The truth is, blackmail and every other business vice is the natural result of the peculiar business practices of the Stand ard. If business is to be treated as warfare and not as a peace ful pursuit, as they have persisted in treating it, they cannot expect the men they are fighting to lie down and die without a struggle. If they get special privileges they must expect their competitors to struggle to get them. If they will find it more profitable to buy out a refinery than to let it live, they must expect the owner to get an extortionate price if he can. And when they complain of these practices and call them black mail, they show thin sporting blood. They must not expect to monopolise hard dealings, if they do oil.
These are considerations of the ethical effect of such busi ness practices on those outside and in competition. As for those within the organisation there is one obvious effect worth noting. The Standard men as a body have nothing to do with public affairs, except as it is necessary to manipulate them for the "good of the oil business." The notion that the busi ness man must not appear in politics and religion save as a "stand-patter"—not even as a thinking, aggressive force—is demoralising, intellectually and morally. Ever since 1872 the organisation has appeared in politics only to oppose legisla tion obviously for the public good. At that time the oil indus try was young, only twelve years old, and it was suffering from too rapid growth, from speculation, from rapacity of rail roads, but it was struggling manfully with all these questions. The question of railroad discriminations and extortions was one of the "live questions" of the country. The oil men as a mass were allied against it. The theory that the railroad was a public servant bound by the spirit of its charter to treat all shippers alike, that fair play demanded open equal rates to all, was generally held in the oil country at the time Mr. Rockefel ler and his friends sprung the South Improvement Company. One has only to read the oil journals at the time of the Oil War of 1872 to see how seriously all phases of the transporta tion question were considered. The country was a unit against the rebate system. Agreements were signed with the railroads that all rates henceforth should be equal. The signatures were not on before Mr. Rockefeller had a rebate, and gradually others got them until the Standard had won the advantages it expected the South Improvement Company to give it. From that time to this Mr. Rockefeller has had to fight the best sentiment of the oil country and of the country at large as to what is for the public good. He and his colleagues kept a strong alliance in Washington fighting the Interstate Com merce Bill from the time the first one was introduced in 1876 until the final passage in 1887. Every measure looking to the freedom and equalisation of transportation has met his oppo sition, as have bills for giving greater publicity to the opera tions of corporations. In many of the great state Legislatures
one of the first persons to be pointed out to a visitor is the Standard Oil lobbyist. Now, no one can dispute the right of the Standard Oil Company to express its opinions on pro posed legislation. It has the same right to do this as all the rest of the world. It is only the character of its opposition which is open to criticism, the fact that it is always fight ing measures which equalise privileges and which make it more necessary for men to start fair and play fair in doing business.
Of course the effect of directly practising many of their methods is obvious. For example, take the whole system of keeping track of independent business. There are practices required which corrupt every man who has a hand in them. One of the most deplorable things about it is that most of the work is done by youngsters. The freight clerk who reports the independent oil shipments for a fee of five or ten dollars a month is probably a young man, learning his first lessons in corporate morality. If he happens to sit in Mr. Rockefeller's church on Sundays, through what sort of a haze will he re ceive the teachings? There is something alarming to those who believe that commerce should be a peaceful pursuit, and who believe that the moral law holds good throughout the entire range of human relations, in knowing that so large a body of young men in this country are consciously or uncon sciously growing up with the idea that business is war and that morals have nothing to do with its practice.
And what are we going to do about it? for it is our busi ness. We, the people of the United States, and nobody else, must cure whatever is wrong in the industrial situation, typi fied by this narrative of the growth of the Standard Oil Com pany. That our first task is to secure free and equal transporta tion privileges by rail, pipe and waterway is evident. It is not an easy matter. It is one which may require operations which will seem severe ; but the whole system of discrimination has been nothing but violence, and those who have profited by it cannot complain if the curing of the evils they have wrought bring hardship in turn on them. At all events, until the transportation matter is settled, and settled right, the monopolistic trust will be with us, a leech on our pockets, a barrier to our free efforts.
As for the ethical side, there is no cure but in an increasing scorn of unfair play—an increasing sense that a thing won by breaking the rules of the game is not worth the winning. When the business man who fights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competitor off the track by other than fair competi tive methods, receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by his fellows that the doctor or lawyer who is "unprofes sional," the athlete who abuses the rules, receives, we shall have gone a long way toward making commerce a fit pursuit for our young men.