You must keep this adventure secret. Our name must not appear, and even if you all die, you must agree that we may continue the business in your name, or any other name we choose.
"The firm name," as their counsel pointed out, "was to be kept up even when the members were mouldering in their graves. But the public were to understand that the business of that firm, as it had been conducted in the lifetime of those men, was still being carried on."
You are to be thus tied up for ten years, limited at the best to half the profit on half your capacity, with a right in us to close you up altogether, or to close and resume whenever we choose, with no right in you to start or stop or withdraw. But we are to be left free, in our own refineries, to refine all the oil the market will take, and keep all the profit, and enlarge our works and extend our business.
And, finally, you must put your hand and seal to a statement that you do this to "reconcile interests that have seemed to conflict" and "equalize the business," and that this agreement gives you your "due proportion thereof."
This "free contract" two of the three men who were to make it knew nothing of until their consent was demanded.
One of the partners had secretly been won over. Through him all preliminary negotiations had been conducted.
"I was not consulted," testified one of the other two, until after the contract was "all drawn and prepared," and at first he refused to sign it. The plan was concocted "secretly and unknown to me."
"I was at first opposed to the arrangement," declared the other.[91]
But this was not all the contract. The President, who, as he testified, "conducted most of the negotiations," and "had been familiar with the dealings thereunder," supplemented the written documents with oral instructions:[92]
You must not seem to be prosperous. You must not put on style,[93] he cautioned them; above all, you must not drive fast horses or have fine rigs; you must not even let your wives know of this arrangement.[94]