Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

"For charity's sake."

"Did you give them any occupation?"

"We had it not to give; we gave them money instead."[302]

This was the melancholy end of the great shut-down. But the people were not broken by their new failure. They did not lie long in the cul-de-sac into which they had been trapped. There is a magnificent reserve force of public spirit and love of liberty in the province of William Penn and the chosen State of Benjamin Franklin. The oil business has been a thirty years' war. The people have been whipped until one would suppose defeat had become part of their daily routine, but there have always been enough good men who did not know they were beaten to begin fighting again early the next morning. It was so when the independents of Pennsylvania took the pool of the oil trust's pipe lines and the railroads before the Interstate Commerce Commission, only to reap the unexpected demonstration that the tribunal created by Congress to prevent and punish discrimination was but one more theatre for litigation and delay.[303] Leaving their cause on the floor of the Interstate Commerce Commission, these men went forth for the seventy and seventh time to build a pipe line of their own, on which they are now busy. Their numbers, resources, and hopes are less, but their will and courage are undiminished. To-day, in northwestern and western Pennsylvania this small, determined body of men are going forward with a new campaign in their gallant struggle for the control of their own business. Their efforts have been, a friendly observer says, not too warmly, as heroic and noble and self-sacrificing as the uprising of a nation for independence.

Of all this very little has been known outside the oil regions, for the reason that the newspapers there are mostly owned or controlled by the oil combination,[304] or fear its power. The last independent daily in northwestern Pennsylvania became neutral when the threat was made to place a rival in the field. With sympathy from but few of the home press, ridiculed by the "reptile" papers, and met at every turn by crushing opposition, and annoyances great and little from spies and condottieri, these men are, in 1894, working quietly and manfully to cut their way through to a free market and a right to live. Their new pipe line has been met with the same unrelenting, open, and covert warfare that made every previous march to the sea so weary. The railroads, the members of the oil combination, and every private interest these could influence have been united against them. As all through the history of the independent pipe lines, the officials of the railways have exhausted the possibilities of opposition. At Wilkes-barre, where a great net-work of tracks had to be got under, all the roads united to send seven lawyers into court to fight for injunctions against the single-handed counsel for the producers. They pleaded again the technicalities which had been invoked afresh at every crossing, although always brushed away by the judges, as they were here again. Though they have allowed their right of way to be used without charge for pipe lines which were to compete with them, the railroads refused to allow the independents to make a crossing, even though they had the legal right to cross. Not content with the champerty of collusive injunctions, they have resorted to physical force, and the pipe-layers of the independents have been confronted by hundreds of armed railroad employés. When they have dug trenches, the railroad men have filled them up as fast. Appeal to the courts has always given the right of way to the independents, but the tactics against them are renewed at every crossing because they cost them heart and money, and they have not the same unlimited supply of the latter as of the former. Their telegraph-poles have been cut down, lawyers and land-agents have been sent in advance of them to make leases of the farmers for a year or two of the land it was known they would want. For a few dollars earnest-money to bind the bargain, a great deal of land can be tied up in such ways. In some cases conditional offers would be made guaranteeing the owner five times as much as the independents would give, whatever that might be. Further to cripple them, a bill was introduced into the Pennsylvania Legislature and strongly pushed, repealing the law giving pipe-line companies the right of eminent domain.

The Erie, which has let the combination lay its pipe lines upon its right of way, and bore there for oil,[305] has been conspicuous in its efforts to prevent the new pipe line from getting through. The line at last reached Hancock, New York; there it had to pass under the Erie Railroad bridge in the bed of the river. The last Saturday night in November, 1892, the quiet of Hancock was disturbed by the arrival of one hundred armed men, railroad employés, by special train. They unlimbered a cannon, established a day and night patrol, built a beacon to be fired as an appeal for reinforcements, put up barracks, and left twenty men to go into winter quarters. Dynamite was part of their armament, and they were equipped with grappling-irons, cant-hooks, and other tools to pull the pipe up if laid. Cannon are a part of the regular equipment of the combination, as they are used to perforate tanks in which the oil takes fire. To let the "independents" know what they were to expect the cannon was fired at ten o'clock at night, with a report that shook the people and the windows for miles about. These opponents of competition were willing and ready to kill though their rights were dubious, and there could be no pretence that full satisfaction could not be got through the courts if any wrong was done.

For weeks Hancock remained in a state of armed occupation by a private military force. Referring to this demonstration with a private army at a moment of profound peace, the Buffalo Express said of those responsible for it: "They continue to fight with their old weapons—incendiarism and riot." No case has been come across in which the railroads made any opposition in the courts to the oil trust crossing under their tracks with its pipe line. More than once the railroads have allowed this rival carrier to lay its pipes side by side with their rails.

"Now, is your pipe line to New York laid upon the right of way of any railroad?"

"It touches at times the Erie road, and crosses the Erie road."

"Did you pay anything for that to them?"