Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/279

Rh fused to carry out its contracts. The cars the Equitable ordered sent to the loading track were refused, a side track it had laid was torn up, the frog torn out; everything, indeed, was done to prevent the Equitable doing business, though finally a vigorous appeal to the law brought the road to terms, and in July oil began to flow Eastward by this indirect route. No sooner did the Standard find that the Equitable people were really doing business than they appealed to the railroads. A meeting of the representatives of the trunk lines was held at Saratoga in July, and the rates on crude Eastward were dropped to eighty cents to meet the new competition.

While this fight was going on against the Equitable all sorts of interference were being put in the way of the seaboard line between Brady's Bend and Baltimore. It was ridiculed as chimerical to attempt to pump oil over the mountains, and General Haupt was declared to be a visionary engineer with a record of failures. All the old stories retailed in 1876 were dragged out again. The farmers were told that the leakage from the pipe-line would ruin their fields and endanger their buildings, and an active campaign to excite prejudice was carried on again in the farmers' papers. Philadelphia and Pittsburg both fought the plan, the press and chambers of commerce opposing the free pipe bill at that time before the Legislature, and the project generally. In Pittsburg the opposition created almost a riot, for the oil producers of the Lower Field, who had long bought their supplies there, now threatened to boycott the city if the pipe-line was fought. So strong was the opposition that capital took fright and the company found it most difficult to secure funds. This opposition to the pipe-line was, of course, charged against the Standard and the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Now, while the railroads were refusing cars to independent shippers,—or if they gave an order for them, the United Pipe Lines were refusing to load them,—while the Standard and the