Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

A false account was opened on the books to conceal the nature and origin of this transaction from their own book-keepers. In the name of that account false and fictitious checks were drawn, bills made out, balances struck. A box was taken out at the Cleveland post-office—box 125—in the name of an imaginary "Mr. G.A. Mason," and through this box the correspondence of the "adventure" was carried on. Each of the three parties to the "adventure" continued to march and fight under its own flag as before. All possible pains were taken to conceal the fact that they had ceased competition with each other. They kept up every appearance to the public of being actively engaged in competitive business. The inevitable spy appears in this scene as in every other in the play. The "reconciler," to enforce the provisions that the "reconcilees" should not engage in business elsewhere, extended a system of espionage over them, and followed their movements, and kept watch what they did with their money, and made oath to the courts of the results of these "inquiries and investigations." The espionage continued after this.

A year or two after this contract had been broken by the help of the courts, the then secretary of the great oil company, through an intermediary, approached the book-keeper of the firm which had been freed from the trust.

"Would you not like to make some money?"

"He inclined to let him believe he did want to make some money," his employer afterwards told Congress. "He came and told me about it. I requested that he continue and find out what information they wanted. He was to have had so much per year, but he was to have been paid a down payment; he got $25."

"What service was he to render for that?"

"I have a memorandum. There were so many things he was to do that I cannot carry it in my head."

"One of the questions was, 'What was the result of last year's business?' The other was, 'A transcript of the daily shipments, with net prices received from the same; what is the cost for manufacturing outside of the crude; the kind of gasoline and naphtha made, and the net prices received for the same; what they do with tar and the percentages of the same; what per cent. of water white and what per cent. of Michigan water white; how much oil exported last year?' This information, as fast as received, to be mailed to Box 164, Cleveland post-office.... He (the book-keeper) made an affidavit of it, and I took the money back myself personally."[95]

When orders came in for more oil than the limit put upon them, the "reconcilees," asserting their commercial manhood, went on refining to supply the demands of the public instead of the commands of the clique. They contended that they were not bound by the limitation, and in this were afterwards upheld by the court; but, meanwhile, they were called to account and frightened into another "reconciliation." He was present, the chief reconciler told the court, at the interview in which they "agreed to diminish their manufacture ... to bring the entire amount within the terms" of the contract.

But again they began to refine to supply the needs of the people evidenced by the market demand. Then their supply of crude was shut off. Their suzerain owned the pipe line to Cleveland. When its escaping victims got around that difficulty, it took its "contract" to the courts.

To shut these competitors down to half their capacity, and to reconcile and equalize interests by taking half of all they made on that was merely an incident, collateral to the grander plan, the vaster "adventure," of getting all the profits of that greater field out of which these competitors were barred altogether. Such contracts as these, its counsel said, were made with refiners all over the country. The chief profit of the adventure lay, not in the divided profits of the picayune business it let the vassals do, but in the undivided profits of the empire kept for itself. Why should the reconciler hurry with expensive lawyers into court for a summary injunction to prevent a "reconcilee" from making more oil, when the reconciler, who toiled not nor spun, was to get half of the gain of $2.05 on every barrel of it? Why, but that every "co-operative" barrel so made would displace in the markets a barrel, all the profits of which went to it.