Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/140

Rh "Improvement and Standard Companies are cancelled. Will you please give us official notice whether such contracts are cancelled or not? The people in mass-meeting assembled have instructed the executive committee not to sell or ship any oil to these parties until we receive such notice. Please answer at once, as we fear violence and destruction of property. Signed, President."

General McClellan, Horace F. Clark, Thomas A. Scott, and W. H. Vanderbilt all sent emphatic telegrams in reply, asserting that the South Improvement contracts had been cancelled and that their roads had no understanding of any nature in regard to freights with the Standard Oil Company. "The only existing arrangement is with you," telegraphed General McClellan. W. H. Vanderbilt reminded Mr. Hasson that the agreement of March 25, between the railroad companies and the joint committee of producers and refiners, was on a basis of perfect equality for all, and the inference was, how could Mr. Vanderbilt possibly make a special arrangement with the Standard? From the Standard Oil Company the following was received:

, April 8, 1872. "To : In answer to your telegram, this company holds no contract with the railroad companies or any of them, or with the South Improvement Company. The contracts between the South Improvement Company and the railroads have been cancelled, and I am informed you have been so advised by telegram. I state unqualifiedly that reports circulated in the Oil Region and elsewhere, that this company, or any member of it, threatened to depress oil, are false."

After reading all the telegrams the committee submitted its report. The gist of it was that since they had official assurance that the hated contracts were cancelled, and that since they had secured from all the trunk lines a "fair rate of freight, equal to all shippers and producers, great or small, with an abolition of the system of rebates and drawbacks," the time had arrived "to open the channels of trade to all parties desiring to purchase or deal in oil on terms of equality." The