Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/96

 feller's control of transportation rates and the enhanced prices caused by limiting output, they made $2.52 a barrel the first year after. This was the year of the Standard's first great coup in refined oil. The dividends on 88,000 barrels this year were $222,047, against $41,000 the year before. In four years Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle paid Mr. Rockefeller $315,-345 on his investment of $10,000—and rebates.

After four years the Standard began to complain that their partners in the adventure were refining too much oil—the first year the books showed they had exceeded their 85,000 barrel limitation by nearly 3,000, the second year by 2,000, the third by 15,000, the fourth by 5,000. Dissatisfied, the Standard demanded that the firm pay them the entire profit upon the excess refined; for, claimed Mr. Rockefeller, our monopoly is so perfect that we would have sold the excess if you had not broken the contract, consequently the profits belong to us. Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle paid half the profit on the excess, but refused more, and they persisted in exceeding their quota; then Mr. Rockefeller, controlling by this time the crude supply in Cleveland through ownership of the pipe-lines, shut down on their crude supply. If they would not obey the contract of their own will they could not do business. The firm seems not to have been frightened. "We are sorry that you refuse to furnish us crude oil as agreed," they wrote Mr. Rockefeller; "we do not regard the limitation of 85,000 barrels as binding upon us, and as we have a large number of orders for refined oil we must fill them, and if you refuse to furnish us crude oil on the same favourable terms as yourselves, we shall get it elsewhere as best we can and hold you responsible for its difference in cost."

Mr. Rockefeller's reply was a prayer for an injunction against the members of the firm, restraining them individually and collectively "from distilling at their said works at