fact that the actual unification of businesses
took place a good many years before the formation of the Trust, there
is nothing in the account given above inherently inconsistent with the
following explanation afforded by the Standard Oil Trust of their
proceedings:--

"The Standard Oil Trust offers to prove by various witnesses that the
disastrous condition of the refining business, and the numerous
failures of refiners prior to 1875, arose from imperfect methods of
refining, want of co-operation among refiners, the prevalence of
speculative methods in the purchase and sale of both crude and refined
petroleum, sudden and great reductions in price of crude, and
excessive rates of freight; that these disasters led to co-operation
and association among the refiners, and that such association and
co-operation, resulting eventually in the Standard Oil Trust, has
enabled the refiners so co-operating to reduce the price of petroleum
products, and thus benefit the public to a very marked degree."[132]

So far as this furnishes an explanation of the motives leading to the
earlier growth of the Company, the consolidation of rival companies,
no doubt it contains a considerable element of truth. The Standard Oil
Trust, however, differs from most others in that it was not directly
formed by the union of a number of leading rival businesses, but was
merely a reorganisation upon a firmer basis of a single complex
business. The motive of self-protection, though it might be operative
in the early history of the Company, cannot be adduced as the true
motive of the formation of the Trust.

Since the claim of the Standard Oil Trust to be a public benefit rests
upon the fall of price to the customer, resulting from the various
economies and improvements adopted by the Trust, it may be well to
append a diagram showing the actual fall of prices during the twenty
years 1870 to 1890.

In this diagram we note that from 1870 to 1875 there was a rapid
reduction of price in consequence of the fact that these were years of
keen competition with other Pennsylvanian businesses. 1875, which
marks the establishment of a monopoly of the interior trade in the
hands of the Standard Oil Trust, also marks a sharp rise of prices.
The expansion of their business brought them into contact with new and
more distant competitors, and a fall of price continued until 1879,
while prices continued to oscillate until 1881, the year of the
formation of the Trust.