Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/307

 means for sustaining this purpose is still that of the original scheme—a control of oil transportation giving special privileges in rates.

It is now thirty-two years since Mr. Rockefeller applied the fruitful idea of the South Improvement Company to the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, a prosperous oil refinery of Cleveland, with a capital of $1,000,000 and a daily capacity for handling 1,500 barrels of crude oil. And what have we as a result? What is the Standard Oil Company to-day? First, what is its organisation? It is no longer a trust. As we have seen, the trust was obliged to liquidate in 1892. It became a "trust in liquidation," and there it remained for some five years. It seemed to have come into a state of stationary liquidation, for at the end of 1892 477,881 shares were uncancelled; at the end of 1896 the same number were out. The situation of the great corporation was indeed curious. There began to be comments on it, for complications arose—one over taxes. In 1893 an auditor in Ohio tried to collect taxes on 225 shares of the Standard Oil Trust. The owner refused to pay and took the case into court. He won it. The Standard Oil Trust is an unlawful organisation, said the court. Its certificates have no validity. It would seem strange that a certificate which was void to all purpose would still be valid as to taxable purposes. Here was an anomaly indeed. The certificates were drawing big quarterly dividends, had a big market value, but were illegal. Owners of small certificates naturally refused to exchange. In 1897 it took 194½ shares in the Standard Oil Trust to bring back one share in each of the twenty companies. Thus one share in the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was worth twenty-seven shares in the Standard Oil Trust. If a man owned twenty-five shares he got only fractional parts of a share in each company. On these fractional parts he received no dividends, it not being considered practical