Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/153

Rh not be five dollars! What could he do then? He would be their slave, there would be no other buyer—could be none, since they would control the entire transportation system.

The upshot of the negotiations was that again the advocates of combination had to retire from the Oil Regions defeated. "Sic semper tyrannis, sic transit gloria South Improvement Company," sneered the Oil City Derrick, which was given to sprinkling Latin phrases into its forceful and picturesque English. But the Derrick underrated both the man and the principle at which it sneered. A great idea was at work in the commercial world. It had come to them saddled with crime. They now saw nothing in it but the crime. The man who had brought it to them was not only endowed with far vision, he was endowed with an indomitable purpose. He meant to control the oil business. By one maneuvre, and that a discredited one, he had obtained control of one-fifth of the entire refining output of the United States. He meant to secure the other four-fifths. He might retire now, but the Oil Region would hear of him again. It did. Three months later, in August, 1872, it was learned that the scheme of consolidation which had been presented in vain at Titusville in May had been quietly carried out, that four-fifths of the refining interest of the United States, including many of the creek refiners, had gone into a National Refiners' Association, of which Mr. Rockefeller was president, and one of their own men, J. J. Vandergrift, was vice-president. The news aroused much resentment in the Oil Regions. The region was no longer solid in its free-trade sentiment, no longer undividedly true to its vow that the rebate system as applied to the oil trade must end. There was an enemy at home. The hard words which for months men had heaped on the distant heads of Cleveland and Pittsburg refiners, they began to pour out, more discreetly to be sure, on the heads of their neighbours. It boded ill for the interior peace of the Oil Regions.