Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/80

 oil has been sold in different cities at the doors of consumers at less than crude oil was bringing at the wells, and several cents per gallon less than it was selling to wholesale dealers in refined. It is claimed by independents that at the present time the "bogus" companies generally manage this matter of driving out peddlers, thus saving the Standard the unpopularity of the act and the dissatisfaction of the rise in price which, of course, follows as soon as the trade is secured.

The general explanation of these competitive methods which the Standard officials have offered, is that they originate with "over-zealous" employees and are disapproved of promptly if brought to the attention of the heads of the house. The cases seem rather too universal for such an explanation to be entirely satisfactory. Certainly the system of collecting information concerning competitive business is not practised by the exceptional "over-zealous" employee, but is a recognised department of the Standard Oil Company's business. In the mass of documents from which the reports of oil shipments referred to above were drawn, are certain papers showing that the system is nearly enough universal to call for elaborate and expensive bookkeeping at the headquarters of each Standard marketing division. For instance, on the next page is a fragment illustrating the page of a book kept at such a headquarters.

What does this show? Simply that every day the reports received from railroad freight agents are entered in records kept for the purpose; that there is on file at the Standard Oil headquarters a detailed list of the daily shipments which each independent refiner sends out, even to the initials and number on the car in which the shipment goes. From this remarkable record the same set of documents shows that at least two sets of reports are made up. One is a report of the annual volume of business being done by each particular independent refiner or wholesale jobber, the other of the business of each