THE STANDARD'S " INVENTIONS " Standard achieved other ends by its system of creating bogus competitors, besides avoiding public odium. It was enabled by their operation to carry on a competitive warfare cheaply. The " bogus independents " bought oil from the genuine independents, and proceeded to retail it at the wholesale price. As the genuine independents then came down a peg or two in their retail price to meet this competition, and lowered their wholesale price correspondingly, the bogus concerns bought more at the new wholesale level, and then retailed it at that, and so ad infinitum— or, rather, ad infimum—till the bottom was reached, without their losing a cent in the process. Meantime the Standard virtuously kept its prices up to its own customers in that particular district, and protested against the ruin that was being brought upon the trade by underselling. Thus the function of the " bogus independent," whether company or pedlar, was not to make money for the Standard, but to kill off its competitors. It was an instrument of assassination pure and simple. And just as a particularly diabolical murderer arranges the time and manner of his victim's death, so that it shall seem to be self inflicted, so the Standard arranged by the working of these bogus concerns that the genuinely independent firms outside its own charmed circle should seem to the public to be perishing as the result of their own " cut throat competition." It was a subtle game, and played with devilish cunning and per sistency for many years before it was definitely shown up in its true light. And it was helped by the fact that many of the bogus concerns worked in this way had once been genuinely independent concerns which the Standard had secretly bought up.
Charles E. Farrell testified as a Government witness at the Missouri trial—and no attempt was made to rebut his evidence—that he had been a tank-wagon driver for the Standard Oil Company until events took place as follows : About March, 1899, he was approached at his home at night by the Standard's agent at Troy, N.Y., who told him that McMillan, the Standard's manager at Albany, had some im portant work for him to do which must be kept entirely secret even from Farrell's own family. At his instance Farrell met McMillan and Mason, the Standard manager at Bing hamton, N.Y., who told him that the Standard had competition at Oneonta, N.Y., from the Tiona Oil Company, which had got the bulk of the trade, and that they wanted to get it back, and for that purpose to set the store keepers fighting with one another. He was
directed to go to the Tiona Oil Company at Binghamton, N.Y., and buy twenty-five barrels of oil, and have it shipped to Worcester, as the Tiona would not sell him oil to sell at Oneonta, where it was already doing business. He was then to reship it from Wor cester to Oneonta, where he was to peddle it about, putting the sign " Tiona Oil " on his wagon, at 8 cents (4d.) a gallon, the same price he had to pay the Tiona for it at Binghamton. Strict secrecy was enjoined as to whom he was working for. Farrell carried out the manoeuvre till the merchants cut against one another down to 2 cents a gallon retail, and one even put out a sign : " Free oil ; come and get your cans filled." Later Farrell could not succeed in getting any more Tiona oil ; then the Standard supplied him with its own oil, cautioning him not to sell too much of it, but only to bell the low price about. Farrell was suspected at last by the Tiona people of being sent by the Standard, but, acting on instructions, denied it through thick and thin.
This nefarious game went on for six months, during which time Farrell carried on his correspondence with Mason at Binghamton by addressing the letters to a man named George Craven at a certain post-office box in Albany, and Craven forwarded them to Mason. Most of the letters sent by Mason in reply were on plain paper and unsigned, but not all. In one which is signed, and which was exhibited in court, Mason says :— I have your various letters. . . . Our salesman who visits Oneonta knows nothing whatever of who you are, nor does any one except those you saw in our office, and under no circumstances whatever do we want any one to get the slightest hint that we are in any way concerned in this matter. The Tiona people are denying that they have anything to do with it, and claiming that we started you there. Of course, we are denying this, and you must be very cautious, and not allow any one to try to pump you. . . . You are doing first rate and carrying out the plan excellently, and very much to my satisfaction. . . . As soon as you have read this, set a match to it and burn it up. . . . Don't tear it up, for some person might get hold of the pieces of paper and put them together, but if you burn it with a match, then it is out of the way wholly. . . .