Ida Tarbell

“ In late years the cutting and the "Oil Wars" are often intrusted to so-called "bogus" companies, who retire when the real independent is put out of the way. In later years the Standard has been more cautious about beginning underselling than formerly, though if a rival offered oil at a less price than it had been getting—and generally even small refineries can contrive to sell below the non-competitive prices of the Standard—it does not hesitate to consider the lower price a declaration of war and to drop its prices and keep them down until the rival is out of the way. ”

“ The negro was never taken into the Atlantic Refinery, and Buckley soon after lost his position, as he of course richly deserved to. A man who shows himself traitorous, lying, thieving, even for the "good of the oil business," is never kept long in the employment of the Standard Oil Company. It is notorious in the Oil Regions that the people who "sell" to the Standard are never given responsible positions. They may be shifted around to do "dirty work," as the Oil Regions phrase goes, but they are pariahs in the concern. ”

“ The South Improvement scheme provided perfectly for this, for it bound the railroad to send daily to the principal office of the company reports of all oil shipped, the name of shipper, the quantity and kind of oil, the name of consignee, with the destination and the cost of freight. [1] Having such knowledge as this, an agent could immediately locate each shipment of the independent refiner, and take the proper steps to secure the trade. But the South Improvement scheme never went into operation. It remained only as a beautiful ideal, to be worked out as time and opportunity permitted. ”

“ There is no question that the attempts of Standard agents to persuade or bully dealers into countermanding orders, or giving up an independent with whose oil they are satisfied, meet with much less general success than they once did. It even happens now and then that communities who have had experience with "Oil Wars" will stand by an independent dealer for months at a time, resisting even the temptation to have their lamps cleaned and filled at next to nothing. ”

“ After the trade is secure, that is, after the genuine independent is ousted, the masquerading concern always finds itself obliged to advance prices. When the true identity of such a company becomes known its usefulness naturally is impaired, and it withdraws from the field and a new one takes its place. ”

“ The local stations from which the dealer is served to-day are models of their kind, and one can easily believe they have always been so. Oil, even refined, is a difficult thing to handle without much disagreeable odour and stain, but the local stations of the Standard Oil Company, like its refineries, are kept orderly and clean by a rigid system of inspection. Every two or three months an inspector goes through each station and reports to headquarters on a multitude of details—whether barrels are properly bunged, filled, stencilled, painted, glued ”

“ It is only certain that little by little a secret bureau for securing information was built up until it is a fact that information concerning the business of his competitors, almost as full as that which Mr. Rockefeller hoped to get when he signed the South Improvement Company contracts, is his to-day. Probably the best way to get an idea of how Mr. Rockefeller built up this department, as well as others of his marketing bureau, is to examine it as it stands to-day. ”

“ In these raids on peddlers of independent oil, refined oil has been sold in different cities at the doors of consumers at less than crude oil was bringing at the wells, and several cents per gallon less than it was selling to wholesale dealers in refined. It is claimed by independents that at the present time the "bogus" companies generally manage this matter of driving out peddlers, thus saving the Standard the unpopularity of the act and the dissatisfaction of the rise in price which, of course, follows as soon as the trade is secured. ”

“ The agent seeks trade on the ground that he represents an independent concern and that he can sell at lower prices than the firm from which the dealer is buying. Gradually he works his way into the independent's trade. As a matter of fact, the new company is merely a Standard jobbing house which makes no oil, and which conceals its real identity under a misleading name. The mass of reports from railroad freight offices quoted from in this article corroborate this claim of the independents. ”

“ The system results every now and then, naturally enough, in flagrant cases of bribing employees of the independents themselves. Where the freight office does not yield the information, the rival's own office may, and certainly if it is legitimate to get it from one place it is from the other. It is not an unusual thing for independent refiners to discharge a man whom they have reason to believe gives confidential information to the Standard. ”

“ Independent oil dealers of the present day complain bitterly of a rather novel way employed by the Standard for bringing into line dealers whose prejudices against buying from them are too strong to be overcome by the above methods. This is through what are called "bogus" oil companies. The obdurate dealer is approached by the agent of a new independent concern, call it the ABC Oil Company, for illustration. ”

“ Very soon after this, Chess, Carley and Company took in hand a Nashville firm, Wilkinson and Company, which was
buying of Rice. "It is with great reluctance," they wrote, "that we undertake serious competition with any one, and certainly this competition will not be confined to coal-oil or any one article, and will not be limited to any one year. We always stand ready to make reasonable arrangements with any one who chooses to appear in our line of business, and it will be unlike anything we have done heretofore if we permit any one to force us into an arrangement which is not reasonable. ”

“ There is never a dealer in oil too small to have applied the above methods of competition. In recent years they have frequently been applied even to oil peddlers. In a good many towns of the country oil is sold from door to door by men whose whole stock in trade is their peddling wagons. Many of these oil peddlers build up a good trade. As a rule they sell Standard oil. ”

“ Naturally and properly the local agents of the Standard Oil Company are watchful of the condition of competition in their districts, and naturally and properly they report what they learn. "We ask our salesmen and our agents to keep their eyes open and keep us informed of the situation in their respective fields," a Standard agent told the Industrial Commission in 1898. "We ask our agents, as they visit the trade, to make reports to us of whom the different parties are buying ”

“ Jobbers say when they take hold of another oil they are at once boycotted by Waters-Pierce Oil Company, who not only refuse to sell them, but put oil below what they pay for it, and thus knock them out of the oil trade, unless they sell at a loss. ”

“ Bribery is not as dangerous business in this country as it deserves to be—of course nothing but a bribe would induce a clerk to give up such information as these daily reports contain but, happily, such is the force of tradition that even those who have practised it for a long time shrink from discovery. ”

“ Copies of letters and telegrams accompanying the reports show that as soon as a particular report had reached Standard headquarters and it was known that a carload, or even a barrel, of independent oil was on its way to a dealer, the Standard agent whose name was written after the shipment on the record had been notified. "If you can stop car going to X, authorise rebate to Z (name of dealer) of three-quarters cent per gallon," one of the telegrams reads. There is plenty of evidence to show how an agent receiving such information "stops" the oil. ”

“ Rockefeller began to gather the oil markets into his hands he had a task whose field was literally the world, for already, in 1871, the year before he first appeared as an important factor in the oil trade, refined oil was going into every civilised country of the globe. ”

“ The moral effect of this system on employees is even a more serious feature of the case than the injustice it works to competition. For a "consideration" railroad freight clerks give confidential information concerning freight going through their hands. It would certainly be quite as legitimate for post-office clerks to allow Mr. Rockefeller to read the private letters of his competitors, as it is that the clerks of a railroad give him data concerning their shipments. Everybody through whose hands such information passes is contaminated by the knowledge. ”

“ Hope you will make it a point to be present at the next meeting of the city council, to-morrow night, and do everything possible to prevent granting a permit to build within the city limits, unless building similar to ours is constructed, for it would not be fair to us to allow someone else to put up constructions for the storage of oil, when they had compelled us to put up such an expensive building as we have. ”

“ Archbold said that the Standard was in the habit of fighting vigorously to hold and advance its trade—even to the extent of holding prices down to cost until the rival gives way—though he declared it to be his opinion that the history of the company's transactions would show that the competitor forces the fight. ”

“ A firm is absolutely obliged to accept a countermand. The fact that the order has been signed does not make any difference. We want you to absolutely refuse, under any circumstances, to accept the car of oil. ”

“ According to this circular the public paid from 25 to 331⁄3 per cent more where there was no competition. The fact that oil is cheaper where there is competition, and also that the public has to pay the cost of the expensive "Oil Wars" which have been carried on so constantly for the last twenty-five years all over the country, is coming to be recognised, especially in the Middle West of this country, by both dealers and communities. ”

“ Rice carried on his fight for a market in the most aggressive way, and everywhere he met disastrous competition. In 1892 he published a large pamphlet of documents illustrating Standard methods, in which he included citations from some seventy letters from dealers in Texas, received by him between 1881 and 1889, showing the kind of competition his oil met there from the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, the Standard's Texas agents. A dozen sentences, from as many different towns, will show the character of them all:
"I have had wonderful competition on this car. ”

“ If they are letting too much business get away from them, it looks as if they were not attending to their business. They get it from what they see as they go around selling goods." But there is no such generality about this part of the agent's or salesman's business as this statement would lead one to believe. ”

“ Let one take independent oil, however, and the case is at once reported. His customers are located and at once approached by a Standard tank wagon man, who frequently, it is said, not only sells at a lower price than they have been paying, but even goes so far as to clean and fill the lamps! ”

“ But however diligent the agent may be in keeping his eyes open, however he may be stirred to activity by the prodding and compliments of his superiors, it is of course out of the question that he get anything like the full information the South Improvement scheme insured. ”

“ But the Standard Oil agents were not sent into a territory back in the seventies simply to sell all the oil they could by efficient service and aggressive pushing; they were sent there to sell all the oil that was bought. "The coal-oil business belongs to us," was Mr. Rockefeller's motto, and from the beginning of his campaign in the markets his agents accepted and acted on that principle. If a dealer bought but a barrel of oil a year, it must be from Mr. ”

“ The general explanation of these competitive methods which the Standard officials have offered, is that they originate with "over-zealous" employees and are disapproved of promptly if brought to the attention of the heads of the house. ”