Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/436



[Proceedings in Relation to Trusts, House of Representatives, 1888. Report Number 3112, pages 363-365.]

Gentlemen: About July I last the undersigned were of a delegation from the Oil Region of our state, asking of your road an assurance that its course during the preceding two months, in giving to all producers and shippers of petroleum equal facilities and impartial rates, might be formally made its permanent policy.

In an interview with your president at that time, that assurance was given, coupled with the requisition that such support should be given it by the producers and shippers as would repay it for the exertion it must make in defending that policy, and guaranteeing that such support should be continuous and permanent.

The people of the Oil Region were only too glad to enter into such an agreement, and steps were immediately taken of a practical nature to carry it out.

It was understood that it could not be immediately done.

After the formal abandonment by the trunk lines of the South Improvement Company in 1872, your road for some months faithfully adhered, as we believe, to the pledge then given by all the trunk lines, that no discrimination should thenceforth be permitted. We believe also that it stood alone among the roads in adhering to it, for gradually the persons constituting the South Improvement Company were placed by the roads in as favourable a position as to rates and facilities as had been stipulated in the original contract with that company. At this time the line of your road in Western Pennsylvania, including that under your influence and control, was dotted with refineries capable of producing a large proportion of the refined oil needed by the world. The policy of the Standard Oil Company, the successor in everything but name of the South Improvement Company, has resulted in the dismantling and abandonment of every one of those refineries (as soon as they fell into their possession) which could not be reached by some other and a rival road to yours, and now there are in the Oil Region proper but few refineries and those universally owned by the Standard Oil Company, those in Pittsburg being owned or controlled by that combination or by