Standard had refined about fifteen hundred barrels a day, and now
suddenly its capacity jumped to more than twelve thousand
barrels. This one strategic move had made Rockefeller master of
about one-third of all the oil business in the United States, and
this fact explains the rapidity with which the other citadels
fell. There is no evidence that the Standard exercised any
pressure upon the great refineries in New York, Pittsburgh, and
Philadelphia. Indeed these concerns manifested an eagerness to
join. The fact that, unlike the Cleveland refiners, many of the
firms in these other cities took Standard stock, and so became
parts of the new organization, is in itself significant. They
evidently realized that they were casting their fortunes with the
winning side. The huge shipments which the Standard now
controlled explain this change in front. Every day Mr.
Rockefeller could send from Cleveland to the seaboard a train,
sixty cars long, loaded with the blue barrels containing his
celebrated liquid. That was a consideration for which any
railroad would at that time sell its soul. And the New York
Central road promptly made this sacrifice. Hardly had the ink
dried on its written promise not to grant any rebates when it
began granting them to the Standard Oil Company.

In those days the railroad rate was not the sacred, immutable
thing which it subsequently became, although the argument for
equal treatment of shippers existed theoretically just as
strongly forty years ago as it does today. The rebate was just as
illegal then as it is at present; there was no precise statute,
it is true, which made it unlawful until the Interstate Commerce
Act was passed in 1887; but the common law had always prohibited
such discriminations. In the seventies and eighties, however,