Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/95

 validity of Mr. Rockefeller's claim that the coal-oil business belonged to him. "We have a right to do an independent business," they said, "and we propose to do it." They began this effort by an attack on the weak spot in Mr. Rockefeller's armour. The twelve years just passed had taught them that the realisation of Mr. Rockefeller's great purpose had been made possible by his remarkable manipulation of the railroads. It was the rebate which had made the Standard Oil Trust, the rebate, amplified, systematised, glorified into a power never equalled before or since by any business of the country. The rebate had made the trust, and the rebate, in spite of ten years of combination, Petroleum Associations, Producers' Unions, resolutions, suits in equity, suits in quo warranto, appeals to Congress, legislative investigations—the rebate still was Mr. Rockefeller's most effective weapon. If they could wrest it from his hand they could do business. They had learned something else in this period—that the whole force of public opinion and the spirit of the law were against the rebate, and that the railroads, knowing this, feared exposure of discrimination, and could be made to settle rather than have their practices made public. Therefore, said these individuals, we propose to sue for rebates and collect charges until we make it so harassing and dangerous for the railroads that they will shut down on Mr. Rockefeller.

The most interesting and certainly the most influential of these private cases was that of Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle, of Cleveland, one of the firms which, in 1876, entered into a "joint adventure" with Mr. Rockefeller for limiting the output and so holding up prices. The adventure had been most successful. The profits were enormous. Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle had made thirty-four cents a barrel out of their refinery the year before the "adventure." With the same methods of manufacture, and enjoying simply Mr. Rocke-