Little Falls herald. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1889-1950, 1910-03-11
CLAIMS TO Be A
LEGAL CONCERN
Standard Oil Replies to Cow
eminent Suit.
BRIEF FILED In COURT

Of Individual Citizens Of the United
states"-History Of the Company
Gone Into at Great Length by the At
torneys Responsible for Document
Washington, March 9.-The Stand.
ard Oil company has filed in the su.
preme court of the United States a
brief in opposition to the attempt of
the government to dissolve the cor:
poration as violating the Sherman
antitrust law The document comes
as prelude to oral argument Monday
end is the work of D. T. Watson, John
N. Freeman and Ernest c. Irwin. The
brief for the government has not yet
been filed.
The keynote of the defense is the
so called preservation of the rights
of individual citizens of the United
States" The issue, according to the
paper filed, is the charge made in the
petition, denied in the answer and re-
asserted in the replication, that the
seven individual defendants, John D.
Rockefeller, William R. Rockefeller,
John D. Archbold, Oliver H. Payne,
Henry NJ Flagler, Charles NJ Pratt
and Henry M. Rogers, combined and
cOnspired, and continued to combine
and conspire at the time the petition
was filed, to restrain interstate trade
in oil and to gain a monopoly of the
traffic.
The brief asserts that the circuit
court of the United States for the
Eastern district of Missouri, whose
adverse decree the defendants seek to
.overturn, held that solely because these
individual joint owners of a group of
lnon-competitive properties engaged
for forty years in private trade, in
stead of continuing to hold through
trustees controlled by, the seven de-
PENDANTS, changed in 1899, as the brief
says, 'the method of holding theft
properties by conveying them to the
Standard Oil Company Of New Jersey
and that such change was violation
Of the Sherman antitrust act"
Assert Business Is Lawful.
This decree is complained of as be-
ing unjust to the men who, according
to the brief, were lawful group,
lawfully doing business" and who,
after what is described as mere con-
veyance and solely by reason thereof,
became a group of laWless cOnspira-
tors" it is charged.
The claim that the seven individuals
are engaged in lawful business is en-
phasized. "The Standard Oil business
as it existed in 1906 and still exists"
says the brief, was the natural de-
velopment and outgrowth of the bust
ness begun in 1852 and steadily pur-
sued by the Rockefellers and others.
BY untiring energy, with infinite skill,
with abundant capital and the steady
reinvestment of early profits these men
and their associates created out of an
entirely new, unique and unprecedent-
ed production of crude oil the new,
universally used and cheapest illu-
minant the world has ever known.
"By creative skill they secured from
refuse oil valuable by-products. They
invented the huge reservoirs fer stcr-
ing oil-the combined pipe line sys-
tenn which gathers up and carries t.. G
natural products-the tank cars would
carry the refined products. They Gre
ated the export trade in oil, transport
ing it in ships of their own construc-
ton and selling it in Asia, India, ia
pan, China, Russia and all Europe.
They devised the trading stations
the tank delivery wagons-and used
every means to cheaper the product
and the quality. From 1862 to 1903
(forty-four years. the work went on.
They took the risk of the failure in
production, of destruction by fire and
tempest, besides all the ordinary risks
Of trade. They met all emergencies
with competent skill and sufficient
funds"
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