In 1892 a number of refiners and producers of Pennsylvania, in a formal appeal to Governor Pattison, asked him to investigate the causes which were working "to the injurious depression if not the ultimate destruction of a great industry." In the same year mutterings of a turbulent discontent and threats of violence and the destruction of property, repeating those of 1872, were heard again in Pennsylvania and in Ohio, which had become an oil-producing State. "Many of the oil producers," a member of their protective association in Ohio said, in the spring of 1892, "are in a bad way. They are at that point that they don't know just where their next sack of flour is coming from, and I am not surprised at anything they may do."
This area of low pressure, following the habit of American storms, made itself felt abroad in bankruptcies and falling wages from Scotland to Baku and beyond. Meanwhile the little nest-egg of nothing of the group which came into the field in 1862 grew to $1,000,000 in 1870; to $2,500,000 in 1872; to $3,500,000 in 1875; to $70,000,000 in 1882; and in 1887 to a capital of $90,000,000, which the New York Legislature reported in 1888, "according to the testimony of the trust's president," to be worth "not less than $148,000,000."[656] Before the trust was dissolved in name, in 1892, and the "trustees" betook themselves to the greater seclusion of separate corporations, acting in concert, its stock sold as high as 185, a valuation of $166,500,000 for the whole.
Its dividends had been $10,800,000 a year for several years. These ducal incomes and the vaster sums accumulated as undivided profits made themselves visible in the progressive embonpoint of the capitalization. In the six years (1876-81) preceding their taking the veil as trustees their net earnings added up the total of $55,000,000. In the next six years (to 1888) the dividends alone—not the net earnings—were more than $50,000,000.[657] These did not absorb their profits. In one year they spent $8,000,000 out of their profits for construction, besides making the regular payments to stockholders.[658]
"All this vast wealth," the New York Legislature said, "is the growth of about twenty years; this property has more than doubled in value in six years, and with this increase the trust has made aggregate dividends during that period of over $50,000,000. It is one of the most active," the report continued, "and possibly the most formidable moneyed power on this continent."[659]
"This is an immense property," says the Interstate Commerce Commission," ... and it gives an immense power which is capable of being so employed as to put all competitors at a great and perhaps ruinous disadvantage."[660]
For the first time the New York investigation of 1888 revealed that it was only the beginning of the truth that these hundreds of millions were controlled by "trustees." It now became known that some one or more of the trustees owned personally more than half of every concern in the trust, and of the best ones owned all.
"These eight trustees control all these ninety millions of property scattered over the United States?" the president of the trust was asked.
"They have as trustees, and they have as individual owners both."[661]
In corroboration of this testimony the trust furnished the New York Senate Committee of 1888 a "list of corporations, the stocks of which are wholly or partially held by the trustees of the Standard Oil Trust." In this list, under the head of "New York State," appears this: "Capital stock, $5,000,000. Standard Oil Company of New York, manufacturers of petroleum products. Standard Oil Trust ownership, entire."[662] But when the company was threatened with the forfeiture of its charter by the proceedings before the Attorney-General in May, 1894, its president made oath as follows: "The Standard Oil Company of New York never permitted its stock to be transferred to trustees."[663]