Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

One of the successful men disposed of the evidence that these powers had been so used by styling it before the committee of Congress of 1888 as the "worst balderdash," and before the New York Legislative Committee of 1888 as "irresponsible newspaper statements," "a malignity and mendacity that is little short of devilishness." The secretary of the oil trust waved it away as "all this newspaper talk and flurry." The president knows nothing about the existence of such privileges, except that he has "heard much of it in the papers." And yet another of the trust in the North American Review of February, 1883, similarly describes the accusation as "uncontradicted calumny," to which, he regrets to say, "several respectable journals and magazines lent themselves."

After taking 3700 pages of evidence and sitting for months, the committee of 1879 of the New York Legislature said in their report: "The history of this corporation is a unique illustration of the possible outgrowth of the present system of railroad management in giving preferential rates, and also showing the colossal proportions to which monopoly can grow under the laws of this country.[734] ... The parties whom they have driven to the wall have had ample capital and equal ability in the prosecution of their business in all things save their ability to acquire facilities for transportation."[735]

The committee of the Ohio Legislature which took the evidence of the treatment of the Marietta independents by the railroads[736] is, so far as the author knows, the only body of all the legislative and judicial tribunals that have been investigating for the past thirty years which has found the relations of the railroads and the oil combination to be proper. It used the words "public," "uniform," "in accordance with law," "equitable," "no special discriminations or privileges" to describe the conduct of the common carriers in that case. But in doing so it had to except from these exculpations the railroad which originated the attack on the independent refiners, and the rates of which controlled the others, as it was the initial road. It had also to admit that the oil combination had received "better rates," but defended them on the ground that its shipments were larger. These two exceptions are doors wide enough to admit every possibility of the rebate. The Secretary of State for Internal Affairs of Pennsylvania made an investigation in 1878 on the complaint of citizens. He reported to the Attorney-General that no case had been made out "beyond the ordinary province of individual redress." He was hung in effigy by the citizens, and the evidence he took remains, like that of the Ohio Committee of 1879, a valuable repository of facts from which students can draw their own conclusions.

More than any others the wrongs of the oil industry provoked the investigations by Congress from 1872 to 1887, and caused the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and more than any others they have claimed the attention of the new law and the new court. The cases brought before it cover the oil business on practically every road of any importance in the United States—in New England, the Middle States, the West, the South, the Pacific coast; on the great East and West trunk roads—the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, the New York Central, and all their allied lines; on the transcontinental lines—the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific; on the steamship and railroad association controlling the South and Southwest. They show that from ocean to ocean, and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, wherever the American citizen seeks an opening in this industry, he finds it, like the deer forests and grouse moors of the old country, protected by game-keepers against him and the common herd. The terms in which the commission have described the preferences given the oil combination are not ambiguous: "Great difference in rates," "unjust discrimination," "intentional disregard of rights," "unexcused," "a vast discrepancy," "enormous," "illegal," "excessive,"[737] "extraordinary," "forbidden by the act to regulate commerce,"[738] "so obvious and palpable a discrimination that no discussion of it is necessary," "wholly indefensible," "patent and provoking discriminations for which no rational excuse is suggested," "obnoxious," "disparity ... absurd and inexcusable," "gross disproportions and inequalities,"[739] "long practised," "the most unjust and injurious discrimination ... and this discrimination inured mostly to the benefit of one powerful combination."[740]

This was what the Interstate Commerce Commission found all along the record from 1887 to 1893. When one of those who got the benefits so characterized was before the New York Legislature in 1888, he said:

"I know of no discrimination in the oil traffic of any kind since the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act."

"Do you use any means for the purpose of avoiding the effect of that new law?"

"None whatever."[741]

But the people have found that the explicit prohibitions of the Interstate Commerce law were of no more protection to them than the equally explicit prohibitions given long before by the State constitutions and laws, the common law of the court, and by the still older common law of right, which the statute was created to enforce. The "unjust," "enormous," "illegal" differences in freights by which the public was excluded were got from the railroads after, as before, Congress, obedient to an aroused and universal demand, had passed a special statute and created a special tribunal to prevent and punish this special sort of crime. This is the adjudicated fact.