"When did that change take place?"
"I think it was commenced some time in July; it may have been later."
The result of that renumbering made it practically impossible to identify any car as connected with any shipment made before that time. The cars were there, looking as fresh and innocent as good men who have donned robes of spotless white earned by the payment of generous pew-rent. The cars showed even to the unassisted eye, as the Interstate Commerce Commission said, how much larger they were than was pretended. There were still the accounts of the railroads, showing that these cars had been "blind-billed" as containing only 20,000 pounds, but the cars mentioned in the manifesto could no longer be identified with the cars on the tracks. The sin of "blind-billing" was washed out in paint. Rice went to the Interstate Commerce Commission with his complaint in this case in July. Immediately the repainting and renumbering took place. "It was commenced some time in July; it may have been later."[444]
In such cases time is money, and more. "Seest thou a man diligent in business, he shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men."
The members of this combination have many thousand tank-cars engaged in carrying their oil, and some of them have another kind of tank-car travelling about the country. Under the head of the "Gospel Car" the Daily Statesman, of Portland, Oregon, printed the following article, Sunday, December 13, 1891: "The Gospel Car.—The mission car 'Evangel' arrived yesterday, and was side-tracked on the penitentiary switch. A song service attracted many people during the morning. There will be services at 10.30 this morning, and in the afternoon, at 3 o'clock, a Sunday-school will be organized. This will be the first Sunday-school ever organized from the gospel car, which has been on the road since last spring. The 'Evangel' is sixty feet in length, ten feet wide, and seats nearly one hundred people. It is the generous gift of"—several New York millionaires, the most important of them belonging to the oil trust—" ... to the American Baptist Publication Society. The reverend gentleman who was in charge of the 'Evangel,'" the Statesman continued, "will visit the smaller towns along the railway, and conduct evangelistic meetings in the car." One of these cars was in Chicago early in 1893, and was admiringly described by the Chicago press. Though corporations have no souls they are ready to help save the souls of others, for the railroads give these cars free hauling, and the messages and the packages of its occupants are franked by the telegraph and express companies. The contents of this tank-car are distributed by its donors to the people without money and without price. It is conceivable that by making it so "cheap" and by multiplying the "Evangel" into an evangelical tank line of thousands of cars, the donors might drive the churches, which have no tank-cars, out of the business, as they have done the tankless refiners, and ultimately add to their monopoly of the Light of the World that of the Light of the other World.
Tho effect of all this on the family co-operation at Marietta does not need to be described. Its head told Congress that if he had had no difficulty in getting the same freight as others he could have run his refinery to its full capacity, and could have increased his works largely.
"Are not your expenses less than theirs?"
"Yes, sir.... I am running very moderately now.... One-third to one-half generally."[445]
"I am virtually ruined," he says still later in a statement of his condition in a circular to the public, urging them to petition Congress to make the imperfect Interstate Commerce law operative. He is virtually ruined, though he has won his cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and that Federal tribunal has ordered the roads to give him his rights on the highways; but it has been a barren victory. His circular is entitled "My Experience Very Briefly Told." Its opening sentences give us in a phrase the secret of the significance of Rice's story, and dignify his appeal to the public. They show how thoroughly adversity had driven home into this plain man's mind a great civic truth which his fellow-citizens have not yet learned, probably because they have not yet had adversity enough. His solitary and fruitless, although successful, struggle taught him that the citizens of industry can no more maintain their rights acting singly than the citizens of government. He had learned that "competition," "supply and demand," "eternal laws of trade," were catchwords as impotent in the markets to give individuals their rights, if unassociated, as the incantations of royalty and loyalty, and law and order, to save people from their king until they made themselves a People. Persons fail; only a People can get and keep freedom. This Rice had begun to learn from his failure to enforce single-handed rights which all the courts declared were his, but which no court could secure. In his card to the people, he said: "I am fighting for my rights and for my existence (which happens to be in the interest of all) single-handed and alone, at my own expense and time lost.... I am here ... to do what I can to get the Interstate Commerce Act amended at this present session of the Fiftieth Congress, to cure existing evils, and all I ask is that you will take hold and assist me by your signature and approval to the enclosed petition. You are subject to the same influences, and now is your time, my fellow-countrymen, to come forward and assist a little to stop this nefarious work."