"In the interest of all." This is exactly the relation which the struggle of this common citizen bears to the general welfare. The investigation by the Ohio Legislature in 1879;[446] the removal by the United States Court of the railroad receiver who agreed to pay the oil trust $25 out of every $35 freight collected from Rice;[447] the refund ordered by the Supreme Court of Ohio from a pipe-line company which had charged Rice 15 cents extra on every barrel he shipped to pay it to his competitors;[448] the successful prosecution, by the Attorney-General of Ohio before the Supreme Court, of the railroads discriminating against Rice;[449] the cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission from its beginning till now, involving hundreds of railroads, and decided, so far as it did decide, on almost every point in Rice's favor;[450] the disruption, as far as forms go, of the oil trust in Ohio by the Supreme Court of the State ousting corporations from the right to become members of such combinations and to pool their earnings therein;[451] the investigation of the oil trust by Congress in 1888 and 1889, devoted in large part to the various aspects of Rice's experience—these are some only of the public functions which had to be invoked in the ineffectual attempt to protect this one man on the high-road and in his livelihood, and they show how little his was merely a "private affair."
When the amendment of the Interstate Commerce law was before Congress in 1889, eminent counsel were employed by Rice to explain the defects of the law to the committees, and petitions to Congress through his instrumentality were circulated all over the country, and numerously signed. Though a poor man, who could ill afford it, he gave time and money and attention, frequently spending weeks at Washington, discussing the subject with members, and presenting petitions. The act was amended in partial accordance with these petitions and recommendations.
To obtain the elementary right of a stockholder, never withheld in the course of ordinary business—to vote and receive dividends on stock in the oil trust which the trustees had sold and he had bought in the open market—Rice had to sue through all the New York courts from 1888 to 1892. The Court of Appeals decided that there had been no lawful reason for the denial of his rights, and ordered that they be accorded him. This was another barren victory. The trust had meanwhile ostensibly been dissolved; but the dissolution has every appearance of being like that of its progenitor, the South Improvement Company, a dissolution "in name" only; not in reality. In place of the old trust certificates listed on the New York Stock Exchange, new certificates have been issued which were selling in the spring of 1894 at about the same quotation as the former ones.
In this case the trust asked the New York courts to deny Rice his rights because he had in other matters, and as to other parties, appealed to other courts. His other suits had been against the railroads, not against the oil combination. He acted on the defensive, and went into court only to save himself from commercial strangulation. In all of them that went to trial he was successful, with but one or two exceptions. He was so successful that even the judges who heard his case and decided in his favor were moved to outbursts of unaffected indignation on the bench. The only result aimed at or procured was that the courts decreed that these common carriers must in the future give this citizen his legal rights on the railways; not that he must have the same rates as his opponent, but only that the difference in their favor shall not be "excessive," "illegal," "unjust."
Because of this attempt to secure the fair use of the highways side by side with it, the trust pleaded in the Supreme Court of New York that his appeal to courts as a shipper was a reason why the courts should withhold his rights as a stockholder.
In making this plea the trustees described themselves as having been for years persecuted by the independent of Marietta, and moistened the dry pages of their legal pleadings with appeals for the sympathy of the courts and the public. He has "diligently and persistently sought to become acquainted with" our "methods of business and private affairs;" "he has used efforts to injure" our "business"; "he is attempting to harass, injure, and annoy" us; "he has ever since ... 1876, when he first engaged in business, ... maintained a hostile attitude, and been engaged in hostile transactions and proceedings against" us, ... "for the purpose of injuring" us and our "business"; he "has been uninterruptedly prosecuting ... a series of litigations ... in the courts, as well as before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and before an investigating committee of Congress ... for the purpose of harassing and annoying" us.[452] And when in 1891 Rice was appealing to the Attorney-General of New York to bring suit in the name of the State against the oil combination in New York, like that which had been successfully brought in Ohio, he was publicly stigmatized in court as a "black-mailer" because he had once named a price at which he was willing to sell his refinery and quit. So the citizens of Nashville were called black-mailers for competing, and the citizens of Buffalo for bringing a criminal conspiracy to justice.
It is this dancing attendance upon State legislatures, courts, attorney-generals, Congress, the Interstate Commerce Commission, as shown in this recital, which the modern American business man must add to Thrift, Industry, and Sobriety as a condition of survival.