Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/271

Rh randum of the law on the subject. The bill prepared by Mr. Patterson and Mr. Hibbard was introduced into the House of Representatives in May, 1878, by Lewis F. Watson, whose home was in Warren County, Pennsylvania. It was called into committee and came out as the Regan bill and as such was passed at the end of the year by the House, but only to be smothered later in the Senate. At the same time that the effort was going in Washington for relief the Legislature of Pennsylvania was being besieged again for a free pipe-line bill and an anti-discrimination bill. Both of these projects failed, and the committee having them in charge said bitterly in its report to the Union: "How well we have succeeded at Harrisburg you all know. It would be in vain for your committee to describe the efforts of the Council in this direction. It has been simply a history of failure and disgrace. If it has taught us anything, it is that our present law-makers, as a body, are ignorant, corrupt and unprincipled; that the majority of them are, directly or indirectly, under the control of the very monopolies against whose acts we have been seeking relief. There has been invented by the Standard Oil Company no argument or assertion, however false or ridiculous, which has not found a man in the Pennsylvania Legislature mean enough to become its champion."

On every side indeed the producers hastened to protect themselves against the Lord of the Oil Regions, as Mr. Rockefeller, not inaptly, was called, on the completion of his pipe-line monopoly. That they were not merely alarmists in thinking that they must do something to protect their interests was demonstrated sooner than was anticipated. The demonstration was hurried by an unforeseen and difficult situation—a great outpouring of oil in a new field—the Bradford or Northern Field in McKean County, Pennsylvania. About the time that Mr. Rockefeller's lordship was realised it became certain that a deposit of oil had been discovered which was