eded. Only
the most hazy evidence exists that the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews,
and Flagler greatly profited from rebates. In fact, refined oil was not
transported from Cleveland to the seaboard by railroad until 1870, the
year that this firm dissolved; practically all of the product then went
by way of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. Possibly the Rockefeller
firm did get occasional rebates on crude oil from the oil regions to
the refineries, but so did their competitors. It is therefore not likely
that such favors had great influence in making this single firm the most
successful in the largest refining center. With the organization of
the Standard Oil Company, however, rebates became a more important
consideration.

The turning-point in the history of the oil industry came when the
Rockefeller interests acquired the Cleveland refineries. The details
concerning this act of generalship are fairly well known. The South
Improvement Company is a corporation that necessarily bulks large in
the history of the Standard Oil. Mr. Rockefeller and his associates have
always disclaimed the parentage of this organization. They assert--and
their assertion is doubtless true--that the only responsible begetters
were Thomas A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and
certain refineries in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia which, though they
were afterwards absorbed by the Standard, were at that time their
competitors. These refiners and the Pennsylvania, over which the
Standard Oil then was making no shipments, thus represented a group,
composed of railroads and refiners, which was antagonistic to the
Rockefeller interests. The South Improvement Company was an association
of refiners with which the railroads, chiefly the Pennsylvania, the New
York Central, and the Erie, made exclusive contracts for shipping oil.
Under these contracts rates to the seaboard were to be generally raised,
though the members of the South Improvement Company were to receive
liberal rebates. The refiners of Cleveland and Pittsburgh were to get
lower rates than the refiners located in the oil regions. But the clause
in these contracts that caused the greatest amazement and indignation
was one which gave the inside group rebates on every barrel of oil
shipped by its competitors.

It would be difficult to imagine any transaction more wicked than these
contracts. Carried into execution they inevitably meant the extinction
of every refiner who had not bee