Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/222

 Standard—and the sale was made at 100, Colonel Carter giving his check for $297,640 on the Seaboard Bank.

Stock in hand, Colonel Carter went back to the Oil Regions to take possession. It was not so easy as he anticipated. The secretary refused to transfer the stock. He sought the president, Mr. Lee. What took place Colonel Carter himself told later on the witness-stand:

Mr. Carter's cool announcement that he meant to run the company "from a business stand-point, and not from the stand-point of a gadfly"—there seems to be a doubt about its being the producers who had played the part of the gadfly—exasperated the independents to the last degree, and in June, 1896, they met the colonel in court. His ownership of a majority of the company's stock was admitted, but it was urged by the independents that the Producers' Oil Company was a limited partnership, and that under the Pennsylvania