The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-03-16
AGREE ON RATES.
Chanute Shipper Declares Rail-
roads Agreed to Raise Rates.
Claimed He Was Told of Traffic
Managers Meeting.

Chanute, Kan, March 16-The hear
ing of the evidence in the case OF the
state against the Atchison, Topeka &
Santa F'e- Railway company was con-
, tinued Wednesday by taking the testi-
mony of Foster F. Allen, manager for
l. N. Knapp. The railroad company
was represented by other forces in adj
dition to Robert Dunlap and o. J. Wood
of Topeka. Gardiner Lathrop, the sue
cessor to z. D. Kenna, vice president
as general counsel for the entire sys-
| tenn, was the chief figure. This is the
center of the disturbance that produced
the uprising of oil producers through
out the state in January The oil pro-
ducers for miles around were here in
droves, demanding that justice be done
the small shipper of crude oil in this
field
I. N. Knapp, who first developed the
fuel oil business in Kansas, has his
headquarters at this place. He was the
main witness subpoenaed by the state
but the authorities failed to reach him.
He left here Saturday and is now sup
posed to be in Philadelphia. By reason
of his convenient market for the crude
product Mr.. Knapp was independent of
the refineries of the Standard. BY the
use of his own tank cars he marketed
$4,000 gallons year. He not only fur
niShed a market for his own produce
ton, but carried the oil of many of his
neighbors, paying as much as $116 a
barrel, until the Prairie Oil and Gas
company sent it's headman into the
community to drive him off of his pro-
perty and appropriate his oil wells. Mr..
Knapp succeeded. however, in getting
a working agreement with the Standard
which expires in June, that enables him
to keep his investment at a mere living
wage.
Mr.. Allen, who testified in Mr.
Knapp's stead, gave valuable evidence.
He said that the Santa Fe railway had
given a rate of ten cents a hundred
with a weight of GA pounds q gallon be-
tween this place and Kansas City, and
that there was a similar favorable rate
to Omaha. On account of these rates
Mr.. Knapp was enabled to make hand
some profits for himself and his lessees
at these terms until the Prairie Oil and
Gas company put the pipe line through
to Kansas City Instead of the Santa
Fe lowering the price on the production,
he said, Mr.. Knapp received a circular
letter from the railroads reclasSifying
oil, which, in effect, raised the rates
$3.50 q tank car, causing an immediate
loss of 1910 month on the contracts.
The Prairie company gave Knapp, the
witness said, the option of delivering his
oil to it in its pipes at its own terms or
allowing the oil to run to waste in the
meadow lands.
1t was developed further in the testi-
mony that the producers begged the
local freight men to relieve them of
this destructive policy, but they re-
ceived word from the traffic manager
of the road that this act was final. One
of the Santa Fe local freight agents in
formed Knapp, Allen said, that the
heads of the traffic departments of the
various roads had met in secret and
sent forth. this ukase, destroying the
entire freight oil traffic for these same
railroads Mr. Knapp went in person
to &c Broadway, New York. and APP
pealed to the head authorities of the
Standard and finally secured a promise
that the trust would take his gas and
oil contracts off his hands and supply
his customers with gas OIL which is a
by-product of much lower value in the
market than the crude petroleum itself
1t developed further that while the
rates of the Santa Fe on crude oil were
raised and the weights increased by the
classification, that the weights on gas
oil remained the same ga pounds a gal
lon. Gas oil is heavier than the crude
product