Oil Company" he continued,
| against w, C. Schoield at Cleveland,
| Ohio, we learned that the profits of re-
nning. including railroad rebates for four
! of these years was an average of more
| than 81 barrel. profit of refining which,
| If economically managed and honestly
| capitalized, of more than 400 per cent
annually. While at the same time the re-
| finerymen who did not have the favor OF
| the railroad companies we're being driven
| into bankruptcy and ruin, and the pro-
ducers much of the time forced TO take
| price for their oil below the cost of pro-
| duction. while the consumers were paying
two prices for the oil that they burned in
| their lamps.
In the early part of the seventies have
! a record of twenty-siX pipe lines built TO
| transfer oil from the wells to the railways.
These pipe lines were mostly built by pro
ducers in their struggle for deliverance
from monopolistic control. The Standard
Oil Company people having secured control
OF the United Pipe Line and American
Transfer Company, began a campaign to
bankrupt and destroy and absorb these
pipe lines built by the producers. The
Standard Oil people having large rebate
on all the oil they shipped and on all the
oil that anybody else shipped from any OF
these different pipe lines, could go into the
field and pay a little more at the wells,
and could sell oil at a little less at the sea-
board than any other, shipper. and still
only use a small fraction of the large re-
bates which they were freceiving from the
railway companies growing rich them
selves while they were bankrupting and
absorbing these pipe lines built from the
meager means which the producers were
able TO wiring from the grasping greed OF
this great monopoly. Finally the producers
and refiners came TO understand that the
highways of the country, the railways,
were in the hands of set of highwaymen,
who every time they went TO market would
rob them of all of their profit and part
of their principal, and hand it over TO the
Standard Oil Company people helping to
fasten that monopoly upon us. If you must
be robbed, it does not make any difference
to you whether Dick Turpin does it throu
the instrumentality of a pistol or whether
John D. Rockefeller does it through the in
strumentality of a railroad. There could
be but one end to that kind of business
bankruptcy and financial ruin Of these in
dependent pipe lines.
Il have stated that interested parties re
fused to testify, but there is always some
| way for the truth to come ont. Thert
arose a little unpleasantness between th'
, Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading
, Railroad and We were enabled by sub
poenaing the assistant controller of the
Reading Railroad in the case of the Com
/ monwealth of Pennsylvania against th'