Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/83

 infrequently this explanation reads: "Is opposed to monopolies." It is impossible to say from documentary evidence how long such a card catalogue has been kept by the Standard; that it has been a practice for at least twenty-five years the following quotation from a letter written in 1903 by a prominent Standard official in the Southwest to one of his agents shows: "Where competition exists," says the official, "it has been our custom to keep a record of each merchant's daily



purchase of bulk oil; and I know of one town at least in the Southern Texas Division where that record has been kept, whether there was competition or not, for the past fifteen years."

The inference from this system of "keeping the eyes open" is that the Standard Oil Company knows practically where