and did complain of what it cost them to handle this oil, of storage and carrying charges, of the deductions for shrinkage and for loss by fire. If the Standard had not forced out every competing line, there would have been sufficient competition to have lowered these items—which at the present prices soon ate up the value of oil. And they fell to rehearsing the raids by which the various transporting companies which had fought themselves into independent positions had been forced into combination, their chief grievances being naturally the affair of the Tidewater. In this state of mind, and incited by the Buffalo, the Payne, and the Rice cases, it was natural enough that when suddenly, at the opening of 1887, a bill evidently intended to strike a blow at the Standard was introduced into the Legislature of Pennsylvania, the oil producers rushed pell-mell to support it. The opening sentence was enough for them. It was "An act to punish corporations."[1] This was what they had always sought, some way to punish Mr. Rockefeller for what they believed to be a conspiracy against their interests. The way in which the Billingsley Bill, as it was called from the name of its father, proposed to punish the Standard was to make it a criminal offence to charge in excess of certain rates it fixed—ten cents a barrel for gathering and delivering oil to storing points (the current rate was twenty cents); one-sixtieth of one per cent. per barrel a day for storage, with no storage charge for the first thirty days (one-half of one per cent. was the current rate); one-half of one per cent. shrinkage, instead of three per cent. Besides, the bill required the Standard to go to any well on application of the owner, it made the company liable for damage, and it required it to deliver oil of like kind and quality as that received.
The enthusiasm with which the bill was greeted was cooled a little by the announcement that as it stood it was
- ↑ See Appendix, Number 50. The Billingsley Bill.
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