Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1907 — STANDARD OIL'S PAMPHLET [ARTICLE]

STANDARD OIL'S PAMPHLET

Mends It Out to Its Stockholders and Denies Guilt. New York. Aug. 21.—While President Roosevelt was telling the people at Provincetown, Mass., tliat he intended to send to prison certain‘'malefactors,” presumably the Standard Oil people, those people were sending out a pamphlet to the company’s stockholders in which it is declared that the Standard Oil is innocent of any real violation of law and is the object of a conspiracy between the administration and the press “uplifters.” Referring to Judge Landis’ decision, the pamphlet says: “If the Judgment in question be allowed to stand, the company will be forced to pay $20,000 (that is, fifty times the value of the oil) for every carload carried over the Alton coud during two years at an open 6-cent rate —a rate used over three competing railroads for from ten to fourteen \eare.

“The trial judge refused to allow proof that the 6-ceut rate had been Hied by the Chicago and Eastern Illinois, and was therefore a legal rate. He refused to allow proof that linseed oil. for iustance, was carried at 8 cents He Insisted that 18 cents was the only legal* rate for oil, when no one had ever paid it, and when It was authoritatively sworn that it did not apply to oil.” The pamphlet def-lares the presss is “swayed alike by socialistic outcry from below and political pressure from above.” and continues: “As proof of the latter, it may be noted tlint In the president’s message of May 4, 1900. attack was made on the Standard jOll company for the purpose of forcing the passage of the bill remitting the duty on denatured alcohol a measure In which the company was not interested. On May 17. 1006, the issue of Commissioner Garfield’s report on petroleum transportation, a tissue of old misrepresentations, was timed to Influence the Hepburn rate bill, then before congress. “On May 20, 1907, while Judge Landis had still under consideration the judgment in the Chicago and Alton rate case. Commissioner Smith’s partisan report on these line* was made public. The commissioner’s second report on the petroleum prices and profits, a wholly false deduction from Incomplete facts, was sent In advance to the press for publication on Aug. 5, in the knowledge that Judge Landis would pronounce judgment Aug. 3. Here surely Is evidence of a combination Influencing all sources of public opinion, disturbing the orderly disposition of Justice, sanctioning in advance, and supporting when made, the most sensational opinions and judgments hostile to the company.”