Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/44

 to support a claim against the Standard Oil Company for some $3,000,000 of back taxes. The Standard had made Mr. Patterson's services unnecessary by coming forward and giving the attorney-general all the information as to its financial condition which he desired. Exasperated at the result of all his efforts, and feeling that he had been deserted by the public he had tried to serve, Mr. Patterson sent word to the Standard that he proposed still further to attack them (just how he never explained) unless they would give him, not to attack, as much as there was in the contract from the state. They seem to have thought it worth while to buy peace, and agreed to give Mr. Patterson some $20,000 in all, and secure him a position for a term of years. The first payment was made at the end of April, 1882, and $5,000 of the money received Mr. Patterson paid to the Tidewater for stock he had taken at its organisation. No sooner was the stock in his hands than he began the preparation of the bill of complaint above referred to, and in December the case was heard.

The Oil Regions watched it with keenest interest. That Mr. Patterson had made some settlement with the Standard was generally known, and the charge was freely circulated that they had bribed him to bring this suit in hopes of blasting the credit of the Tidewater and getting its stock for a song. The testimony brought out in the trial did not bear out this popular notion. The case was rather more complicated. That the suit was backed by the Standard, one would have to be very naïve to doubt, but they were using other and stronger parties than Mr. Patterson, and that was a faction of the company known as the "Taylor-Satterfield crowd." These men, controlling some $200,000 worth of Tidewater stock, had been professing themselves dissatisfied with the management of the business for some months, though always