Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/168

 production and prices, and to prevent men outside entering the oil business?

It was to learn these things that the commission summoned Mr. Rockefeller. Flanked by Joseph H. Choate, present Ambassador to the Court of King Edward and the most eminent lawyer of the day, and S. C. T. Dodd, a no less able if a less well-known lawyer, Mr. Rockefeller submitted himself to his questioners. In no case where he has appeared on the stand can his skill as a witness be studied to better advantage. With a wealth of polite phrases—"You are very good," "I beg with all respect"—Mr. Rockefeller bowed himself to the will of the committee. With an air of eager frankness he told them nothing he did not wish them to know. The committee had a desire to begin at the beginning. It evidently had heard that a short-lived organisation, called the South Improvement Company, had given Mr. Rockefeller his whip-hand in the oil business as far back as 1872, enabling him in three months' time to raise his daily capacity as a refiner from 1,500 to 10,000 barrels, and so they asked Mr. Rockefeller:

It is a perfectly well-known fact that Mr. Rockefeller owned 180 shares in the South Improvement Company, of which he was a director; that, when a public uprising caused the destruction of the company, he was one of the two men who tried to save it; also that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was the only concern which profited by the short-lived conspiracy.

Another staggering bit of testimony concerned railroad rates. Asked if there had been any arrangements by which