Q. All those gentlemen, Warden, Frew and Company, and the Standard Oil Company of Pittsburg, Charles Pratt and Company of New York, are now associated with you as parties interested in the present Oil Trust?
A. They are stockholders. The property formerly owned by them was at that time purchased by the Standard Oil Company.
Q. When you speak of purchasing their interest, you do not exclude them from their interest? They united with you and remained as your associates in the business?
A. If it was not from the fact that ours was a corporation, we might call it a co-partnership.
Q. They becoming interested in yours, and you in theirs?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you simply used your name to represent the joint ownership, as it was a corporation?
A. Yes, sir.
NUMBER 26 (See page 1153)
GEORGE H. BLANCHARD’S TESTIMONY ON THE BREAKING UP OF THE PIPE POOL OF 1874
[Report of the Special Committee on Railroads, New York Assembly, 1879. Volume III, pages 3445–3447 and 3449–3451.]
The contract with the Standard Company of April 17, 1874, as I have said, contained nothing inconsistent with our obligations to the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads, and the New York Central, under their later contract, and our company, convinced the Pennsylvania Railroad of that fact during the discussions both as to rates and each and every other detail agreed to, but President Jewett thought it better to rely upon the arrangements between the railway companies alone, and decided to avail himself of the ninth clause of the agreement with the Standard Oil Company of April 17, 1874, which provided that either party might terminate it by six months’ written notice, but that notice might be given by the Standard Company within thirty days after the election of a new board of directors of the Erie or Atlantic and Great Western Company. This trunk line oil pool of October 1 being in operation, President Jewett gave notice of the termination of the Standard agreement of April 1, 1874, on October 31, 1874, which would have terminated in six months. It was the thirty-first of the following May, but an election having in the meantime taken place upon the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, the Standard Oil Company gave the thirty days’ notice it had the right to do on January 13, 1875, which, therefore, terminated the agreement upon February 13, 1875, about three months and a half before President Jewett’s notice could, under the contract, take effect.
The trunk line agreement of October 1, 1874, continued in force, and pool settlements were made thereunder for but five months, namely, until the close of February, 1875, during which time the Erie Company paid $31,019.05 and received $6,570.55.
Notice of the abandonment of that contract was given by the Erie Company, April 1, 1875, although no statements or moneys were exchanged for March, and dissatisfaction with its operations had been expressed by us prior to that time, the reasons therefor being as follows:
The higher rates of the pipe pool had stimulated new pipe-lines, and the Hunter and Cummings Line and other small pipes had been completed, or did not maintain the agreed rates of pipage. The Columbia Conduit Company had also been completed to Pittsburg, in the interest of the Baltimore and Ohio Company, and either acting upon the then policy or advice of that company, or with a desire to be bought out, declined to charge equal rates of pipage or agree to any fixed rates, a fact which threatened the diversion of oil largely to Baltimore, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad not being in the trunk line oil pool of October 1, 1874, and publicly and frequently announcing its endeavour to divert the oil trade to Baltimore.
We also believed that large drawbacks or commissions were paid by the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Empire Line in addition to those provided in our joint pool contract; and our belief has since been confirmed by later knowledge of the fact that the Pennsylvania Railroad paid to the Empire Line about 30 per cent., including the use of cars; and the mileage, being about ten (10) per cent. at current rates of car service, left the commission equal to about 20 per cent., an advantage not possessed by any other shipper or company over any of the northern lines.
It was clear that, as the Empire Line added to its already large resources, not only this commission upon the oil business excepting Pittsburg, but the added profits upon its pipe-lines, that its combined operation and profit united to control an increasing share of the entire trade and put it in strong financial shape for a control which it subsequently entered upon to absorb also a large refining interest.
As the northern trunk lines made no similar arrangements, allowances or commissions to any forwarder or receiver, and derived no profit from any pipe-lines, it was clearly unfair to concede them to the Empire Line, and the agreement which gave it these growing advantages was very properly annulled.
We also desired the actual transportation of the oil rather than to receive money from others, as we had done during the pool, as their increased business might finally result in a demand for larger percentages if the pool continued.
I directed careful examination of our records up to date of the abandonment of this oil pool contract; and upon the authority of General Freight Agent Vilas, state that the net rates charged to the Standard Company during this period to through points were uniform with the rates charged by our lines to other shippers, taking into account, as before stated, the transportation of the crude equivalent to their refineries.... The preliminary discussions and general conclusions relating to those (new) contracts were all with President Jewett, although many of their details were subsequently discussed and suggested by me; and the reasons influencing him to make them have been stated by him in his testimony; I was directed to carry them out, and have from time to time attended meetings at which the rates thereunder were advanced or reduced. I believe those contracts were not concluded until the latter part of April or early in May, and were then dated back to the disruption of the trunk line oil pool, in order to secure our guaranteed proportion of oil shipments from that earlier date and without interruption. The transportation contract continued to guarantee us 50 per cent. of the business of the Standard Oil Company, which 50 per cent. should not be less than the percentage we had received in the year 1874 of the total arrivals at the seaboard; and at this time, for that reason, the Standard Oil Company had no transportation arrangements with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and this fact and guaranty induced us to disregard the question as to whether or not the Standard Company had similar or other contracts with the New York Central or its connections, our only interest in the question being as to whether rates were equal and if we received our guaranteed share of the oil.
There was no understanding or agreement by the Erie Company to my knowledge that the New York Central Company or Pennsylvania Railroad, or either of them, had or had not similar or other contracts with the Standard Oil Company.
They were shipping by the New York Central route, and we assumed from their large business, terminal arrangements, etc., that some defined understanding probably regulated such large interests, but we were not consulted as to the terms or conditions of its contracts with other companies if it had any, because we relied upon their responsible guaranty to give us our proportion of the total arrivals of oil at the seaboard and at rates equal to those of other companies, as ample protection to our interests.
At the time this transportation contract was made by the Erie Company, other considerations than relief from risks and the equalisation of the arrivals at the seaboard bore upon the contracts for an allowance of 10 per cent. It continued to be our belief, since fully confirmed by Mr. Cassatt’s testimony, that other shippers via the Empire Line over the Pennsylvania Railroad had at least similar rates and arrangements, to which, on the part of the Erie Company, no objection was offered; it also continued to be the fact that the Empire Line continued to receive in addition to its probable pipe profits, the same or about the same, large commission as before, from the Pennsylvania Railroad, and it was believed by the officers of the Erie in making this contract with the Standard Company that the allowance to it of 10 per cent. was not much more than one-half the allowance then being made by the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Empire Line.
In addition thereto, we secured the actual transportation of our full share of the oil, at the agreed rates, without delays or disputes in adjustments, or the preparation or exchange of the pool statements.
It maintained the business to New York and provided against any increase to our rival railways or ports, no matter how the territory of oil production might shift or vary, and while under the trunk line pool we could not influence the various shippers to send them oil over our railway or to this city, unless their varying and dissimilar interests all agreed (as they did not), and no matter how much one company might be in deficit, the Standard Company is compelled to send it over our line. The loading and unloading, and taking the risks, were also important items to us as has before been detailed, and relieved us from a class of claims we had paid prior to that time.
It was also important to us that by this contract we were explicitly released from large losses when the great fire consumed the Weehawken docks in July, 1874.
The ninth section of the contract has also been of much value to us. In the delivery of oil to vessels or exporters, the Standard Company assumes all the risks and expenses of delays to ships, and their demurrage, even if it be the fault of the railway by nondelivery, and I have known of cases where this amounted to a large sum.
In 1877 when the general and extended railway strikes occurred, this clause also released us beyond doubt from large claims that might otherwise have been urged.
The freight rates provided by the railway pool of October 1, 1874, were not changed until October 1, 1875; and my recollection is that it was not until the discussion upon that change that anything was definitely known by any of the trunk lines of the arrangements of the others with the Standard Oil Company. At that meeting the 10 per cent. reduction to be allowed the Standard was distinctly understood as due upon its shipments via all the trunk lines in consideration of the facts stated, and it then first came to my knowledge that Warden, Frew and Company, of Philadelphia, represented the Standard Oil Company, as Charles Pratt and Company represented their crude interests at New York via our line.
NUMBER 27 (See page 1196)
MR. FLAGLER’S EXPLANATION OF THE COMMISSION OF 10 PER CENT. ALLOWED THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY IN 1877
[Proceedings in Relation to Trusts, House of Representatives, 1888. Report Number 3112, pages 774–775.]
I would like the privilege of explaining about that 10 per cent. commission. The railroad companies, as perhaps Mr. Gowen will remember, he at that time having been head of the Reading Railroad, tried and did agree among themselves for divisions of the oil business. I know that they agreed among themselves that a certain percentage of it the New York Central should take; a certain other percentage the Erie should take; a certain other percentage the Pennsylvania Railroad should take; and a certain other percentage the Baltimore and Ohio should take. We were only anxious that uniform rates should be maintained by these roads. All these roads, and each one of the roads, found it impossible to secure the divisions of the business as they had agreed upon. Notwithstanding, we co-operated with them, for we were heartily in favour of its being done and were only seeking for a uniformity of rates by the different roads. But as any gentleman connected with railroad interests well knows there always is that desire to get more than belongs to the line. That desire kept cropping out in the practical shape of cutting under rates for the sake of getting a little more, each road feeling that it was not getting enough to insure it its percentage. The Standard Oil Company at that time owned a very large percentage of the entire oil traffic. It was possible for it to do a service for the roads that the roads were unable to do for themselves. That service, however, involved a good many hardships.
The practical working of it was this, that at the end of each month after the arrangement had been made, each of these railroad companies, they first having agreed how they would divide among themselves and not seek to go beyond that certain percentage—at the end of each month each railroad company sent to us a statement of the number of barrels of oil they had transported during the month. It was incumbent upon us during the succeeding month to ship over the road or roads which had received less than its percentage an amount during that following month sufficient to bring up the deficit of the previous month. Undertaking to do that meant, as I well knew at the time, a responsibility imposed upon us, and an obligation to run refineries at certain localities which perhaps at the time it was unprofitable for us to run. It meant a steady continuance of a large volume of business at periods of time when it might not be profitable to run them; and if the gentlemen of the committee will bear with me just a moment you will see the difficulties. It was not only the three trunk lines—the New York Central, terminating at Buffalo, the Pennsylvania, terminating at Pittsburg, and the Baltimore and Ohio, I don’t know where—but there came in their Western connections. I remember well the New York Central had two; the Lake Shore was its connection west of Buffalo to Cleveland, and the Dunkirk and Allegheny Valley was its western division to the Oil Region. It was not an easy matter, for we had not only to regard the percentage delivered at the seaboard, but we had to try to keep the Lake Shore satisfied with its proportion, the New York Central’s proportion, and the Dunkirk and Allegheny Valley’s proportion. As I say, it was no light task, and realising that, I said to these gentlemen, “We will undertake to do this business for you, to secure to each one of you the percentage which we may have agreed upon, upon condition that we are paid for that service a sum which shall be equal to 10 per cent. of the rate you receive for doing the business.” There were, however, to be added to what I have already stated as an inducement for the railroad companies to pay that commission, other agreements, one of which was that we assumed the risk of loss by fire in transportation. That may seem to be to the gentlemen of the committee a cheap thing to do, but Mr. Gowen understands, as well as I do, that a railroad company cannot divest itself of the obligations by the common law imposed upon it as a common carrier without a special agreement to that effect. We took that risk, and did not collect from the railroad companies, any of them, any losses sustained by fire in transit. We furnished terminal facilities at the seaboard free of charge to the railroad companies, and for all this service the Pennsylvania Railroad agreed to pay us a commission of 10 per cent. We carried out our part of the contract faithfully, and secured to the roads such a division of the traffic as kept them in a state of accord and peace, so far as quantity was concerned, and yet the Pennsylvania Railroad paid to other shippers than ourselves a rebate or a drawback, or whatever you choose to call it, on their shipments, which were exactly equal to the 10 per cent. they agreed to pay us. So that in that respect we were not favoured at all.
NUMBER 28 (See page 1196)
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER AND MR. SCOTT IN OCTOBER, 1877
[Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Pennsylvania Railroad Company, United Pipe Lines, etc., Testimony. Appendix, pages 734–736.]
Philadelphia, October 17, 1877.Thomas A. Scott,President Pennsylvania Railroad Company.Dear Sir: In consideration of the covenants by your company to be performed as hereinafter mentioned, we will agree as follows:
First.—It having been agreed by the trunk lines that of all the oil shipped by the trunk lines to the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, 63 per cent. shall be considered as the proportion which would naturally go to the City of New York, and it having been further agreed that of this percentage one-third shall be transported over each of the trunk lines having termini in New York, viz.: The New York Central, Erie, and Pennsylvania, we agree, unless the aforesaid division shall be changed by mutual consent of said trunk lines, to ship such quantities of oil over your lines, from time to time, as will, when added to the quantities shipped by parties other than ourselves, give your line one-third of the shipments to New York by the said trunk lines, or 21 per cent. of the whole amount shipped to the three cities above named by the said trunk lines; it being understood that in stating the number of barrels for the purpose of making this division or for carrying out any of the other stipulations herein contained, the barrel of forty-five gallons of crude shall be the unit, and that each barrel of the usual size of refined oil shall be counted as equal to one and three-tenths barrels of crude.
Second.—It having been agreed, as we are informed, between your company and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, that of the remaining 37 per cent. of the total shipments aforesaid you should be entitled to transport by lines owned and controlled by your company to Philadelphia and Baltimore, 26 per cent., and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company to Baltimore by its lines 11 per cent., we agree, until these proportions are changed by mutual consent, to ship such quantities to Philadelphia and Baltimore by lines owned and controlled by your company as will, when added to shipments of parties other than ourselves, give for transportation by your lines to Philadelphia and Baltimore, 26 per cent. of the total shipments by the four trunk lines to the three seaboard cities above named.
Third.—We further agree that the quantity of oil which we will ourselves ship over your line shall not in any calendar year be less than two million barrels, based upon an average production of not less than thirty thousand barrels per day. If we should fail to give you traffic herein named, we will pay to you a sum equal to the profits which you would have realised upon the quantity in deficit—provided, however, that you will at all times furnish us with transportation, as we may reasonably require it.
Fourth.—We will, of the proportion of oil going to Philadelphia, refine as much as is practicable in Philadelphia, as we understand that you desire to see the refining capacity of Philadelphia fully employed, and, if needful, increased. And in shipping by your lines, whether to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or New York, we will endeavour to deliver the oil to you at points from which you will have short hauls; and to the extent that we can, we will make the proportion of crude shipped as large as possible, as we understand its transportation to be more profitable to you than that of refined oil.
Fifth.—We ask, in consideration of the above named guarantee of business, upon which it is understood we shall pay such rates as may be fixed from time to time by the four trunk lines (which rates it is understood shall be so fixed by the trunk lines as to place us on a parity as to cost of transportation with shippers by competing lines), that you shall furnish us promptly all the transportation we may reasonably require; and that you shall allow to, and pay us, weekly, such commission on our own shipments and the shipments which we may control, as may be agreed to by your company and the other trunk lines from time to time; this commission, it is understood, has for the present been fixed at 10 per cent. upon the rate, and shall not be fixed at a less percentage, except by mutual agreement of your company and ours—provided, that no other shipper of oil by your line shall pay less than the rate fixed for us before such commission is deducted; and no commission shall be allowed any other shipper unless he shall guarantee and furnish you such quantity of oil for shipment as will, after deduction of commission allowed him, realise to you the same amount of profit you realise from our trade; that is, you will not allow any other shipper of oil any part of such commission, unless after such allowance you realise from the total of his business the same total amount of profit you realise from the total of our business, except so far as your company may be compelled to fill certain contracts for transportation made by the Empire Line with refiners and producers, which contracts terminate on or before May 1, 1878, a statement of which shall accompany your reply to this letter—such contracts to be fulfilled. We agree that all the stipulations herein contained shall be carried out by us for the period of five years from the date hereof, unless sooner changed or terminated by mutual consent, provided that you advise us in writing within ten days that your company accept, and will carry out, its part of the arrangement for the like term. In entering into this agreement we desire to put ourselves on record as expressing our wish and intention of making our business relations with your company such that not only your main lines but the connecting lines controlled by you, especially the Allegheny Valley Railroad, shall secure the best possible results from the oil traffic consistent with our existing obligations to other transportation interests. We feel that the location of our refineries—all of which can be reached by your lines—should naturally create a close alliance between your company and ours, and that the best results from this important traffic can only be secured to yourselves and ourselves, and, we might add, to the entire petroleum interests of the country, by the establishment of friendly and mutually satisfactory arrangements between us.
Yours truly,Standard Oil Company,By William Rockefeller,Vice-President.
Office of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,Philadelphia, October 17, 1877.William Rockefeller,Vice-President Standard Oil Company.My Dear Sir: I am in receipt of your letter of this date, reciting the understanding and agreement to exist between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and your company for a period of five years.
I beg leave to say that the same covers the whole basis of the arrangements, and is satisfactory to this company—the provisions of which will be duly carried out by it.
Very respectfully yours,Thomas A. Scott,President.
NUMBER 29 (See page 1197)
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MR. O’DAY AND MR. CASSATT
[Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Pennsylvania Railroad Company, United Pipe Lines, etc., Testimony. Appendix, pages 732–733.]
Office of the American Transfer Company,Oil City, Pennsylvania, February 15, 1878.A. J. Cassatt,Third Vice-President, Philadelphia.Dear Sir: Referring to the conversation I had with you in January, I wish to submit the following facts: That our company has at large expense (involving the payment of several hundred thousand dollars), purchased and created certain pipe-lines to Pittsburg, through which we are able not only to protect the Allegheny Valley road in a paying rate of freight for the oil it carries, but also to secure to that company (by agreement with it) its full proportion of the oil traffic going to Pittsburg.
You are acquainted with the efforts we have put forth in other directions during the last months in which we have acted in thorough accord with the trunk line interests, and I believe I may say without egotism, we have, to the extent of our ability, effectually protected their interests in such action. I here repeat what I once stated to you and which I asked you to receive and treat as strictly confidential, that we have, been for many months receiving from the New York Central and Erie Railroads certain sums of money, in no instance less than twenty cents per barrel on every barrel of crude oil carried by each of those roads.
Co-operating, as we are doing, with the Standard Oil Company and the trunk lines in every effort to secure for the railroads paying rates of freight on the oil they carry, I am constrained to say to you that, in justice to the interest I represent, we should receive from your company at least twenty cents on each barrel of crude oil you transport.
The fruit of co-operation referred to has been fully evidenced in the fact that since last fall your company has received fifty to sixty cents per barrel more freight than was obtained by it prior to our co-operation.
In submitting this proposition I feel I should ask you to let this date from the first of November, 1877, but I am willing to accept as a compromise (which is to be regarded as strictly a private one between your company and ours) the payment by you of twenty cents per barrel on all crude oil shipments commencing with February 1, 1878.
I make this proposition with the full expectation that it will be acceptable to your company, but with the understanding on my part that in so doing, I am not asking as much of the Pennsylvania road and its connections as I have been and am receiving from the other trunk lines.
You are doubtless aware that during the last two years a large amount of oil has been shipped to Richmond via the Chesapeake and Ohio road, and that since the purchase of the Pittsburg lines by us not one barrel has been permitted to go in that direction.
During the season of 1877, and so long as the Columbia Conduit Company afforded the Baltimore and Ohio road access to the Oil Regions, that company, I understood, refused to accept from the other trunk lines (for its proportion of the oil traffic) less than 20 per cent., but after the purchase by us of the Columbia Conduit you succeeded in arranging with the Baltimore and Ohio for about half as much as they previously claimed.
I may add that the Baltimore and Ohio road are wholly dependent upon us for any oil they may carry.
Yours truly,(Signed) Daniel O’Day,General Manager.
Philadelphia, May 15, 1878.R. W. Downing, Comptroller.Dear Sir: I enclose herewith copy of letter from Daniel O’Day, general manager of the American Transfer Company, which refers to a conversation I had with him in January last in reference to allowing the American Transfer Company a commission of twenty cents per barrel on all crude oil transported over this company’s lines to New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
I agreed to allow this commission from and after February 1, until further notice, after having seen receipted bills showing that the New York Central Railroad allowed them a commission of thirty-five cents per barrel and that the Erie Railway allowed them a commission of twenty cents per barrel on Bradford oil, and thirty cents per barrel on all other oil, and that they had been doing so continuously since the 17th of October last.
Of this, however, you saw the evidence yourself in the bills which I submitted to you last week. Please, therefore, prepare vouchers in favour of the American Transfer Company per Daniel O’Day, for this commission of twenty cents on shipments during February, March and April, and hereafter make settlements with that company monthly.
Yours truly,(Signed) A. J. Cassatt,Third Vice-President.
NUMBER 30 (See page 1197)
HENRY M. FLAGLER’S TESTIMONY ON THE REBATE PAID TO THE AMERICAN TRANSFER COMPANY
[Proceedings in Relation to Trusts, House of Representatives, 1888. Report Number 3112, pages 777–778.]
Q. Mr. Cassatt testified and offered in evidence the correspondence which showed that his company agreed to the payment of that 22½ cents to the American Transfer Company on every barrel of crude oil passing over their line in consequence of the fact that the writer of the first letter on behalf of the American Transfer Company had asserted that the New York Central and the New York and Lake Erie roads paid the same amount. You know that to be a fact, do you not?
A. May I explain that now?
Q. You are entitled to make any explanation you wish.
A. The American Transfer Company was built originally for, really, the New York Central road. The New York Central had no means of getting south of Titusville with its cars. The American Transfer Company’s lines were built really in the interest of the New York Central road. In those days the pipe-lines purchased the oil and oftentimes sold it at just what they paid for it, and sometimes less. They got more when they could. The New York Central, as I said, paid the American Transfer Company a price, which I presume was the figures named in Mr. Cassatt’s testimony, for collecting oil in the lower country and delivering it to the Dunkirk and Allegheny Valley, which is the New York Central’s connection. As that pipe-line increased its business the Erie road did the same thing. Later the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted the service of that pipe-line in collecting oil. Mr. O’Day did what I suppose any manager would do. He said to Mr. Cassatt, if you do the same thing for me that the other roads are doing, I have no objection to making the same arrangement with you. The payment made by the Pennsylvania, the Erie, and the New York Central roads constituted the gross income of the American Transfer Company, out of which it paid its expenses of doing its business and its losses, if it made any, in the purchase and sale of oil. It acted as a factor for those northern roads, and, as I said, was originally built in order that oils might be reached by the New York Central.
Q. But in addition to the sum of 22½ cents, or whatever it may have been, which these trunk lines paid to the American Transfer Company, that company as a transporter of oil through its own pipe got this pipage charge besides?
A. I never so understood it. As I remember the facts in the case, while there was a nominal pipage—there might have been; I do not say there was; I do not remember.
Q. You do not say there was?
A. I do not remember. But while there might have been a nominal pipage, that nominal pipage might have been absorbed in the crude oil. In other words, it threw away its nominal pipage and relied——
Q. I am speaking now solely of the relations of the American Transfer Company to the railroads. The former received 22½ cents on every barrel of oil passing over the Pennsylvania road and the other roads. But the American Transfer Company was a transporter of oil itself, and to the extent it transported oil through its pipes it made charge for that service also?
A. That is a point where I say I want to correct you. While it may have made a nominal charge, about which my memory fails me, I say it threw away that nominal charge by paying to the owner or the producer of the oil the value of the oil at the wells, plus what that pipage might have been, and that twenty odd cents paid by the Pennsylvania constituted its gross revenue.
NUMBER 31 (See page 1199)
LETTER TO PRESIDENT SCOTT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD FROM B. B. CAMPBELL AND E. G. PATTERSON
[Proceedings in Relation to Trusts, House of Representatives, 1888. Report Number 3112, pages 363–365.]
To the President and Directors Pennsylvania Railroad Company.Gentlemen: About July 1 last the undersigned were of a delegation from the Oil Region of our state, asking of your road an assurance that its course during the preceding two months, in giving to all producers and shippers of petroleum equal facilities and impartial rates, might be formally made its permanent policy.
In an interview with your president at that time, that assurance was given, coupled with the requisition that such support should be given it by the producers and shippers as would repay it for the exertion it must make in defending that policy, and guaranteeing that such support should be continuous and permanent.
The people of the Oil Region were only too glad to enter into such an agreement, and steps were immediately taken of a practical nature to carry it out.
It was understood that it could not be immediately done.
After the formal abandonment by the trunk lines of the South Improvement Company in 1872, your road for some months faithfully adhered, as we believe, to the pledge then given by all the trunk lines, that no discrimination should thenceforth be permitted. We believe also that it stood alone among the roads in adhering to it, for gradually the persons constituting the South Improvement Company were placed by the roads in as favourable a position as to rates and facilities as had been stipulated in the original contract with that company. At this time the line of your road in Western Pennsylvania, including that under your influence and control, was dotted with refineries capable of producing a large proportion of the refined oil needed by the world. The policy of the Standard Oil Company, the successor in everything but name of the South Improvement Company, has resulted in the dismantling and abandonment of every one of those refineries (as soon as they fell into their possession) which could not be reached by some other and a rival road to yours, and now there are in the Oil Region proper but few refineries and those universally owned by the Standard Oil Company, those in Pittsburg being owned or controlled by that combination or by the Conduit or Empire lines. The use and export of crude oil is but a small proportion of the consumption, and time and money were required to re-establish this great product upon its former basis, and these people were glad to furnish all needed means to accomplish this end, as are also capitalists at other points not strictly within the Oil Region, yet upon your lines.
We are met in the midst of this preparation by assertion of agents of the combination, and as accepted news by the press, that such a combination is entered into, or under consideration by your road and the Empire Transportation Company, the Erie, Central, Lake Shore, and Baltimore roads of the one part, and the Standard Oil Company of the other, as would preclude your road from carrying out the policy announced by your president at the interview heretofore referred to.
We believe there is danger that such a result may be reached, and we in behalf of these whom we represent, in making our efforts to prevent its accomplishment, or if accomplished to defeat it, as the first step, address this communication to you, desiring to present its aspect as affecting your road from our stand-point.
So far as we, and the general public are affected, you will not question that the present scheme is but the repetition of the South Improvement scheme, never abandoned by its authors, and seeking the sole and absolute control of all petroleum produced, purchased, refined, and shipped within the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, or West Virginia.
The over-production of 1873, 1874, 1875, and the consequent almost entire destruction of petroleum values, gave the Standard Oil Company, with its organisation and capital, almost the desired monopoly. The equalisation of consumption and production of 1876–1877 brought that combination to the same point that they were in 1872—utterly unable by reason of geographical position, if for no other, to monopolise this product without the co-operation of all the transportation, and then only under a contract similar to that of the South Improvement Company, and including all of its dangerous and extraordinary features. None other can serve them, and so they stand to-day, and we believe that your road can enter into no compromise, treaty, or arrangement which will serve the ends of the monopoly, under any less stringent stipulations and devoid of the liabilities thereof.
Under such an arrangement it is probable that the Central and Erie have transported its oil, during nearly all of this year. It is now an open secret in the producing region, that no charges follow the shipments over at least one of these roads, and crude oil is delivered in New York, on shipping order, at prices which barely repay the cost of packages and contents, with little or no remainder for transportation charges. This aid to the scheme of the combination is possibly given in view of the high tariff and consequent large revenue promised to be derived hereafter, when the scheme has been made a success, and all opposition in trade and transportation extinguished.
Suppose your opposition to be withdrawn, and you join the alliance, when does your profit come in? We are entitled to impartiality. As we are advised, the law, common and statute, provides for it; it pronounces those participating in such a scheme conspirators against the public weal, and there is no court upon your line but what will enforce by mandamus and injunction the impartiality that we ask. The combination will promise you an immediate increase of revenue. If we are well advised, will you realise upon that promise? Can you make a contract with them that if we do not succeed in destroying, it will be their interest to keep? You will not have a refinery left; and they are now completing pipe-lines from Pittsburg to Oil City, and can deliver the oil received by all their pipe-lines, independent of your road and its branches. In case of a contract with them executed but afterwards broken, from what source will you derive your oil traffic and what court will enforce the broken contract in your favour? We urge that you cannot enter into any arrangement with the monopoly that can be permanently useful to it and to you, and doubt if it can be made temporarily so.
Suppose that you decline to enter into such a treaty, or any such scheme, but announce and adhere to the opposite policy? There is no law, not even that of necessity, to compel you to serve the ends of the Standard Oil Company.
If Messrs. Vanderbilt and Jewett believe that their aid alone is insufficient to the establishment of the monopoly, for how long will they carry its oil as at present for nothing, when they could have full rates, by uniting the railroad interest, and leaving the Standard Oil Company to do its business in common with all others?
If the Pennsylvania Railroad, having the geographical position in its favour, will announce and adhere to the policy of impartial and competitive rates, in three or six months, it can have all the facilities and extent of business which the Standard Oil Company can give the competitive roads, and by men who have all to gain by so doing.
We ask consideration of our views and of our assurance of good results from their favourable consideration.
If you choose to place the matter in the light of an experiment, its trial can cost you nothing but the failure to realise upon the immediate fulfillment of the promises of the common enemy, and that realisation we believe will not be permitted.
Very respectfully,B. B. Campbell, of Pittsburg,E. G. Patterson, of Titusville.Philadelphia, September 11, 1877.
NUMBER 32 (See page 1225)
PRODUCERS’ APPEAL OF 1878 TO GOVERNOR JOHN F. HARTRANFT, OF PENNSYLVANIA
[Proceedings in Relation to Trusts, House of Representatives, 1888. Report Number 3112, pages 351–356.]
Sir: The undersigned, members of a committee appointed by the General Council of the Petroleum Producers’ Union for that purpose, address to you, as the official head of the Commonwealth, a plain statement of facts, to a great extent known to be true from personal knowledge, and all material parts of which are susceptible of proof by competent evidence.
We address you, not only as individuals whose personal interests have been affected, whose property has been rendered comparatively valueless, and whose capital and labour are bound against their consent, to increasing the gains of grasping corporations, but as citizens of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, apparently prostrate and powerless to control one of its greatest products, and the immense business that annually flows from it.
The petroleum production of Pennsylvania is confined geographically to the Northwestern portion of the state, extending from its border upon New York State nearly to Pittsburg, and is the chief interest in the counties of McKean, Warren, Forest, Crawford, Venango, Clarion, Butler and Armstrong.
The amount of money invested in well property, constantly to be renewed and kept good, represents at least twenty millions of dollars, and while the value of the lands upon which the wells are located is not easily determined, it represents many times the value of the well property.
Petroleum should yield at the wells, with its transportation and sale unfettered, twenty-five to thirty-five million dollars annually, while as an article of export, it ranks third among the products of the nation, and as first among its manufactured exports.
For transportation outlets, it has the Pennsylvania Railroad to the seaboard at an average distance therefrom of less than 400 miles. The New York Central and Lake Shore Railroads reach Oil City by way of Cleveland, Ohio, 764 miles from the seaboard, and Titusville, by way of Dunkirk, New York, 571 miles to the seaboard, and the New York, Lake Erie and Western, and Atlantic and Great Western Railways reach Oil City by way of Meadville, 550 miles to the seaboard.
CONDITION OF THE TRADE IN 1871
At that time the lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the Oil Region were dotted with refineries located at Tidioute, Henry’s Bend, Oleopolis, Oil City, Corry, Titusville, Miller Farm, Rouseville, and other points on the Oil Creek Railroad, at various points on the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, and on the Allegheny Valley Railroad, these roads being tributaries of and controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad, while upon its main line extensive refineries were located at Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The refineries at Cleveland, Ohio, confined themselves in a measure to the Western domestic trade, and those of Portland, Boston and New York had generally specialties in the trade.
The markets were filled with buyers of crude and refined; information as to stocks, production and consumption was open and obtainable, and values were regulated by the law of supply and demand.
In its relation to this trade, Western Pennsylvania almost exclusively possessing this product, with ample refineries in its midst, with its great state railroad penetrating the producing region, and by it, having the shortest route to the seaboard, with the Allegheny River as an additional means of transportation to Pittsburg, the Western terminus of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and with Philadelphia, its Eastern terminus as an exporting point, Pennsylvania had, and was entitled to, the control of the refining and transportation of its own product.
CONDITION OF THE TRADE IN 1877–1878
Now, this is all changed! The refineries on the lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad have been demolished, excepting where reached by rival railroads, and this business has been transferred to Cleveland and New York, the refineries remaining in this state having passed into the ownership and control of a foreign organisation, as has also the local transportation from the wells, by means of pipe-lines to the lines of the railways.
The transportation of every nature is subject to its dictation; it possesses every avenue of information; it affixes its own value to the crude product when purchasing and the refined products when selling; it establishes its own rates of compensation to be paid the railways, and the laws of commerce which govern values in other products are in this a part of the history of the past. So far as the petroleum trade is concerned an enterprise or investment therein is only a wager as to what step the Standard Oil combination will next take. With the world consuming double the amount of our petroleum that it did in 1871, the thirty millions which should be received from the crude product has dwindled to its half; the fifteen millions which should be the profit of Pennsylvania refineries has been transferred to Ohio and New York, and the twenty millions which should have swelled the earnings of the railways have gone—no one dare say where—but the colossal fortunes acquired since 1872 by every member (so far as its members are known) of this now world-renowned organisation, are proofs of the success attendant upon a scheme, no less unlawful than gigantic, and which has all the outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual corruption. To-day a foreign corporation is the absolute master of the production and its value, of transportation by pipe-lines, transportation by railroad and the compensation therefor, of storage and refining, and the profit thereof, and dictates prices through the world of the first, or among the first, of the products of Pennsylvania, and of the United States, and this to the impoverishment of thousands of citizens, and the destruction of each of these interests within the state. That this has been accomplished through and by means of the co-operation of the Pennsylvania Railroad, its management and influence, is matter of record.
THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO MONOPOLISE THE TRADE
was initiated by the conveyance, by R. D. Barclay, Thomas A. Scott’s private secretary, and S. S. Moon, the legislative agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, to a party composed principally of Cleveland and New York men, headed by an agent of the New York Central and Erie Railways, of a charter granted by the Legislature of Pennsylvania for a different purpose, under which they organised for the seizure of the petroleum trade, retaining the charter title of
“THE SOUTH IMPROVEMENT COMPANY,”
the then managers thereof being the managers of the organisation now known as the Standard Oil Company.
With the South Improvement Company, not a member of which lived in the Oil Region, or was an owner of oil wells or oil lands, the Pennsylvania Railroad hastened to execute a contract (January 18, 1872), giving it the sole and exclusive control of all petroleum shipments thereon, regardless of ownership, and securing this by the payment by the railroad of a rebate or drawback to the South Improvement Company of such a sum as would have inevitably driven all others out of the trade, and lest there might be doubt as to the intent to so do, it was expressly stipulated in the fourth article thereof that that was the result aimed at, and the Pennsylvania Railroad therein bound itself, so far as it legally might, to aid in accomplishing it.
The action of the Legislature and of Congress, and the uprising of the people against this unparalleled iniquity, destroyed the combination for the time being, the railroads having pledged themselves to never attempt a similar outrage.
The local transportation of crude petroleum had been gradually changing from movement by barrels to carriage in
PIPE-LINES
from the wells to tankage located on the lines of railway, the principal of which pipe-lines, at this time known as the Pennsylvania Transportation Company (formerly Allegheny Transportation Company), was under special charters of the Legislature and owned and controlled by Messrs. Scott, of the Pennsylvania, and Fisk and Gould, of the Erie Railways. The Legislature had been petitioned at various times since 1866 to pass a Free Pipe Law, but the various bills introduced for that purpose could never overcome the opposition of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the Legislature. During the excitement attendant upon the rise and fall of the South Improvement Company scheme, the effort was renewed, and the Legislature enacted a law, restricted to the eight oil-producing counties, but the Pennsylvania Railroad influence was strong enough to exclude Allegheny County from the operation of the Act, thus shutting out Western Pennsylvania from Pittsburg, the terminus of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the natural outlet of the Oil Region, and the natural refining point of the United States.
The succeeding efforts to pass a Free Pipe Law, either general in its nature or to permit construction of pipe-lines to lines of railway within the state, or to include Allegheny County in the law of 1872, have been defeated invariably by the opposition of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the law of 1874, known as the Wallace Act, was so framed and enacted as to leave it doubtful whether it had not succeeded in withdrawing from the eight counties referred to all the rights conceded to them by the Act of 1872, a wrong which no subsequent Legislature has been able to redress.
Under the law of 1872, pipe-lines owned by citizens in the Oil Region had been organised and were in operation, giving free access to the railways, but after the passage of the Wallace Act (April 29, 1874), the Standard Combination, which had never really abandoned the South Improvement scheme, systematically undertook their destruction by forcing them into insolvency and then absorbing them. This required railway co-operation, and various means were employed therein, notably among which is the scheme adopted by the ring and promulgated by the railroads October 1, 1874. An explanation is necessary to understand why the railroads should unite: First, to carry oil received by them through pipe-lines that had combined to maintain a given rate for pipage twenty-two cents per barrel cheaper than on oil received from pipe-lines not so combining, and Second, to further weaken the refineries remaining in Western Pennsylvania by depriving them of their geographical advantage of proximity to the crude product, to the coal used as fuel, and to the exporting ports by free transportation of crude petroleum to the ring refineries in other states. Various pipe-lines had already been forced out of existence, had been bought up and united under the name of “The United Pipe Lines,” which was owned, one-third by the Standard Oil Company, one-third by the Lake Shore and New York Central Railroads, and one-third by individuals who were members of and directors in the Standard Oil Company. The Pennsylvania Railroad had as its particular feeder a similar organisation, known as the “Empire Pipe Line.” This explains the first point referred to above. The second, so far as the Pennsylvania Railroad is concerned, is inexplicable upon any ordinary hypothesis or under any known theory in railroad politics. The scheme was a success, pipe-lines one after another succumbed, and refiner after refiner was bankrupted and his works absorbed.
This effected, the monopoly, backed by the New York railroads, in one of which it exercised unlimited power, felt strong enough to demand of the railroads that it should be given the future sole conduct of the trade under the old South Improvement plan. Upon this the Pennsylvania Railroad apparently awoke to its danger, resisted the demand, and in July, 1877, President Scott announced as the policy of the Pennsylvania Railroad open and free trade to all shippers of petroleum. It was then conducting its oil traffic through its ally, the Empire Transportation Company, which possessed a system of pipe-lines (before referred to) extending over the Oil Region, controlling a large portion of the production, with ample tankage, with a large rolling stock upon the Pennsylvania Railroad, and owning or controlling a refining capacity nearly equal to one-half the consumption of the world. In the following month (August, 1877), immediately after the riots at Pittsburg, which were in their extent the natural outgrowth of railroad freight discrimination against that city, the monopolists succeeded in convincing the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad that it was to their or its interests to force the Empire Company, its cars, its pipe-lines, its tankage and its refineries into their hands. The people of Western Pennsylvania protested in a communication to the president and directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad in September, before the extent of the proposed iniquity had become fully known to the public, which communication seems never to have reached the board of directors. The outrage was finally consummated October 17, 1877, and the Pennsylvania Railroad was left without the control of a foot of pipe-line together, a tank to receive, or a still to refine a barrel of petroleum and without the ability to secure the transportation of one except at the will of men who live and whose interests lie in Ohio and New York.
Into those hands had now passed the last refineries of Pennsylvania, the last means of transportation from the wells to the railroads, and the last means of carriage to the markets of this country and of the world. The South Improvement scheme (less its chartered organisation as in 1872) was at last an accomplished fact, and in the successful designing, prosecution, consummation and operation of which it is impossible not to believe that railroad officials were personally interested.
CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION
As the conspiracy was evidently gaining strength, the people of Pennsylvania united in an effort to induce Congress to again interfere as in 1872, and in 1876 it directed an investigation, which was conducted in a dilatory manner by a committee, a prominent member of the Standard Oil Company, and not a member of Congress, presiding behind the seat of the chairman. Vice-President Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was the only prominent railway official who appeared in obedience to the subpœnas of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and he refused to give the committee any information as to the matter under investigation, and the counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad, ex-Senator Scott, appeared before the committee in justification of his so doing. The financial officer of the Standard Oil Company appeared before the committee, accompanied by a member of Congress—also a member of that Company, and promptly refused to give the committee any information as to the organisation, or the names of its members, or its relations with the railroads. The influence and power of the combination was apparent; the committee never reported, never complained of the contempt of its witnesses, and all the evidence and record of its proceedings effectively disappeared. In 1877–78, a bill was introduced by Representative Watson, of Western Pennsylvania, seeking to prevent discrimination in interstate commerce, which has been reported by a committee, but which can hardly overcome the covert opposition which it meets.
RECENT STATE LEGISLATION
All efforts to obtain a Free Pipe Law in this state having through a series of years proved unavailing, although New York, in its efforts to control the trade in Pennsylvania petroleum, had enacted such a law, a bill was prepared enforcing in this state the Third and Seventh Sections of the Seventeenth Article of its Constitution. This bill, known as
THE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ACT,
provided that shippers of property by car-load from any point on a railroad within the state to any other point within the state, should be charged equal rates and given equal facilities. Copies of the proposed law were sent to the prominent railroad officials in the state, but its provisions were so fair and protective to every citizen of the state, and to every legitimate railroad interest, that neither before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, which reported it favourably by an unanimous vote, nor in the Senate, which passed it with but one dissenting voice, nor before the Judiciary Committee of the House, which reported it unanimously, did any railroad stockholder, official, or legislative agent appear to offer an objection to its becoming a law. Yet it was killed in the House by the familiar means employed by legislative agents in disposing of measures objectionable, but not debatable. Had the bill become a law, it would have rebuilt the refineries of the state, with Philadelphia (whose petroleum trade under the monopoly has gradually dwindled to a fraction of its former magnitude) as the exporting point, with the Pennsylvania Railroad as the transporter thereto, and the people of Western Pennsylvania might have arisen from a community of miners, working for the benefit, and under the rule, of a foreign corporation, to their former conditions as citizens of a prosperous mining and manufacturing section of the state.
RESULTS AND EFFECT OF THE SUCCESS OF THE CONSPIRACY
Upon or with the New York railroads no appeal or representation of the people of this section would have any weight or influence. Their managers reside in Cleveland and New York, and are subject to the daily manipulations of the monopoly managers, while in our own state, to all efforts for emancipation or toward the restoration of trade to its natural channels the Pennsylvania Railroad and its power is as a Chinese wall. Its president and vice-president admit the preferences in rates given to the monopoly, and boldly announce their intent to continue in so doing; they claim the legal right to so do, and challenge resistance; they obstruct all efforts of producers, shippers and refiners by delaying or restricting facilities; by threatening other railroads with severance of connections and deprivation of general traffic if they transport petroleum for parties outside the monopoly; they refer applicants for rates and facilities over the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Standard Oil Company, and offering their personal service as negotiators for such rates and facilities, assure all that there is no hope of success in the trade unless by a coalition with the Standard.
We have thus far given not more than an outlined sketch of this enormous monopoly, its plan, its growth, and its results. We have not burdened your Excellency with details of individual oppression and outrage, but we should fail to discharge our duties to ourselves and as citizens if we neglect to recite some of the means by which the most deplorable results are produced to our state and section. Wrong is constantly perpetuated and right driven from us. True it is that in many things the monopoly has been unwittingly aided in its schemes by unwary concessions as to the management of its business, by producers of petroleum themselves, but they had a right, as men pursuing an honest calling, to believe that they were dealing with honest men, and not with a gang of public plunderers, leagued together by no better tie than the sordid desire of gain, to be acquired by methods of corruption and lawlessness.
By the theory of the law, corporations derive their powers from the people of the Commonwealth in General Assembly convened; they have no powers not delegated to them by the people; they take nothing by implication; they are public servants, invested for the public benefit with extraordinary privileges, and their charters may be taken from them when they cease to properly perform the duties of their creation. The railroad and pipe-line companies are common carriers of freight for all persons, are bound to receive it when offered at convenient and usual places, and to transport it for all, for reasonable compensation, without unreasonable discrimination in favour of any. These are but simple statements of well established legal principles, never doubted in any court, but affirmed by every tribunal that has ever considered them. Yet the people who granted these special privileges are now upon the defensive, their rights denied by these corporations, and they are challenged to enter the courts to establish them, while in the meantime they are inoperative to the irreparable injury of their business. They have yielded to the railways that they have created a part of their sovereignty, and given them the right to take private property for public use, but restricting such taking, strictly to such use. Yet where the narrow strip of land used as a railway roadbed runs through valuable oil lands, this combination is strong enough to demand from the railways its transfer to them, that they may and do thereon sink their own oil wells, and thereby drain the oil from the adjoining lands whose owners gave the strip for public use by a railroad.
The owners of lands along the line of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, producing petroleum from those lands, with their own pipe-line running to their own shipping racks by the side tracks of that railroad, are unable to obtain cars in which to load their product for transportation, at any rate of freight, while their tanks overflow. Shippers of petroleum are refused cars, or are promised them, only to find the promises broken, and their contracts rendered impossible of fulfillment, while the monopoly demands and is given all the cars belonging to the railroads, it permitting its own private cars to meantime stand idle, so that the railroads may assert its inability to accommodate all.
Owners of tanks connected with the monopoly pipe-lines, with ample storage therein for their own product, are refused transportation from their own wells upon the ground that “their tanks are full,” a barefaced and daily demonstrated falsehood. Other producers of petroleum are refused transportation by the pipe-lines, on the plea of want of capacity to carry, and at the same time are informed that their oil will be carried if they will sell it to the ring, “immediate shipment.”
If the applicant’s tanks are overflowing, or if he needs money and complies with their terms, he is offered a price from two and a half to twenty-five cents below the market value. If he accepts and sells a fixed amount of his oil, the pipe-line removes all but five or ten barrels, delays for days and weeks to take the remainder, and refuses to pay for any until all is taken. This is known as the “immediate shipment swindle.”
By their use of the petroleum of others stored in their tanks and lines; by the overissue of Pipe Line Certificates; by refusal to perform their public duties; by open defiance of the law and impudent evasions of its provisions, the pipe-line and railroad companies leave to the people, whose creatures they are, but two remedies—an appeal for protection, first to the law of the land, next to the higher law of nature!
These corporations have made themselves the interested tools of a monopoly that has become the buyer, the carrier, the manufacturer, and the seller of this product of immense value. It needs no argument or illustration to convince that in such a position this foreign corporation is in direct antagonism to the producer, the labourer and the consumer.
The South Improvement conspiracy embraced in its scheme the ownership of the oil-producing territory, wells and machinery. If the present course of its successor cannot be stayed, it is merely a question of time when the ownership of the entire oil production will fall into its hands through the impoverishment of thousands of our citizens and their inability to contend longer.
That monopolies are dangerous to free institutions is a political maxim so old as to have lost its force by irrelevant repetition, but if anything were needed to awaken the public sense to its truth, the immediate effect of this giant combination is before us. Throughout the Oil Region, as wherever it does business, it now has its own acid works, glue factories, hardware stores and barrel works. We have seen that it is master of the railroads, and owns and controls all the refineries, all the pipe-lines. All these enumerated industries controlled by them employ large numbers of labourers dependent for the support of themselves and their families upon the daily labour given or withheld by this powerful conspirator. At the flash of the telegraphic message from Cleveland, Ohio, hundreds of men have been thrown out of employment on a few hours’ notice and kept for weeks in a state of semi-starvation and justifiable discontent, deceived meanwhile with delusive promises of work, until the autocrat of a foreign corporation, maintained and upheld by the chief among Pennsylvania corporations, gives leave from within the borders of a foreign state for the Pennsylvania labourer to earn his bread.
Along the valley of Oil Creek and the Allegheny Valley, where a few years since the smoke of busy refineries and their attendant industries darkened the air, piles of rusted iron and heaps of demolished brick work mark the results of the conspiracy; where a few years since busy men crowded to and fro in the pursuit of lawful trade in a great staple, there is now silence and emptiness. The producer, once surrounded with competitive buyers of his product, now goes with crowds of his fellow victims to wait his turn for leave to sell it at a dictated price to a single agent of a single purchaser.
To permit to stand unattacked the foul principles of such an organisation, to permit them to be fastened as lawful or right upon the policy of the Commonwealth or the nation, is to lay the foundation for the exile of capital, endless injury to the public interests, endless oppression of the labourer, riots, tumults, and the decay of the state.
So far as this public wrong is within the scope of Executive interference, we ask that immediate steps be taken to enforce by legislative enactment the wise provisions of our State Constitution, and by such legal processes as are necessary, compel obedience to law and the performance by chartered companies of their public duties.
B. B. Campbell, of Pittsburg,E. W. Codington, of Bradford, McKean County,Lewis Emery, Jr., of Bradford, McKean County,George H. Graham, of Petrolia, Butler County,J. A. Vera, of St. Petersburg, Clarion County,H. O. Robbins, of Turkey City, Clarion County,L. H. Smith, Petrolia,R. B. Brown, Clarion,D. S. Criswell, Oil City,A. J. Salisbury, Karns City,A. N. Perrin, Titusville, Crawford County,W. B. Benedict, Enterprise, Warren County,H. W. Bumpus, Monroe, Clarion County,Samuel Q. Brown, Pleasantville, Venango County.