THE TRUST'S " TIED HOUSES " IN ENGLAND reserved until the end of my survey the examination of the Standard Oil Trust's operations in Great Britain, because, as they have not been investigated so closely here as they have been by various Legislative Commit tees in the United States, there is less official testimony to proceed upon. Many of the Trust's intrigues and agitations here can only be under stood by remembering what has been proved by direct testimony to have taken place in similar circumstances in the United States. In this way our preceding examination of the secret rebate, the bribery, the underselling, and all the other machinery of the Trust in its native home, will help us to understand a few things which are still obscure here. During the time when the Trust was growing up in America, the British consumer and the British oil-dealer were alike blissfully uncon scious of what was in store for them. For the first English news of the Trust we must turn to the evidence provided by Mr. (now Sir) Boverton Redwood, the distinguished chemist, whose subsequent appearances at so many public inquiries as a Standard Oil witness have been fitly rewarded by his selection as Petro leum Adviser to the Home Office ! This takes us back to the years 1877-8, when Mr. Boverton Redwood was the Secretary of the Petroleum Association, and visited America at their request to induce the American refiners to adopt the Abel (closed) tester in standardising their oil, and also to complain of certain impuri ties which were appearing in their consign ments. With regard to the first, Mr. Redwood's report to his association shows that he con ducted experiments with the Petroleum Com mittee of the New York Produce Exchange which satisfied them with the Abel tester, and we read that Mr. Paul Babcock took great interest in these experiments. Mr. Babcock was then a director of the Devoe Manufacturing Company, about this time bought by the Trust, and twenty years later he and Mr. Boverton Redwood met in London, both giving evidence before the Commons' Petroleum Committee against raising the flash-point of kerosene. Mr. Redwood met in 1877 a number of other persons whose names will be familiar to readers of my narrative. He, for example, visited the refinery of Messrs. Charles Pratt & Co., through the kindness of Mr. H. H. Rogers, and when he left New York he carried letters of introduction from Mr. Wm. Rockefeller,
Vice-President of the Standard Oil Company, to Colonel Payne, its Treasurer, in Cleveland, Ohio. Indeed, Mr. Redwood's tour seems to have been in the main a Standard Oil excursion, for in Philadelphia he visited Messrs. Warden and Frew (who were in the Trust), at Pittsburg he saw Mr. Charles Lockhart, of Lockhart and Frew (another Trust firm), and then at Cleveland he was taken over the Standard Oil works by Mr. Samuel Andrews (John D. Rockefeller's first partner). When he returned Mr. Redwood was the bearer of a letter from Mr. Wm. Rockefeller, dated December 19, 1877, couched in the best Standard Oil vein :— It is our desire to furnish at all times refined oil that will be acceptable to the trade of all countries. It is our wish and in tention that our products shall always reach the highest excel lence.
Whatever their wish might be, the prospect of making more money proved too strong for these philanthropists, and complaints continued from the English traders as to the bad quality of the oil sent here. In 1879 and again in 1884 Mr. F. W. Lockwood, a saponaceous Standard Oil expert, was sent here to gammon the Petroleum Association with some cock-and bull story. The second visit is referred to by Mr. Boverton Redwood in a report to the Petroleum Association, published in the Grocer of May 3, 1884. In it he explained that Mr. Lockwood attributed the complaints about the oil to the use of damp-clogged or hard lamp wicks. This great discovery was too much even for Mr. Redwood, who has never been a harsh critic of the Standard Oil Trust methods. He thus reported :— In conclusion, I desire to record as strongly possible my individual opinion that in their own interest the American refiners should forthwith institute such arrangements as will ensure the future maintenance of a satisfactory standard of quality. Considerable injury to the petroleum trade results from the distribution of such oil as is the subject of this report, consumers in many cases relinquishing the use of petroleum oil in favour of some other sort of light. Moreover, the American refiners should bear in mind that even now they have not a monopoly of the supply of mineral burning oil in this country, and they will find it necessary to pay much greater attention than heretofore to the quality of the oil they manufacture.