In support of his assertion Mr. Shull offered letters from firms he has been dealing with. The following citations show the character of them:
“Tiffin, Ohio, February 1, 1898.
“Independent Oil Company,
Mansfield, Ohio.
“Dear Sirs:—The Standard Oil Company, after your man was here, had the cheek to come in and ask how many barrels of oil we bought and so forth, then asked us to countermand the order, saying it would be for our best; we understand they have put their oil in our next door and offer it at six cents per gallon, at retail. Shall we turn tail or show them fight? If so, will you help us out any?...
“Yours truly,
“Talbott and Son.”
“Tiffin, Ohio, January 24, 1898.
“Independent Oil Company.
“Dear Sirs: ... I am sorry to say that a Standard Oil man from your city followed that oil car and oil to my place, and told me that he would not let me make a dollar on that oil, and was dogging me around for two days to buy that oil, and made all kinds of threats and talked to my people of the house while I was out, and persuaded me to sell, and I was in a stew what I should do, but I yielded and I have been very sorry for it since. I thought I would hate to see the bottom knocked out of the prices, but that is why I did it—the only reason. The oil was all right. I now see the mistake, and that is of getting a carload—two carloads coming in here inside of a week is more than the other company will stand....
“Yours truly,
“H. A. Eirick.”
In case the agent cannot persuade the dealer to countermand his order, more strenuous measures are applied. The letters quoted above hint at what they will be. Many letters have been presented by witnesses under oath in various investigations showing that Standard Oil agents in all parts of the country have found it necessary for the last twenty-five years to act at times as these letters threaten. One of the most aggressive of these campaigns waged at the beginning of this war of exterminating independent dealers was by the Standard marketing agent at Louisville, Kentucky—Chess, Carley and Company. This concern claimed a large section of the South as its territory. George Rice, of Marietta, Ohio, had been in this field for eight or ten years, having many regular customers. It became Chess, Carley and Company’s business to secure these customers and to prevent his getting others. Mr. Rice was handicapped to begin with by railroad discrimination. He was never able to secure the rates of his big rival on any of the Southern roads. In 1888 the Interstate Commerce Commission examined his complaints against eight different Southern and Western roads, and found that no one of them treated him with “relative justice.” Railroad discriminations were not sufficient to drive him out of the Southwest, however, and a war of prices was begun. According to the letters Mr. Rice himself has presented he certainly in some cases began the cutting, as he could well afford to do. For instance, Chess, Carley and Company were selling water-white oil in September, 1880, in Clarksville, Tennessee, at twenty-one cents a gallon delivered in carloads—export oil was selling in barrels in New York at that date at 10⅝ cents a gallon. Rice’s agent offered at eighteen cents. The dealer to whom he made the offer, Armstrong by name, wished to accept, but as he had been buying of Chess, Carley and Company, went first to see them about the matter. He came back “scared almost out of his boots,” wrote the agent to Rice.
“Carley told him he would break him up if he bought oil of anyone else; that the Standard Company had authorised him to spend $10,000 to break up any concern that bought oil from anyone else; that he (Carley) would put all his drummers in the field to hunt up Armstrong’s customers and sell his customers groceries at five per cent. below Armstrong’s prices, and turn all Armstrong’s trade over to Moore, Bremaker and Company, and settle with Moore, Bremaker and Company for their losses in helping to break Armstrong up, every thirty days.
“That if Armstrong sent any other oil to Clarksville, Tennessee, he (Carley) would put the price of oil so low in Clarksville as to make the party lose heavily, and that they (the Standard) would break up anyone that would sell him (Armstrong) oil, and that he (Carley) had told Stege and Reiling the same thing. Did you ever? What do you think of that?”
Very soon after this, Chess, Carley and Company took in hand a Nashville firm, Wilkinson and Company, which was buying of Rice. “It is with great reluctance,” they wrote, “that we undertake serious competition with any one, and certainly this competition will not be confined to coal-oil or any one article, and will not be limited to any one year. We always stand ready to make reasonable arrangements with any one who chooses to appear in our line of business, and it will be unlike anything we have done heretofore if we permit any one to force us into an arrangement which is not reasonable. Any loss, however great, is better to us than a record of this kind.” And four days later they wrote: “If you continue to bring on the oil, it will simply force us to cut down our price, and no other course is left to us but the one we have intimated.” Wilkinson and Company seem to have stuck to Rice’s oil, for sixteen months later, we find Chess, Carley and Company calling on the agent of a railroad, which already was giving the Standard discriminating rates, to help in the fight.
The screw was turned, Mr. Rice affirms, his rate being raised fifty per cent. in five days.
Rice carried on his fight for a market in the most aggressive way, and everywhere he met disastrous competition. In 1892 he published a large pamphlet of documents illustrating Standard methods, in which he included citations from some seventy letters from dealers in Texas, received by him between 1881 and 1889, showing the kind of competition his oil met there from the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, the Standard’s Texas agents. A dozen sentences, from as many different towns, will show the character of them all:
“I have had wonderful competition on this car. As soon as my car arrived the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, who has an agent here, slapped the price down to $1.80 per case 110.”
“... Oil was selling at this point for $2.50 per case, and as soon as your car arrived it was put down to $1.50, which it is selling at to-day.”
“The Waters-Pierce Oil Company reduced their prices on Brilliant oil from $2.60 to $1.50 per case and is waging a fierce war.”
“Waters-Pierce Oil Company has our state by the throat and we would like to be extricated.”
“I would like to handle your oil if I could be protected against the Waters-Pierce Oil Company. I am afraid if I would buy a car of oil from you this company would put the oil way below what I pay and make me lose big money. I can handle your oil in large quantities if you would protect me against them.”
“The Waters-Pierce Oil Company has cut the stuffing out of coal-oil and have been ever since I got in my last car. They put the price to the merchants at $1.80 per case.”
“We have your quotations on oil. While they are much lower than what we pay, yet unless a carload could be engaged it would pay no firm to try and handle, as Waters-Pierce Oil Company would cut below cost on same.”
“The day your oil arrived here, their agent went to all my customers and offered their Eupion oil at ten cents per gallon in barrels and $1.50 per case, and lower grades in proportion, and told them if they did not refuse to take the oil he would not sell them any more at any price, and that he was going to run me out of the business, and then they would be at his mercy.”
“Now we think Waters-Pierce Oil Company have been getting too high a price for their oil. They are able and do furnish almost this entire state with oil. They cut prices to such an extent when any other oil is offered in this state that they force the parties handling the oil to abandon the trade.”
“Trace and hurry up car of oil shipped by you. We learn it is possible that your oil is side-tracked on the line, that Waters-Pierce might get in their work.”
“If we were to buy a car or more, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company would manage to sell a little cheaper than we could, and continue doing so until they busted me up.”
“In regard to oil, we are about out now, and Waters-Pierce have put their oil up again and quote us at the old price.”
“Jobbers say when they take hold of another oil they are at once boycotted by Waters-Pierce Oil Company, who not only refuse to sell them, but put oil below what they pay for it, and thus knock them out of the oil trade, unless they sell at a loss.”
“If I find that I can handle your oil in Texas without being run out and losing money by this infernal corporation, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, I want to arrange with you to handle it extensively. I received verbal notice this morning from their agent that they would make it hot for me when my oil got here.”