Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/214

 apprehension of the facts, and is satisfied that Mr. Emery has been wronged, and should be vindicated, and this retraction is freely made as such.

Many of the articles have been republished in various papers in this country and Europe, and it is the desire of Mr. Boyle that this retraction shall be as freely and fully printed and published as were the original articles reflecting on Mr. Emery.

(Signed)

It is a satisfaction to the writer to be able to help gratify Mr. Boyle's laudable desire to have this document well circulated!

Although the greater part of the Oil Regions never took Mr. Boyle himself seriously, the conviction that his attacks were inspired, that this was the Standard's way of saying to the producers that their enterprise would not be allowed to live, gave a sinister look to what he said. More damaging still was the quiet confidence with which the solid men of the Standard smiled at the independent effort. What were their puny hundreds compared to the millions of the trust? What was a band of scattered "oil-shriekers" against the cold-blooded deliberation of Mr. Rockefeller's solid phalanx? The oil men were conscious enough of the inadequacy of their capital and their organisation, but they hung on, many of them because their blood was up, and they preferred spending their last cent to yielding; others on the principle which Mr. Phillips confesses held him, "that God sometimes chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty"; or that "one might chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight."

The efforts which the Standard made to discredit the independent companies and their leaders were accompanied by a persistent, though quiet, attempt of Standard agents to buy in all the stock in the Producers' Oil Company and the United States Pipe Lines which timid, indifferent, or financially embarrassed stockholders could be induced to give up. The movement began to be rumoured and caused no little