FRANCE Standard was artful enough to strengthen its position by acquiring existing oil companies and retaining certain prominent German oil merchants as share holders, thus breaking to some extent the force of the natural outcry against itself as an alien corporation. In the case of its English companies, very few shares are held by any body resident in England, and even these are mostly Americans, but in Germany they are more cautious. There has been a great con troversy as to the adoption of tank railway wagons and tank installations on the Prussian State railways. It is obvious that these methods will cheapen the transit of oil, but it is also obvious that they will play into the hands of the Standard, which with its vast capital is able to establish extensive installations of this kind, and to prevent its smaller competitors from reaching the market.
Public opinion is the more suspicious of these gentlemen because of the remarkable reve lations made last year with reference to their branch—not included in the list given in Chapter I.—which is called the German Vacuum Oil Company. The disclosure in question is so thoroughly in keeping with what is already known of the doings of the Standard in other parts of the world that it fully bears out the opinion already expressed, that the great octopus is always one and the same in its methods irrespective of time and country. It goes all the lengths it is permitted to go. It has gone, as will be seen, pretty far in Germany, though the State railway system renders rebates impossible there, and as Ger many is so close to our own doors the lesson is one we may well take home to ourselves.
In the early autumn of 1909 Mr. F. Hilde brandt, the editor of the Hamburger Fremden blatt, whose attention had been called to the doings of the German Vacuum Oil Company, and who had been led to investigate the matter, published a vigorous attack on that Company in his columns. We of course know that the Vacuum Oil Company, Ltd., is in England merely a tentacle fixed on the body of John Bull through which suction is applied from 26, Broadway, New York. But the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce were in blissful ignor ance until quite recently that the German Vacuum Oil Company was only the particular limb of the monster that had settled down on Germany. It reported not so long ago to the Friedrichsort Torpedo Works at Kiel that the Vacuum was a German company, though it might have learnt differently if it had taken the trouble to look into the Handelregister, or German public registry of commercial com panies. There it would have found among the
names of the chief shareholders Messrs. J. D. Archbold, C. M. Pratt, and C. M. Everest, the well-known Standard men who were regis tered as the original directors of the Vacuum Oil Company of Rochester, N.Y, the Company whose connection with the Buffalo arson pro secution has been explained in Chapter VI. Their connection with the Vacuum Oil Com pany, Ltd., of London will be explained in a later chapter. Two other shareholders of the German Vacuum Oil Company, J. C. Moffet and C. E. Bedford, also belong to the Standard.
The main allegation put forward in the Fremdenblatt by Mr. Hildebrandt was that the German Vacuum Oil Company was selling precisely the same quality of lubricating oil under various fancy names and at different prices, according to differently imagined utili ties to its German customers, and securing preference being given to its goods by bribing engineers and foremen right and left to advise their employers in their favour. The simple change of a label seemed to have such a mar vellous effect on the intrinsic quality of the Vacuum lubricator that in some cases it justi fied a rise of 25 per cent. in price, and even higher. The " Etna " brand of lubricating oil, for instance, was a poor thing that sold at 41 marks per 100 kilos for ordinary smearings, but when an important firm gave an order for a superior article such as the " Gas Engine E " or " Viscolite " oil they received the same old " Etna " oil duly labelled " Gas Engine E " or "Viscolite" at the correspondingly superior price of 56 marks and 62 marks respectively. Acting on this denunciation, the Public Prosecutor in tervened, ordered an inquiry, and summoned Mr. Hildebrandt to produce his evidence, but not before Dr. Oscar Ruperti, a director of the Vacuum in Hamburg, had taken a personal action for libel against Mr. Hildebrandt, who in his turn had taken an action against Mr. E. L. Quarles, the American manager of the Vacuum in Hamburg, and Dr. Polchau, who was both legal counsel and brother-in-law to Dr. Ruperti.