Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/310

Rh A meeting between the legal advisers of the two parties to discuss the proposed terms was arranged for January 7, 1880, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City—the very time to which the trial of the case for conspiracy had been postponed. It was hardly to be expected that when such negotiations were going on in New York the trial in Clarion County would be pushed very briskly. It was not. There was a hitch again, and for the fourth time proceedings were stayed. The conferences, however, went on.

These negotiations with the Standard continued for a month, and then, early in February, Mr. Campbell, the president of the Union, called a meeting of the Grand Council for February 19, 1880, in Titusville, Pennsylvania. For several weeks the Oil Regions had known that President Campbell and Roger Sherman, the leading lawyer of the Union, were in conference with the Standard officials. It was rumoured that they were arranging a compromise, and it was suspected that the meeting now called was to consider the terms. Naturally the proposition to be made was looked for with suspicion and curiosity. The meeting was the largest the Grand Council had held for many months. It was supposed to be secret, like all gatherings of the Union, but before the first session was over, the word spread over the Oil Regions that Mr. Campbell had brought to the meeting contracts with both Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Scott, and that they were receiving harsh criticism from the Grand Council. The very meagre accounts which exist of this gathering, historic in oil annals, show that it was one of the most exciting which was ever held in the country, and one can well believe this when one considers the bitter pill the council was asked to swallow that day. Mr. Campbell began the session by reporting that all the suits at which they had been labouring for nearly two years had been withdrawn, and that in return for their withdrawal the Standard and the Pennsylvania Railroad officials had signed con