Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/294

Rh comply with their agreement, is not less than $2,500,000, for one-half of which defendants should account to your orators, but which they neglect and refuse to do.

Naturally enough the producers now pointed out that the case of the H. L. Taylor Company was a demonstration of what they had claimed in 1872, when the South Improvement Company, alarmed at the uprising, offered them a contract, and what they had always claimed since when the Standard offered contracts for oil on a sliding scale, viz., that such contracts were never meant to be kept; that they were a blind to enable the Standard to make scoops such as they had made in the winter of 1876 and 1877.

Taking all these points into consideration—

First—That the Standard Oil Company, like the South Improvement Company, was a secret organisation;

Second—That both companies were composed in the main of the same parties;

Third—That it aimed, like its predecessors, at getting entire control of the refining interest;

Fourth—That it used the power the combination gave it to get rebates on its own oil shipments and drawbacks on the shipments of other people;

Fifth—That it arranged contracts which compelled the railroads to run out all competition by lowering their rates.

Sixth—That it aimed to put up the price of refined without allowing the producer a share of the profits—

Taking all these points into consideration, many of the producers, including the president of the Petroleum Producers' Union, B. B. Campbell, and certain members of his Council, came to the conclusion that as they had sufficient evidence against the members of the Standard Combination to insure conviction for criminal conspiracy, they should proceed against them. Strenuous opposition to the proceedings, as hasty and ill-advised, developed in the Council and the Legal