Rockefeller master of about one-third of all the oil
business in the United States, and this fact explains the rapidity with
which the other citadels fell. There is no evidence that the Standard
exercised any pressure upon the great refineries in New York,
Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. Indeed these concerns manifested an
eagerness to join. The fact that, unlike the Cleveland refiners, many of
the firms in these other cities took Standard stock, and so became
parts of the new organization, is in itself significant. They evidently
realized that they were casting their fortunes with the winning side.
The huge shipments which the Standard now controlled explain this change
in front. Every day Mr. Rockefeller could send from Cleveland to
the seaboard a train, sixty cars long, loaded with the blue barrels
containing his celebrated liquid. That was a consideration for which any
railroad would at that time sell its soul. And the New York Central road
promptly made this sacrifice. Hardly had the ink dried on its written
promise not to grant any rebates when it began granting them to the
Standard Oil Company.

In those days the railroad rate was not the sacred, immutable thing
which it subsequently became, although the argument for equal treatment
of shippers existed theoretically just as strongly forty years ago as
it does today. The rebate was just as illegal then as it is at present;
there was no precise statute, it is true, which made it unlawful until
the Interstate Commerce Act was passed in 1887; but the common law had
always prohibited such discriminations. In the seventies and eighties,
however, railroad men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Thomas A. Scott
were less interested in legal formalities than in getting freight. They
regarded transportation as a commodity to be bought and sold, like
so much sugar or wheat or coal, and they believed that the ordinary
principles which regulated private bargaining should also regulate the
sale of the article in which they dealt. According to this reasoning,
which was utterly false and iniquitous, but generally prevalent at the
time, the man who shipped the largest quantities of oil should get the
lowest rate.

The purchase of the Cleveland refineries made the Standard Oil group the
largest shippers and therefore they obtained the most advantageous terms
for transporting their product. Under these conditions they naturally
obtained the monopoly, the extent of which has been already d