Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/299

Rh instituted after the others had been completed, but which, introduced now, completely changed the situation, for it gave the witnesses from whom they were most anxious to hear a loophole for escape.

For instance, the officials of the Standard pipe-lines had been instructed to appear on the 14th of May, 1879, to answer questions which earlier in the trial they had refused to answer "on advice of counsel." Now the president of the United Pipe Lines, J. J. Vandergrift, and the general manager, Daniel O'Day, were both included in the indictment for conspiracy. The evening before the interrogatory the producers' counsel received a telegram from the attorney-general of the state, announcing that the pipe-line people were complaining that the testimony which they would be called on to give on the morrow would be used against them in the conspiracy trial—as it undoubtedly would have been—and that he thought it only fair that their hearing be postponed until after that suit. And so the defendants gained time—the chief desideratum of defendants who do not wish to fight.

Soon after, the conspiracy case was again used to excellent advantage by the Standard people in the investigation which was being conducted in New York before the Hepburn Commission. Mr. Bostwick, the Standard Oil buyer, whose order to buy immediate shipment oil only at a discount had been one of the oil men's chief grievances for a year and a half, was summoned as a witness; but Mr. Bostwick too was under indictment for conspiracy, and when the examiners began to put questions to him which the producers were eager to have answered, he asked: "How can I, a man soon to be tried for conspiracy, be expected to answer these questions? I shall incriminate myself." He was sustained in his plea, and about all the Hepburn Commission got out of him was, "I refuse to answer, lest I incriminate myself." This, then, was the first