portion of which is confessedly water. In answer to the statement that the price of oil has been reduced steadily by the operations of the trust, it is charged that no thanks is due to the trust for this benefit. The trust has always wished to put up the price, but the continual increase in the production of the oil fields has obliged the trust to make low prices in order to dispose of its stock. There are also about one hundred independent refineries competing with the trust, and their competition may have had some influence in keeping prices down. It is undoubtedly true that the economy in the storage, transportation, and distribution of oil by the systematic methods of the Standard Oil Trust has made it possible to deliver oil to the consumer at a small fraction of its cost a decade ago. But it is also true that a good part of the reduction in the price of oil is due to the abundant production of the petroleum wells, which have furnished us so lavish a supply. The principal charges against this trust, made by those who were conversant with its operations, have never been that it was particularly oppressive to consumers of oil; but that, in the attempt to crush out its competitors, it has not hesitated to use, in ways fair and foul, its enormous strength and influence to ruin those who dared to compete with it.
In a later chapter we