The managers of the Pennsylvania road went back with the zeal of backsliders reconverted to their yoke in the service of the men who had given them this terrific whipping. They sent word to the independent refiners, whom they had secured as shippers by the pledge of 1872 of equal treatment, that equal rates and facilities could be given no longer. The producers and refiners did not sit down dumb under the death sentence. They begged for audience of their masters, masters of them because masters of the highway.
The third vice-president, the official in charge of the freight business, was sent to meet them.
"As you know," they began by reminding him, "we have been for the past year the largest shippers of petroleum the Pennsylvania Railroad has had."
He acknowledged it.
"Shall we, after the 1st of May, have as low a rate of freight as anybody else?" they then asked.
"No," he said; "after the 1st of May we shall give the Standard Oil Company lower rates than to you."
"How much discrimination will we have to submit to?" the poor "outsiders" asked.
"I decline to tell you," was the reply.
"How much business must we bring your road to get as good rates as the combination?" they then asked, and again—