Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1906-05-11
WASHINGTON LETTER.
(From our Regular CORES pondenl. :.

tFrom our Regular respondent
Washington. ID. G., May 5.-Such
sensation as has stirred official circles
as the result of Commission Garfield Is
report on the Standard Oil Company,
has not been known in Washington
for a long time. There was little COM
mendation for the report of the Bureau
of Corporations in the Beef Trust case,
and what litrle the ere was negatived
by the now famous immunity decision
of Judge Humphrey. But the Stand
ard OIL Report is only little less not
able than the message with which the
President sends it to Congress.
The report in itself is an arraignment
of the oil company that is perhaps not
as entertaining reading as Miss Tar
bells History OF the Standard Oil
Company, but it contains much the
same facts, told in a more official way
and it is the most severe arraignment
of a corporation that has ever been
known from such a high official source.
It charges specifically that the Stand
ard Oil Company has the practical
monopoly of the Oil business of the
United States. 1t refines and handles
q, 900, 900 out of 20, 900. 900 barrels of oil
produced in this country each year.
The few refiners that are outside the
control OF the trust are those who are
in close touch with an oil producing
territory and who can supply limited
area around their reiners. This su-
premacY of the Standard, the report
says, has been gained by all sorts of
unlawful practices. 1t has received
rebates in direct defiance of the law
till it was found out when it quickly
discontinued the practice. 1t has Jug
gled the railroad tariffs and while in
some cases kept inside the strict letter
of the law, 1t has taken all sorts of ad-
vantages that the law never contem
plated. 1t has stuck to the State tar
ifs on oil carrying and pieced them
together so that the oil seemingly for
State consumption only was really car
rled over the interstate routes. In
various ways it has made direct pro-
fit of $3.50, 900 year out of this unjust
and in many cases absolutely illegal
railway dissemination. But the total of
the case in which this sort of profit
was made, the report does not profess
to have discovered. At the same time
the profit out of the railway rates was
mere bagatelle to the amount that
the company was able to make out of
choking off competition and muIcting
the public of outrageous prices for oil.
The report states that half cent a
gallon is accepted by the trade as fair
profit to make on refined oil Instead
of this it was found that the price
charged by the Standard in territory
where it has succeeded in killing com
petition was from three to five cents
higher than in the territory where it
had to complete with the few indie
pendent companies. Handling %. OOO,.
900 barrels of oil a year, as it was shown
to do this made tidy profit, for the
hard working corporation.
The officers of the company claimed
that they had merely taken advantages
of natural conditions and that it was
hard work and foresight of the COM
pany to which it owed it's supremacy
in the oil field. The pipeline mode of
transportation was cited as one instance
of this. But the report shows that
the pipe line idea, aside from not be-
ing the invention of the Standard, was
bought up and controlled by the enor.
nous power of money behind the com.
pany and that instead of being a ma
tural advantage. it like many other of
the So called natural advantages, was
simply the result of cruel and killing
competition on the part of the great