The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1908-01-31
Commissioner Smith VS.. The STANDARD Oil Co.
From the Rai1avay World, January 8, 1908.

tory had been guilty, Considering the fact
that these shippers included the packers and
elevator men of Chicago the action of the
grand jury in calling upon President Moffett
to furnish evidence Of their wrong-doing may
be interpreted as a demand for an e1abora-
tion of the obvious; but the fact that rate
book containing these freight rates for other
shippers was offered in evidence during the
trial and ruled out by Judge Lands, was
kept out of sight. President Moffett would
not, of course, accept the invitation of the
grand jury although he might have been
pardoned If he had referred them to various
official Investigations by the Interstate Com
MERGE Commission and other departments of
the Government.
We come back, therefore, to the conclusion
of the whole matter, which is that the Stand
ard Oil Company Of Indiana was fined an
amount equal to seven or eight times the
value of It's entire property, because it's traffic
department did not verify the statement Of
the Alton rate clerk, that the six-cent COM
modify rate oil had been properly filed
with the Interstate Commerce Commission.
There is no evidence, and none was intro
duced at the trial, that any shipper of oil
from Chicago territory had been interfered
with by the eighteen-cent rate nor that the
failure of the Alton to file its siX-cent rate
had resulted in any discrimination against
any Independent shipper,-we must take this
the word of the Commissioner of Cor
porations and of Judge Lands. Neither IS it
denied even by Mr. Smith that the '1nde-
pendent" shipper of oil, whom he pictures as
being driven out of business by this Ascrim-
nation of the Alton, could have shipped all
the oil he desired to ship from Whiting via
Dolton over the lines of the Chicago and
Eastern Illinois to East St. Louis. In short,
President Moffett's defence is still good, and
we predict will be declared so by the higher
court.
The Standard Oil Company has been
charged with all manner of crimes and mis-
demeanors. Beginning with the famous Rice
Of Marietta passing down to that apostle of
popular liberties, Henry Demarest Lloyd,
with his Wealth Against the Commonwealth,
descending by easy stages to Miss TarbelFs
offensive personalities, we finally reach the
neither depths of unfair and baseless mis-
representation in the report of the Commits
sioner OF Corporations. The Standard has
been charged with every form of commercial
piracy and with most of the crimes on the
corporation calendar. After long years of
strenuous attack, under the leadership of the
President Of the United States, the corpora
ton is at last dragged to the bar Of justice to
answer for its misdoings. The whole strength
of the Government is directed against it, and
at last, we are told, the Standard Oil Com
pany is to pay the penalty of its crimes, and
it is finally convicted of having failed to
verify the statement of rate clerk and is
forthwith fined prodigious sum, measured
by the car. Under the old criminal law, the
theft of property worth more than shilling
was punishable by death. Under the inter-
probation Of the Interstate Commerce law
by Theodore Roosevelt and Judge Kenesaw
Landis a technical error of a traffic official
is made the excuse for the conhscatlon or
vast amount of property.