Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/113

 Fortified by his counsel, Receiver Pease put the arrangement into force, and beginning with March 20, 1885, a joint agent of the Standard pipe-line and of the Cincinnati and Marietta road collected thirty-five cents per barrel on the oil of all independent shippers from Macksburg to Marietta. Ten cents of this sum he turned over to the receiver and twenty-five cents to the pipe-line. When Mr. Rice found that the rate was certainly to be enforced he began to build a pipe of his own to the Muskingum River, whence he was to ship by barge to Marietta. By April 26 he was able to discontinue his shipments over the Cincinnati and Marietta road. This was not done until a rebate of twenty-five cents a barrel had been paid to the Standard Oil Company on 1,360 barrels of his oil—$340 in all.

Mr. Rice, outraged as he was by the discrimination, was looking for evidence to bring suit against the receiver, but it was not until October that he was ready to take the matter into court. On the 13th of that month he applied to Judge Baxter of the United States Circuit Court for an order that Phineas Pease, receiver of the Cleveland and Marietta Railroad, report to the court touching his freight rates and other matters complained of in the application. The order was granted on the same day the application was made. It was specific. Mr. Pease was to report his rates, drawbacks, methods of accounting for discrimination, terms of contracts, and all other details connected with his shipment of oil. No sooner was this order of the court to Receiver Pease known than the general freight agent, Mr. Terry, hurried to Cleveland, Ohio, to meet Mr. O'Day of the Standard Oil Company, with whom he had made the contract. The upshot of that interview was that on October 29, twelve days after the judge had ordered the contracts produced, a check for $340, signed by J. R. Campbell, Treasurer (a Standard pipe-line official), was received from Oil City, headquarters of the