Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/351

 Q. Three or four years, was it not?

A. I thought it was two years.

Q. Then I understand you to say that all that struggle, and the low rate that the trunk line charged at the time the competition with the Tidewater and Reading came into existence, was brought about by the trunk lines themselves?

A. It was a struggle on the part of the trunk lines to hold the entire oil business, and they avowed it to me not once, but many times, that it was their firm intention never to recognise the Tidewater to the seaboard.

Q. And during that struggle they actually carried it at fifteen cents a barrel?

A. I should have said twenty or twenty-five cents. I knew it was a ridiculously low rate.