The stopping of the oil supply finally forced the South Improvement Company to recognise the Producers' Union officially by asking that a committee of the body be appointed to confer with them on a compromise. The producers sent back a pertinent answer. They believed the South Improve ment Company meant to monopolise the okbusiness. If that was so they could not consider a compromise with it. If they were wrong, they would be glad to be enlightened, and they asked for information. First: the charter under which the South Improvement Company was organised. Second: the articles of association. Third : the officers' names. Fourth: the contracts with the railroads which signed them. Fifth: the general plan of management. Until we know these things, the oil men declared, we can no more negotiate with you than we could sit down to negotiate with a burglar as to his privileges in our house.
The Producers' Union did not get the information they asked from the company at that time, but it was not long before they had it, and much more. The committee which they had appointed to write a history of the South Improve ment Company reported on March zo, and in April the Congressional Committee appointed at the insistence of the oil men made its investigation. The former report was pub lished broadcast, and is readily accessible to-day. The Con gressional Investigation was not published officially, and no trace of its work can now be found in Washington, but while it was going on reports were made in the newspapers of the OirRegions, and at its close the Producers' Union published in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a pamphlet called "A History of the Rise and Fall of the South Improvement Company," which contains the full testimony taken by the committee. This pam phlet is rare, the writer never having been able to find a copy save in three or four private collections. The most important part of it is the testimony of Peter H. Watson, the president, and W. G. Warden, the secretary of the South Improvement Company. It was in these documents that the oil men found full justification for the war they were carrying on and for the losses they had caused themselves and others. Noth ing, indeed, could have been more damaging to a corpora tion than the publication of the charter of the South Im provement Company. As its president told the Congressional Investigating Committee, when he was under examination, "this charter was a sort of clothes-horse to hang a scheme upon." As a matter of fact it was a clothes-horse big enough to hang the earth upon. It granted powers practically unlim ited. There really was no exaggeration in the summary of its powers made and scattered broadcast by the irate oil men in their "History of the Rise and Fall of the South Improve ment Company" :* The South Improvement Company can own, contract, or operate any work, busi ness, or traffic (save only banking); may hold and transfer any kind of property, real or personal; hold and operate on any leased property (oil territory, for instance); make any kind of contract; deal in stock, securities, and funds; loan its credit, guarantee any one's paper; manipulate any industry; may seize upon the lands of other parties for railroading or any other purpose; may absorb the improvements, property or franchises of any other company, ad infinitum; may fix the fares, tolls, or freights to be charged on lines of transit operated by it, or on any business it gives to any other company or line, without limit.
Its capital stock can be expanded or "watered" at liberty; it can change its name and location at pleasure; can go anywhere and do almost anything. It is not a Penn sylvania corporation only; it can, so far as these enactments are valid, or are confirmed by other Legislatures, operate in any state or territory; its directors must be only citizens of the United States—not necessarily of Pennsylvania. It is responsible to no one; its stockholders are only liable to the amount of their stock in it; its directors, when wielding all the princely powers of the corporation, are also responsible only to the amount of their stock in it; it may control the business of the continent and hold and transfer millions of property, and yet be rotten to the core. It is responsible to no one; makes no reports of its acts or financial condition; its records and delibera tions are secret; its capital illimitable; its object unknown. It can be here to-day, to-morrow away. Its domain is the whole country; its business everything. Now it is petroleum it grasps and monopolises; next year it may be iron, coal, cotton, or breadstuffs. They are landsmen granted perpetual letters of marque to prey upon all commerce everywhere.
When the course of this charter through the Pennsylvania Legislature came to be traced, it was found to be devious and uncertain. The company had been incorporated in 1871, and vested with all the "powers, privileges, duties and obli gations" of an earlier company—incorporated in April, 1870 —the Pennsylvania Company; both of them were children of that interesting body known as the "Tom Scott Legisla ture." The act incorporating the company was not published until after the oil war ; its sponsor was never known, and no votes on it are recorded. The origin of the South Improve ment Company has always remained in darkness. It was one of several "improvement" companies chartered in Penn sylvania at about the same time, and enjoying the same com mercial carte blanche.