"YOU ARE NOT TO REFINE"
In the obituary column of the Cleveland Herald, of June 6, 1874, was given the news of the death of one of the pioneer manufacturers of Cleveland. He began the refining of petroleum in that city in 1860, several years before any of those who afterwards became the sovereigns of the business had left their railroad platforms, book-keeping stools, and lawyers' desks. He was married in the same year, and from that time until his death, in 1874, gave his whole life to his refinery and his family, and was successful with both. The Herald said of him editorially:
"He was well known in Cleveland and elsewhere as a business man of high character. He was a prominent member of the First Presbyterian Church, was at one time President of the Young Men's Christian Association, and was active in all enterprises of a religious and benevolent character. He was about forty years of age, and leaves a wife and three children."
His enterprise had been "very profitable," his wife said afterwards in court, in narrating how she and her children fared after the death of the husband, father, and bread-winner. "My husband devoted his entire energies and life to the business from about 1860 to the time of his death, and had acquired through his name a large patronage. My husband went into debt just before his death," she continued, "for the first time in his life. For the interest of my fatherless children, as well as myself, I thought it my duty to continue the business. I took $75,000 of the $100,000 of stock, and continued from that time, 1874, until November, 1878, making handsome profits, during perhaps the hardest business years of the time since my husband had begun."[113]
The business received from her the most thorough and faithful attention, and she maintained the prosperity her husband had founded by making a profit of about $25,000 a year.
A representative of one of the oil combination came to her, she continued, "with a proposition that I should sell to them." This agent was "a brother manufacturer," who, but a short time before in a conference with her, had agreed that in view of the dangers which seemed to threaten them, he and she should mutually watch out for each other, and that no arrangement should be made by either without letting the other know. The next she saw of her ally he pounced upon her in her office with the news that he was in the oil combination, that the head of it had told him he meant to have control of the refining business if it took him ten years, but he hoped to have it in two. He went on to warm the woman's heart by the declaration that since he had become acquainted with the secrets of the organization he wondered that he and she had been able to hold out so long. After which preliminaries he proposed that she, too, should sell to it. With sagacity and spirit she declined point-blank to have any negotiation with him.
She declined to deal with subordinates, and said she did not want to sell. The principal then called upon her at her residence. This was in 1878, and these were dark days for "outside" refiners. One by one they were sinking out of sight, and slipping under the yoke like the victims of the "reconciliation" and "equalization" described in the last chapter.