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116 a frown or a wrinkle upon the face of smiling Standard Oil.

The "trust octopus" is seconded and supported in price and service by all the independents. Any one of them can put the price down if he wishes. In that case, his enemies would be the suffering independent producers and not the Standard Oil Company, which usually finds a still larger profit in lower prices and broader markets.

The position of the Standard Oil Company is exactly that of the big copper producer, the big steel producer, or any other large vendor of a raw article. The producer knows, if he knows anything about business economics, that the advancing price restricts the consumption and a lower price enlarges it. What he wishes is the largest possible distribution consistent with profits. Distribution is governed by the minority and the accumulation of supplies lowering the price which all producers are mutually interested to sustain. At the lower price consumption is broadened, the supply is decreased, and if the leading producer does not advance the quotation, exhausting supplies will do it automatically.

On an advancing market producers