Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/79

 pendent concern and that he can sell at lower prices than the firm from which the dealer is buying. Gradually he works his way into the independent's trade. As a matter of fact, the new company is merely a Standard jobbing house which makes no oil, and which conceals its real identity under a misleading name. The mass of reports from railroad freight offices quoted from in this article corroborate this claim of the independents. The ABC Oil Company is mentioned again and again as shipping oil, and in the audited reports it is always checked off in the same fashion as the known Standard companies, and none of its shipments is referred to Standard agents. Independents all over the country tell of loss of markets through underselling by these "bogus" companies. The lower price which a supposedly independent concern gives to a dealer who will not, under any condition, buy of the Standard, need not demoralise the Standard trade in the vicinity if the concession is made with caution. After the trade is secure, that is, after the genuine independent is ousted, the masquerading concern always finds itself obliged to advance prices. When the true identity of such a company becomes known its usefulness naturally is impaired, and it withdraws from the field and a new one takes its place.

There is never a dealer in oil too small to have applied the above methods of competition. In recent years they have frequently been applied even to oil peddlers. In a good many towns of the country oil is sold from door to door by men whose whole stock in trade is their peddling wagons. Many of these oil peddlers build up a good trade. As a rule they sell Standard oil. Let one take independent oil, however, and the case is at once reported. His customers are located and at once approached by a Standard tank wagon man, who frequently, it is said, not only sells at a lower price than they have been paying, but even goes so far as to clean and fill the lamps! In these raids on peddlers of independent oil, refined