Q. Leonard and Ellis were very early manufacturers of cylinder oil ; isn't that true ? A. They were—yes.
Q. Then lubricating oil—it was made from the petroleum stock before 1870, wasn't it ? A. It was to an extent—yes.
Q. Spindle oil, I think, is one thing you testified about the other day. Wasn't that first introduced byithe Downer Manu facturing Company, of Boston 2 A. I think it likely. I do not know definitely. It probably was.
Q. Wool oil—wasn't that sold or manufactured by Paine, Ablett & Co., long before the Standard Oil Company com bination or interests got hold of it ? A. It may have been. I could not say.
Was not vaseline made as early as 1860 by chemists in Cincinnati, Ohio, from petroleum products ? A. If it was I never heard of it. I did not know of it.
Such being the Standard Oil people's methods of dealing with their neighbours, how have their neighbours dealt with them ? The plain answer to this is that their neighbours have simply " howled for their blood " for the past thirty-nine years, since the time, in fact, when the beginnings of the great conspiracy came to light in the detection of the South Improvement Company scheme in 1872. Since then the Stan dard Oil concern has had to face one public prosecution after another and to witness a long series of hostile demonstrations on the part of the public and of public inquiries directed by the Legislature that would have shamed any concern capable of ordinary decent feeling out of existence long ago. In 1879 the Standard Oil Trust was indicted for fraudulent conspiracy in Pennsylvania at the suit of the Petroleum Producers' Union, who were thick-headed and weak-kneed enough to accept a settlement out of court. In 1887 the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was prosecuted by the State Attorney General—Mr. David K. Watson—for belonging to the Standard Oil Trust, an illegal combination in restraint of trade, and in 1892 judgment was rendered prohibiting it from being a party to any such Trust agreement. Ostensibly the liqui
dation of the Standard Oil Trust followed ; in reality it pursued the even tenor of its way. In 1898 the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was again prosecuted by the State Attorney-General, this time Mr. Frank S. Monnett, for failing to obey the 1892 judgment, and the suit, or series of suits, was prolonged by every device on the part of the Standard till his term of office came to an end in January, 1900. His successor, John M. Sheets, suppressed the suits, but matters had been made so hot for the Standard Oil Trust that it took advantage of the lax company law existing in the State of New Jersey to change its style and title (including all its subsidiaries) into that of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. As such it carries on its old conspiracy against public law and the common weal just as before. In 1907 it was again prosecuted in the person of one of its subsidiaries, the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, for the same old charges of unjust and illegal railway discrimi nations, and condemned on August 3, 1907, to pay a fine of $29,240,000 (25,848,000). This fine was set aside on appeal on the ground that it had been assessed on the capital of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey instead of on that of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. On November 15, 1906, the prosecution, already more than once referred to, of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey by the United States Government was commenced in the Eastern Judicial District of Missouri Circuit Court. The Company was convicted of conspiracy ; it appealed, and the appeal was fixed for hearing in the Supreme Court of the United States during the October term of 1909. It was further postponed, however by the death of Judge Brewer, of the Supreme Court, and is now expected to be decided in a few weeks.