Q. Do you mean to say that you don't know what the decision was A. I don't say that. I know that the Insterstate Commerce Commission had made a decision. The decision is quite a com prehensive one, but it is questionable whether it could be said that that decision in all its features results as I understand you to claim.
Q. You don't so understand it ? Will you say, as a matter of fact, that it is not so 2 A. I stated in my testimony this morning that I had known of instances where companies altogether outside of the Trust had enjoyed more favourable freights than companies in this Trust, and I am not able to state that there may not have been arrangements for freight on the part of companies within this Trust as favourable as, or more favourable than, other freight arrangements ; but, in reply to that, nothing peculiar in respect to the companies in this association. I suppose they make the best freight arrangements they can.
A commission, known, from the name of its chairman, as the Hepburn Commission, was appointed by Congress in 1879 to investigate the New York railroads, and a number of Standard Oil officials, notably Messrs. H. H. Rogers, J. D. Archbold, Jabez A. Bostwick, and W. T. Sheide, were summoned before it. Though not so sweeping in their denials as Mr. Rockefeller, all of them avoided the truth. Their testimony, in fact, was so evasive that the Hepburn Commission, in making its report, characterised the Company as " a mysterious or ganisation whose business and transactions are of such a character that its members decline giving a history or description of it lest this testimony be used to convict them of a crime." The reason that the witnesses themselves gave for their evasion was—as might be expected—a different one from that assigned by the Commis sion. They stated that the investigations were an interference with their rights as private citi zens, and that the Government had no business to inquire into their methods. This is a very
interesting plea, for it throws a light on the general spirit of insubordination to all law and order consistently evinced by the Standard Oil Trust throughout its whole career whenever law and order were found to be in opposition to its progress. This constant opposition to the public authority, whether manifested by open contempt of Court when under examination, or by secret bribery to avert or compass legislation, or by secret acts known to be contrary to law, has been such as to merit for the Standard Oil con spirators the appellation of the anarchists of commercial life. Opposition to the law, denial of the law, refusal to be subject to the law, and attempted corruption of the officers of the law, indelibly marks their business policy.
Direct lying, however, was employed on occa sion when Standard witnesses were under the necessity of answering questions categorically. Henry M. Flagler, for instance, swore in 1880 in the Court of Common Pleas (Standard Oil Com pany v. W. C. Scofield et al.) that the Standard Oil Company neither owned, operated, nor con trolled refineries elsewhere than at Cleveland, Ohio, and Bayonne, N.J., whereas before the Investigation Relative to Trusts, New York Senate, 1888, he testified that in 1874 the Stan dard Oil Company purchased the refineries of Lockhart, Frew & Co., of Pittsburg ; Warden, Frew & Co., of Philadelphia ; and Chas. Pratt & Co., of New York. Mr. Rockefeller also swore falsely in the Scofield case in 1880, in the same sense as Mr. Henry M. Flagler. The purchase and consequent control of the Pittsburg, Phila delphia, and New York refineries mentioned was absolutely secret at the time, and seem ingly not likely to be found out.