Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/300

Rh fruit of the producers' hasty and vindictive suit. It had shut the mouths of the important Standard witnesses.

Discouraging as this discovery was, however, there was no reason why the suits against the railroads should not have been pushed through, and the testimony the officials unquestionably could be made to give, now that Mr. Cassatt had set the pace, have been obtained. But the Producers' Union had lost sight for the moment of the fact that the fundamental difficulty in the trouble was the illegal discrimination of the common carriers. The Union was so much more eager to punish Mr. Rockefeller than it was to punish the railroads, that in bringing the suit for conspiracy it was even guilty of leniency toward the officials of the Pennsylvania. Certainly, if there was to be an indictment for conspiracy, all the supposed conspirators should have been included. It was by discriminations clearly contrary to the constitution of the state that the Pennsylvania Railroad had made it possible for Mr. Rockefeller to achieve his monopoly in Pennsylvania. The Union had proof of these rebates, but they let off Mr. Scott and Mr. Cassatt because "they professed the greatest desire to get rid of Standard domination, and were loudly asserting that they had been victimised and compelled at times to carry oil freights at less than cost." Evidently the fate of the settlement the oil men had made seven years before with Mr. Scott and the presidents of the other oil-bearing roads had been forgotten. Naturally enough the railroads took advantage of these signs of leniency on the part of the producers, and brought all their enormous influence to bear on the state authorities to delay hearings and bring about a settlement. The Pennsylvania secured delays up to December, 1879, and then the Governor ordered the attorney-general to stop proceedings against the road until the testimony had been taken