THE TRUST IN AMERICA AND ASIA we have been dealing with the history of the Standard Oil Trust on its native heath, the United States of America. It is now time to pass in brief review some of its operations in foreign countries. It appears in many lands, this Protean conspirator, and always in some new guise. Here it is the pioneer and prophet of native oil ; there it is the importer of vast floods of foreign oil. Itself protected by a heavy tariff in the United States, it poses in other lands as the chief of the apostles of free trade. It demands alike freedom to enter foreign oil-fields as a prospector and foreign oil markets as a retailer. In one country it is the advocate of high prices ; in another it is the ruthless undercutter of its competitors. Always preferring secrecy to daylight, its underground agitations embrace the Press, the politicians, and the public. It is not always easy at first to discover who is behind a Standard oil agitation, but I shall give a few clues which may assist the student of oleaginous origins.
Turning first to Mexico, we find that the Standard's operations there have been con ducted under the name of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of Missouri, which is now after many years of falsehood admitted to be a tentacle of the Trust. The history of the re entry of the Waters-Pierce Company to the State of Texas is a good example of the Standard's methods. There sits in the United States Senate one Joseph Bailey, a Democrat of the deepest dye. A lawyer, an orator, one of those pure-souled patriots who denounce in public the trusts and monopolies, Senator Bailey was exactly the man the Standard wanted. The full facts are given by Miss Ida M. Tarbell in an article in the American Magazine for January, 1908. The Texas Legislature passed a sweeping anti-Trust law; under it the Waters Pierce Company was prosecuted from court to court until finally in March, 1900, the United States Supreme Court sustained the decisions of the Texas courts, and the Company was ordered to close up its business and get out. At this point Senator (then Congressman) Bailey appeared, and for a fee of $3,300 (charged on the Company's books to " profit and loss ") succeeded in obtaining from the Democratic Attorney-General of Texas two months' grace. The Waters-Pierce Company finally transferred itself to a new Company of the same name, which took over the entire business of the original company, and Mr. Henry Clay Pierce,
the manager, applied for a charter for the new one. He swore that it was in no way connected with the Standard Oil Trust, and that he owned 3,996 out of 4,000 shares. Largely through the influence of Congressman Bailey the new charter was granted. Four weeks later Bailey, who was always regarded as a poor man, was able to buy the splendid Grape Vine Ranch at Dallas, Texas, of 6,000 acres—a singular coincidence, to say the least.
The new Waters-Pierce Oil Company went on trading until in the Missouri proceedings in 1906 Mr. Henry Clay Pierce, the managing director, was at last forced on to the witness stand. He there admitted that he only owned 1,250 shares of the new Waters-Pierce Company, and that the Standard owned 2,750. He admitted quite frankly that in order to evade the anti-Trust law of the State of Texas the Standard's 2,750 shares stood on the books in his name from May, 1900, to September, 1904. During this period the dividends were sent to Mr. Bayne, of the Seaboard National Bank of New York—a gentleman whose name my readers will recall as appearing in connection with the Standard's carefully concealed owner ship of the Security Oil Company of Texas. In June, 1904, Mr. H. C. Pierce was asked to transfer these 2,750 shares to Mr. Van Buren, who happens, oddly enough, to be the son-in-law of Mr. J. D. Archbold, whose name has appeared so often in previous chapters.
During all this time that the Waters-Pierce Oil Company was posing as an " independent " business it was carrying on a very large and profitable trade in the adjoining Republic of Mexico. Although there are large natural deposits of petroleum in Mexico, the Waters Pierce Company preferred to import crude oil from Texas and Oklahoma, refine it in Mexico, and sell it at a price which returned a profit of 600 per cent. on the invested capital. But the Mexican Government desired to develop the natural resources of the Republic, and as they were quite tired of the high prices of the Standard, which had a monopoly, they granted large oil concessions to the Pearson interests, which are headed by Lord Cowdray. The Pearson firm had executed large railway, waterworks, and harbour contracts for the Mexican Government, and they developed the petroleum resources of Mexico so rapidly that the Standard, which was hampered by a duty of $4i a barrel on all the crude oil they im ported, soon began to feel the pinch.