Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1906 — TO FIGHT OIL TRUST. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TO FIGHT OIL TRUST.

BUIT IS BEGUN AGAINST STANDARD COMPANY. Attorney General Moody Starts Proceedings In St. Loafs Under the Sherman Act Against Parent and Seventy Const!tuent Corporations.Attorney General Moody, acting through tlie resident United States dis- ' tFi<-t attorney, liegan proceedings

Thursday against the Standard Oil of New Jersey under . the , Sherman anti-trust act by tiling in the United States Circuit I Court at St. Jxmis I a petjtlbjiJiileriufty I against it and its I seventy constituent | corporations an d partnerships and

seven individual defendants. The Attorney General asks that the combination be declared unlawful pud that it be enjoined from entering any contract or combination in restraint vrf trade. The following statement was prepared and made public by Attorney General Moody: “In June. by direction of the I’Tesident. Messrs. Kellogg and Morrison were rippointed by me special assistant attorneys general to act "with Assistant to the Attorney—Genera 1 Purdy to make an investigation of the relations of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey to the business of refining,, transporting, distributing and selling oil throughout tlie United States; to ascertain nil the facts, awl to -reportwhether or not in their opinion there lias" "Been - IT violationof the Sherman anti-trust law by the Standard- OH Company of New Jersey or the persons or corporations associated with or managing it Counsel have completed that duty and the report of their investigation has received careful consideration by the President and his Cabinet.'

Chartres Set Forth by Moody. “The Information available to the department tends to show: | . That the various corporations and limited partnerships under the control, in the manner hereinafter stated, of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey produce, transport and sell about 90 per cent of the refined oil produced, transported and sold in the United States for domestic use, and - about the same proportion of relined oil exported from the • United Slates. That this share of the business has been procured by a course of action which, beginning in 1870, has continued under the direction of the same persons, in the main, down to the present time. That these persons now surviving are John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, Henry 11. Rogers. Henry M. Fltgler, John D. Archbold, Oliver 11. Payne and , Charles M. I’iatt. I That the design throughout of the persons having control of the enterprise has been to suppress competition in the production, transportation and sale of refined oil. and to obtain, as far as possible, a monopoly therein. That between IS7O and ISB2 the design was effected through agreejjents made between many persons and corporations engaged in this business. That during the seven years following the same individual defendants, as a majority of the liquidating trustees, were pretending to liquidate the trust, but as a matter of fact were managing all ot the corporations in the same way and exercising the same control over them. That the individual defendants, ?n 1899, increased the stock of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey from $10.0G0.(G0 to $110,000,000; that said company was then a producing and selling cotpora'ion, and that they added to its corporate powers the power of purchasing stock in other companies and practically all of the powers exercised by the trustees unde- the j unlawful trust agreement of 1882. That the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, then taking the place of the trustees, acquired all of the stock of the corporations theretofore held and controlled by the trustees, paying therefor by the issue of its own shares in exchange ; that the president of the board of trustees became the president of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and that the same persons (the individual defendants) who had directed the business of the trust thou assumed the dir°c

tion of the business of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and ever since have continued it. That the purpose and effect of the use of the Standard Oil Company of New I Jersey as a holding company was precisc- . ly the same as the purpose and effect of the appointment of the trustees hereinbefore referred to —namely, to suppress competition between the corporations an if limited partnerships whose stock was first held by the trustees and then by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. That by the foregoing methods, aided by the establishment of railroad rates for transportation which discriminated in favor of the corporations whose stock was held by the holding company, that company hajj been enabled to obtain, in large section* of the country, a monopoly of the sale of refined oil, with the result that the prices to the consumer within the territory where the monopoly prevails are very much higher than within the territory whore competition to some extent still exists. John D. Rockefeller Indicted. John D. Rockefeller, M. G. Yllaa, treasurer of the Standard OH Company of Ohio; J. M. Robertson, secretary. nnd 11. P. Mclntosh, din J-tor, were Indicted at Findlay by the grand jury. l>efore which 4he recent oil Inquiry was n*>|M<ned by County Prosecutor David. Remb warrants for Ro-ke-feller and the others Indicted wtv Issued Immediately and placed In the bands of Sheriff Groves. Advertise in this paper.

W. H. MOODY.