The "reconcilees" were called into court. A judge was asked to issue an injunction forbidding them to depart from the strict letter of the contract.
They have been refining more than 85,000 barrels of oil a year, was the complaint.
They "threaten to distil crude petroleum without regard to quantity."[96] They are "parties in rebellion," said the lawyers. The judge said, No. This is a contract in restraint of trade, and released those who were in its toils.
The immediate effect of this "equalization" was an advance in the rates of profit. The year before the independent refiners had made a profit of only 34 cents a barrel.[97]
The first year of the "adventure" the profits jumped up to $2.52 a barrel. The dividends rose from $41,000 to $222,047, while the production fell from 120,000 to 88,085 barrels. For the four years the average profit was $2.05 a barrel, or 500 per cent. advance. The lowest profit was $1.37.
"Refined oil advanced to an average of $8 per barrel for that year" (1876), says the counsel of the trust.[98]
These great winnings were made in the depth of the depression following the panic of 1873.
While a world-compelling decline not only of prices but of profits, was in progress, the authors of this arrangement kept up kerosene to a point at which $630,691 was made in four years out of an investment of $81,000, half of which went to those who put in $10,000 and their power over freight agents.
This "adventure," as was said by the Hon. Stanley Matthews, who appeared as counsel for the victimized refiners, was better than a gold-mine. It was a mint. Without giving any personal supervision or any time, without any expenditure except the insignificant investment of $10,000, made as a mere stalking-horse, these men took a share of the profits of "the party of the second part," which is not to be calculated by ordinary percentage, but by multiplications, over and over again, every year, of the money they put in it.
By reducing the volume of business one-half, by increasing the profit from 34 cents a barrel to $2.05, the reconcilers pocketed $315,345.58 in four years, on an investment of $10,000, with no work. This was the fact. The theory with which the fact was hidden from the people is given to the New York Legislature in 1888. The principle on which the trust did business, its president said, was: