Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/90

 there seemed to the independents no escape from Mr. Rockefeller in the market.

The sureness and promptness with which he located their shipments seemed uncanny to them. The ruthlessness and persistency with which he cut and continued to cut their prices drove them to despair. The character of the competition Mr. Rockefeller carried on in the markets, particularly of the South and Middle West of this country, at this time, aggravated daily the feeble refining element, and bred contempt far and wide among people who saw the cutting, and perhaps profited temporarily by it, but who had neither the power nor the courage to interfere. The knowledge of it fed greatly the bitterness in the Oil Regions. Part of the stock in conversation of every dissatisfied oil producer or ruined refiner became tales of disastrous conflicts in markets. They told of crippled men selling independent oil from a hand cart, whose trade had been wiped out by a Standard cart which followed him day by day, practically giving away oil. They told of grocers driven out of business by an attempt to stand by a refiner. They told endless tales, probably all exaggerated, perhaps some of them false, yet all of them believed, because of such facts as have been rehearsed above. There came to be a popular conviction that the "Standard would do anything." It was a condition which promised endless annoyance to Mr. Rockefeller and his colleagues. It meant popular mistrust, petty hostilities, misinterpretations, contempt, abuse. There were plenty of people even willing to deny Mr. Rockefeller ability. That the Standard was in a venture was enough in those people's minds to damn it. Anything the Standard wanted was wrong, anything they contested was right. A verdict for them demonstrated the corruption of the judge and jury; against them their righteousness. Mr. Rockefeller, indeed, was each year having more reason to realise monopoly building had its trials as wells as its profits.