Then ensued the rate-war which lasted so many months in Mexico, but which is reported to be now compromised. The Waters-Pierce Company built a refinery in Mexico, and spent large sums in buying Mexican oil lands. They cut prices so heavily that they sold oil under cost, but the natural advantages of the Pearson interests were so great as to render them impregnable, and the Eagle Oil Company was successfully launched on the London market by Lord Cowdray's firm to carry out extensive developments on the oil-bearing lands they own. During the bitter contest there was plenty of evidence of the existence of the Standard's Press bureau, the head of which gets the liberal salary of $12,500 a year. Articles appeared in London financial news papers predicting the imminent ruin of the Pearson interests, and obviously intended to stop the English investor from backing their flotations. According to a statement recently published in the United States, a more subtle campaign seems to have been carried out against President Diaz, who favours the Pearson interests. Many officials of the Govern ment, including a son of President Diaz, have become shareholders of the Pearson local oil company, being naturally desirous of developing their national resources and of fighting this American monoply. Now under the title of " Barbarous Mexico," an ostensibly humani tarian campaign was opened in newspapers and magazines of the United States of America against the alleged harsh treatment of the Yaqui Indians by the Mexican Government. In the Cosmopolitan Magazine of March, 1910, it was categorically asserted by Mr. Alfred H. Lewis, one of the foremost American magazine writers, that this campaign had been inspired by the Oil Trust. They were determined to be revenged on President Diaz, and therefore they induced a number of well-meaning Americans—who haven't time to put down the public lynching of negroes in the United States—to plead the cause of the unfortunate semi-enslaved Yaqui Indians. I cannot prove this charge, but Mr. Lewis says it is believed by Americans resident in Texas and Mexico. From the nature of the case this allegation is difficult to substantiate, but for the present purpose it is a sufficiently significant fact that a writer of Mr. Lewis's reputation should believe that such a Machiavellian scheme is possible. That the Standard will stick at nothing appears from the fact that when Lord Cowdray visited New York in June, 1910, he was shadowed by their detectives. The Standard Oil Trust issued a formal denial of this charge, but Lord Cowdray repeated it and reaffirmed it in the Daily Mail.
Turning next to Canada, we find that the British flag has been no protection against the Standard's invasion. Here, too, railway dis crimination was the principal weapon employed, and this was aided by the legislation which the Standard obtained at Ottawa permitting them to ship their oil along the international waterways and the Canadian canals in bulk steamers to Canadian ports, where it was easy to transfer it to tank cars. In 1898 the late Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, author of " Wealth Against Commonwealth," wrote as follows to the present writer with regard to these discriminations :— My information came direct from the attorney of one of the principal Canadian refiners. This refiner• carried on his busi ness with my book at his elbow, and he told his attorney that precisely the things that I had exposed in that book were there and then being done to him. The discrimination was
managed by some manipulation of the rates with regard to shipments in barrels. The Oil Trust had barrelling works of its own at certain points, from which it received rates at dis criminations that killed the profits of the home refiners who did not have these central stations. The refiner I speak of was prosperous, liked the business, and would have continued in it but for this railroad discrimination. He made every possible effort by appeals to the railroad people in Canada to remedy the wrong, but found them as determined to favour the American Trust as railroads in the United States.
Finally the Standard clinched the matter by purchasing a Canadian refinery, which it runs as the Imperial Oil Company, a nice patriotic sort of name which no doubt appeals to the Canadian public. With this refinery and the railroad discriminations they are as powerful in Canada as they are in the United States.
When one turns to the Far East it is surprising to discover that the Standard has not had things all its own way. It does a huge business in China and Manchuria in case oil, but it has there had to fight, first, Russian oil shipped in bulk, and, when that fell off, the competition of the Dutch East Indies. Several of these islands are very rich in petroleum, and, in my opinion, its failure to secure a footing there was the Standard's first great defeat. The story is told with commendable bluntness and candour by Mr. Robinson, British Consul at Amsterdam, in his annual report for the year 1897 (Foreign Office Consular Reports, No. 2,054). He says At present a very important question has been raised by the attempt of the well-known American monopolist under taking, the Standard Oil Company, to acquire a footing in the Dutch East Indies by the purchase of the shares of the Moeara Enim Company, an important concession in Sumatra. An extraordinary general meeting of the latter company was to have been held in the last days of February for the purpose of ratifying the agreement with the Standard Oil Company, but the Dutch Government has interfered by the categorical declaration that no concession will be granted to a company under the control of the American monster monopoly, and the meeting has naturally been postponed. It remains to be seen whether the financial power of the Standard Oil Company can be effectively resisted by such steps, but the Government seems quite determined to use all possible means to this end, and the course which it has adopted will certainly be a popular one, threatened as Netherland India is by an " imperium in imperio " of this description. The agitation against the Standard Oil Company's monopoly, in so far as this inflicts on this country all the dangers and disasters caused by an exclusive supply of low-flashing oil, is a constantly increasing one.
The result was that the Moeara Enim Com pany were unable to sell, and the Standard has never been able to get into the Dutch Indies. Worse still, the Moeara Enim and two other Dutch petroleum companies were absorbed by the Royal Dutch Petroleum Com pany, and this in its turn became in 1907 allied with the Shell Transport and Trading Company of London, of which Sir Marcus Samuel is the head.