Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

Change the order to comply with the ruling of the Interstate Commerce Commission the roads would not and did not.[242]

All the roads to the seaboard and New England had made the order in concert, and together they maintained it. It was one hand, evidently, that moved them all, and though that hand moved them, for the benefit of a carrier rival of theirs—the pipe line of the trust—against their own customers, against their own employers, against the authority of the United States Government, all these railroad presidents and freight agents obeyed it with the docility of domestic animals.

These officials were the loyal subjects of a higher power than that of the United States, higher even than that of their railway corporations. They serve the greatest sovereign of the modern world—the concentrated wealth, in whose court the presidents of railways and republics, kings, parliaments, and congresses are but lords in waiting.

Thanks to the superior enterprise of their greater need, the independents of Oil City and Titusville had been able to survive the blows that had preceded, but this was too much. They had weathered the surrender in 1883 of the Tidewater Pipe Line, which had promised them freedom forever. Even the "contract" which made the allied pipe lines and the railroads in 1885 one, to tax them half as much again for transportation, had not broken them down. In spite of it they had been able "to maintain and increase their business."[243] But now they closed their works. The new attack had been shrewdly timed to spoil for them in that year—1888—the season of greatest activity in the export to Europe and Asia. They appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission. "The greater proportion of our refineries are idle."[244] "I have not a customer in the entire New England States. I have not had since the advance of last September."

"How was it before the advance?"

"I had a number of customers."[245]

Labor, though, as always, the most silent, suffered the most. Three hundred coopers were thrown out of work in Titusville alone within a short time, and the loss of employment to the workmen in the refineries was still more serious. This was not because trade was bad. Exports were never greater than in 1889. Government statistics reveal as in a mirror what was being done.

The exports of refined petroleum increased 21 per cent. in 1889 over 1888. But Perth Amboy, from which the independents shipped for the most part, showed a decrease of over 18½ per cent. By the stroke of a freight agent's pen the business of these men was being taken from them, to be given to others. The general tide was rising, but their feet were sinking in a quicksand.

The export business of Boston in oil was given to the "seaboard refiners" by the same stroke. Freights that had been $100 were now $174 to Boston, and $188 to New York. These rates were so high as to stop oil from going through. "The Nova Scotia trade," it was testified, "goes to New York, and from there by water, whereas they used to buy in Boston. Boston brokers will ship oil from New York and get it to Nova Scotia cheaper than if it went from Boston, whereas when we had the export rate we could compete in that market."[246] Two months later most of what remained of the business of the independents in New England was added to the gift of their foreign trade, which had already been made to the "seaboard refiners." By an order of October 25, 1888, the railroads made it known to these "pestilences," as the lawyers of the railroads called the independent refiners in court,[247] that they would not be allowed to send any more through shipments into New England. This was done, as in Ohio in 1879,[248] without the notice required by law, though in the meantime a Federal law had been passed requiring notice.[249]

This order was the finishing touch in the task of using the freight tariff to prevent freight shipment. It shut the independents—the hunted shippers—out of over 150 towns in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, including Manchester, Burlington, Portland, Salem, in which they had built up a good business, and it made it impossible to reach these places except by paying high local rates—from station to station—which were not required of their competitor, who shipped on through rates. The railroads would take the oil of the independents for shipment, but would not tell them what the rates would be. In this, as in all the moves of this game, we see the railroad managers of a score of different roads, at points thousands of miles apart, taking the same step at the same time, like a hundred electric clocks ticking all over a great city to the tune of the clock at headquarters that makes and breaks their circuit.