Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/312

 the thrifty concern we used to be. Mr. Monnett demanded proof from their books. The secretary of the company, on advice of his counsel, Virgil P. Kline, refused to produce the books asked for, on the ground that they would incriminate the company. The court supported Mr. Monnett, and ordered the company to produce those of their records showing the gross earnings since 1892, and what had been done with them. The order met with a second refusal.

Such was the status of the proceedings when Mr. Monnett received an anonymous communication stating that, about the time the company was ordered by the court to produce its records, a great quantity of books had been taken from the Standard's office in Cleveland and burned. An investigation was at once made by the attorney-general, and a number of witnesses examined. The fact of the burning of sixteen boxes of books from the Standard offices in Cleveland was established, but these books, the officers of the company contended, were not the ones wanted by Mr. Monnett. "Then produce the ones we want," ordered the court. But, on the ground that such records might incriminate them, the officers still refused.

The fact was, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was in a very tight place, and it is difficult to see how an examination of their books could have failed to incriminate not only it, but three other of the constituent companies of the trust which held charters from the same state. These three companies were the Ohio Oil Company, which produced oil; the Buckeye Pipe Line, which transported it; and the Solar Refining Company, which refined it. Mr. Monnett had learned enough about these organisations in the course of his investigations since November, 1897, to convince him that these companies—all of them enormously profitable—were, for all practical purposes, one and the same combination, and that they were all working with the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, and that their operations were in direct violation of a state anti-trust law recently