Q. Is it not a matter of fact that he solely represented the Standard Oil Company as a director in the Tide Water Company ? A. I think he was there as a servant of the business.
The truth about Mr. John H. Cuthbert's position in relation to the Standard Oil Trust is clearly shown by the following extract from the Report of the United States Commissioner of Cor porations on the Petroleum Industry (Part I. page 54) :— About the sam time (1881) Standard interests succeeded in acquiring a minority interest in the Tide Water Company's stock. This move, coupled with the continual hostility of the railroads, led to a virtual surrender of the Tide Water interests, and an agreement was reached in 1883 by which they substantially became, and have since remained, a part of the Standard Oil system.
To sum up the history of this General Indus trials Development Syndicate, we have an American oil company sold to a London com pany with no list of shareholders, with a managing director who is a barrister, after an examination and valuation of the property by a Standard Oil employee. We find as one
of the terms of the deal that the Standard Oil Company—who, according to Mr. Archbold, had no interest in this transaction—should guarantee a supply of crude oil at a low rate for ten years to the vendors' Chicago gas company. Then we find all the assets of the Manhattan Company transferred to various Standard Oil companies, except the pipe lines, and these pipe lines used for the purpose of collecting oil for Standard companies, and paying premiums to producers to prevent them supplying oil to independent refineries which the Standard desires to kill. All this, taken with the evasive and obviously untruthful answers of Mr. Archbold, can lead to but one conclusion as to the real origin of the General Industrials. When the facts are considered with regard to the parallel case of the London Commercial Trading Company, that conclusion is strengthened still more.