railroad men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Thomas A. Scott were
less interested in legal formalities than in getting freight.
They regarded transportation as a commodity to be bought and
sold, like so much sugar or wheat or coal, and they believed that
the ordinary principles which regulated private bargaining should
also regulate the sale of the article in which they dealt.
According to this reasoning, which was utterly false and
iniquitous, but generally prevalent at the time, the man who
shipped the largest quantities of oil should get the lowest rate.

The purchase of the Cleveland refineries made the Standard Oil
group the largest shippers and therefore they obtained the most
advantageous terms for transporting their product. Under these
conditions they naturally obtained the monopoly, the extent of
which has been already described. Their competitors could rage,
hold public meetings, start riots, threaten to lynch Mr.
Rockefeller and all his associates, but they could not long
survive in face of these advantages. The only way in which the
smaller shippers could overcome this handicap was by acquiring
new methods of transportation. It was this necessity that
inspired the construction of pipe lines; but the Standard, as
already described, succeeded in absorbing these just about as
rapidly as they were constructed.

Not only did the Standard obtain railroad rebates but it
developed the most death-dealing methods in its system of
marketing its oil. In these campaigns it certainly overstepped
the boundaries of legitimate business, even according to the
prevailing morals of its own or of any other time. While it
probably did not set fire to rival refineries, as it has