Almost on the same day—May 14, 1888—on which Van Syckel was giving the jury this undisputed account, sustained by the judge and jury, of how the combination used "arrangements with the railroads" against its rivals, another pioneer, even more distinguished, was relating his almost identical experience before the committee of Congress investigating trusts, May 3, 1888. This was Joshua Merrill, "to whom," said S. Dana Hayes, State Chemist of Massachusetts, "more than to any one else, belongs the honor of bringing this manufacture to its present advanced state."[344] Merrill's inventions and successful labors are described in the United States Census Report on Petroleum, 1885. He was at work guessing the riddles of petroleum as long ago as 1854.[345]
From 1866 to 1888 he and his partners ran a refinery at Boston.
"What has become of it?"
"We have recently dismantled it."[346]
For several years their business had been unprofitable. There were two causes, he explained. One was that they made a better quality of oil than the average, at a cost which they could not recoup from the prices established in the market by poorer oils. The other cause was the extraordinary charges made against his firm by the railways in Boston which brought their crude.
His firm had their own tank-cars, in which their crude oil came from Pennsylvania. From Olean to Boston his freight cost him the last few years 50 cents a barrel. From the depot in Boston, to get it over two miles of track to his refinery, cost him $10 a car, or about $1.25 a barrel. This was at the rate of about 42½ cents a ton a mile. The average freight rate for the United States is about half a cent a ton a mile. His rate was an advance of 8400 per cent. on the average. He appealed to the Railroad Commission of Massachusetts.
"We wrote to the commissioners that we thought the charge was very high, and they ought to interfere to have it reduced. But it was not done.
"We made repeated efforts, personal solicitations, to the railroad officers, and to the railroad commissioners also, but it was the established rate."[347]
Two roads participated in this charge of $10 for hauling a car two miles. One of these was the New York and New England road, whose haul was a mile and a half, and its charge $6.