Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/253

Rh by generous deeds. They crushed her business and her spirit as remorselessly as they would have killed a dog." These are bitter words written when Colonel Potts was still smarting from his defeat. They were written, too, without reflection that Mrs. Hunt, if allowed to have all the oil she wanted, allowed equal rates, allowed to use her ability and experience, allowed freedom to sell in the markets she had built up, would undoubtedly have increased her business. She would have profited by the high prices of refined oil which Mr. Rockefeller was taking all this trouble to secure. She might have grown a formidable competitor even, and disturbed the steadiness of the working of the great machine. Colonel Potts forgot that if the Great Purpose was realised nobody must do business except under Mr. Rockefeller's control.

In New York City the new tariff and pooling arrangements caused the greatest uneasiness, for here was the largest group of prosperous independent refiners. They had all allied themselves with the Empire Transportation Company in the spring of 1877 when its fight with the Standard had begun, but they had been dropped immediately when peace negotiations were begun, and a letter of remonstrance they sent Mr. Scott at the time was never answered. The experiences of several of these independents have been recorded in court testimony. One or two will suffice here. For instance, among the Eastern refiners was the firm of Denslow and Bush; their works were located in South Brooklyn. They had begun in a very small way in 1870, and by 1879 were doing a business of nearly 1,000 barrels of crude a day. They had transported nearly all their oil by the Empire Line. After that line went out of business in October, 1877, the contract with Denslow and Bush was transferred to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. This contract terminated on the first day of