338.8 
 
 dl7w 
 
OAK ST. HDSF 
 
 
 
 mf- 
 
The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for Its return to the library from 
 n withdrawn on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 
 ore reasons for disciplinary action and may 
 result in dismissal from the University. 
 university of ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 APf! 2 9 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/waterspiercecaseOOadam 
 
HE WATERS PIERCE CASE 
 IN TEXAS 
 
 Compiled from the Series of Press Articles 
 Entitled : 
 
 battling With a Great 
 Corporation 
 
 
 By FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS 
 
 Author : 
 
 esident John Smith,” “The Kidnapped Millionaires,” “John Burt,” 
 “TheBottom of theWell,” “John Henry Smith,” 
 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS 
 
 1908 
 
 PUBLISHED BY SKINNER & KENNEDY 
 SAINT LOUIS. MO. 
 
HENRY CLAY PIERCE 
 
Hi, \ 
 
 INTROD U CTION 
 
 By Louis J. Wortham, Editor Fort Worth Star. 
 
 Those who have kept in touch with economic thought 
 and its literature in the last twenty years need no intro- 
 duction to Frederick Upham Adams, and will not require 
 extended comment on his writings. Years before it was 
 popular or profitable to take issue on the great questions 
 which now occupy the political stage, Mr. Adams fore- 
 saw the coming conflict, and outlined with wonderful 
 accuracy the lines on which it would be waged. 
 
 Like many who have attained distinction in the liter- 
 ary field, Mr. Adams obtained his early training in the 
 practical and exacting school of journalism. He was a 
 reporter on Chicago papers in the exciting period when 
 the great labor movement gained its foothold. He was 
 a witness of the Haymarket Riot, and attained his first 
 recognition as a writer by his earnest and successful 
 championship of the cause of the oppressed coal min- 
 ers of Illinois and Indiana, at a time when merciless op- 
 erators did not hesitate to starve whole communities for 
 the sake of increasing dividends on watered stocks. 
 
 His writings attracted the attention of such men as 
 Edward Bellamy, Henry D. Lloyd and Henry George. It 
 was at the suggestion of the latter that Mr. Adams wrote 
 his first book, “President John Smith.” This was the 
 original contribution of note to that now important 
 school of American fiction which has for its motive a 
 consideration of the issues incident to the rapid develop- 
 ment of industrial trusts. It was a prediction of the 
 growth and ultimate supremacy of organized wealth — 
 one written at a time w’hen the mass of the people and 
 politicians and editors scoffed at the suggestion that mon- 
 opolies would be able to secure a permanent foothold 
 in a country so great in .extent and rich in resources as 
 the United States. 
 
 Mr. Adams wrote “President John Smith” in 1892, 
 and published it as a serial in the Chicago Times in the 
 following year. The trusts were then in their swaddling 
 clothes, but the picture of their future reads as if written 
 yesterday. In book form the novel attained instant pop- 
 ularity, and with the profits Mr. Adams established “The 
 Xew Time Magazine,” the pioneer periodical devoted to 
 such now popular experiments as seek direct legislation 
 through the initiative and referendum, the government 
 ownership of railroads, the municipal ownership of public 
 utilities, income and inheritance taxes, and other radical 
 conceptions which have already been installed in some 
 of the nations of Europe, and which are now claiming 
 the thought of this republic. 
 
 Hardly a writer and not a politician now in the 
 public eye then cared or dared take the advanced ground 
 occupied by Frederick Upham Adams. He boldly asserted 
 that the logic of events pointed to the inevitable supre- 
 macy of the trusts, asserted that it was an evolutionary 
 movement which could not be thwarted or much re- 
 tarded by legislation or judicial mandate, and insisted 
 then, as he does now, that since the causes were basic 
 the remedies must also be basic. His contention was and 
 
 is that certain services and industries naturally are mo- 
 nopolistic, and that such natural monopolies must be 
 owned or controlled by the State, or by the National 
 Government. 
 
 Between 1893 and 1897 there were more than 750,000 
 copies of “President John Smith” sold in the United 
 States. Certain editors and politicians in Texas have 
 presumed to question the right of Mr. Adams to discuss 
 the issues involved in the prosecution of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company. Many of these gentlemen probably never 
 heard of Mr. Adams until his first article on that subject 
 appeared. It will interest them to know that in 1896 
 more than 60,000 copies of “President John Smith” were 
 in circulation in Texas, and that such was its influence 
 that twenty or more Texas papers bore his name at the 
 head of their editorial pages as their candidate for Pres- 
 ident of the United States. Yes, Texas was willing 
 to listen to Mr. Adams at a time when many of his 
 present critics were puzzling over their school books, 
 and Texas is always willing to listen to a man who has 
 an intelligent message to deliver. 
 
 Millions of people have read Mr. Adams’ studies of 
 the history of the framing of the Constitution of the 
 United States, as contained in his masterly series of 
 essays, entitled, “The Shades of the Fathers.” In recent 
 years the leading papers of the country have published 
 his series of current economic studies under the title of 
 “Colonel Monroe’s Doctrine.” In “The Kidnapped Mil- 
 lionaires” IMr. Adams presented the most vivid portrait 
 ever drawn of our system of finance and industry, and 
 he pictured and predicted with almost uncanny accuracy 
 the panic and business depression which has marked this 
 present year. 
 
 Space does not permit mention of his many other 
 books and contributions to literature in recent years. 
 The wide-spread interest all over the United States in 
 municipal ownership has its unquestioned origin in a 
 series of articles published five years ago by Mr. Adams, 
 entitled “How Cities are Governed in Great Britain.” 
 These were prepared after a year spent in the study of 
 the result attained by municipalities in Scotland and Eng- 
 land, and were published in the leading papers in every 
 large city in the United States. 
 
 Notable work of this character qualifies Mr. Adams 
 to write with a measure of authority on economic ques- 
 tions — and the attempt to oust the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company from Texas and to confiscate its property by 
 process of law involves a question of overshadowing 
 economic interest to the whole country, and one which, 
 as Mr. .^dams asserts, must finally be settled by the 
 people, and not by the plottings of unscrupulous poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 Those Texas editors who have presumed to question 
 the right of Frederick Upham Adams to address the peo- 
 ple of the Lone Star State as a democrat, must be rc- 
 
 — 3 — 
 
 / 
 
 >/ 
 
minded that he has probably done more than any other 
 individual, with the single exception of William Jennings 
 Bryan, to arouse public thought and action along the 
 lines which will be incorporated in the next Democratic 
 National Platform. Mr. Adams was the personal selec- 
 tion of Mr. Bryan for the important position of Chief 
 of the Literary and Press Bureau in the campaign of 
 1896. In the campaign of 1892 Mr. Adams had filled 
 with distinction the same position in the Western branch 
 of the Democratic National Committee— the campaign 
 which placed Grover Cleveland in the presidential chair — 
 and it was not his fault that Mr. Bryan did not achieve 
 victory in the famous “First Battle.” 
 
 In the campaign of 1896 Mr. Adams furnished edi- 
 torials and campaign material for more than 7,500 demo- 
 cratic papers. Mr. Adams enjoys the warm personal 
 friendship and admiration of William Jennings Bryan, 
 has traveled with him in England and on the Continent 
 on his tours of investigation, and may be depended on 
 to do splendid service under his leadership in the com- 
 ing campaign. 
 
 Whatever may be said of the merits of the contro- 
 versy, it cannot be denied that Mr. Adams has rendered 
 the people of Texas a service by preparing a history of 
 the incidents which have surrounded the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company. He did not undertake this task until he 
 was in possesion of what he believed to be absolute proof 
 that this great trading concern was not a part of the 
 Standard Oil Trust, and until he was convinced that its 
 record and its policy have been deliberately misrepre- 
 sented and vilified by reckless and desperate politicians^ 
 aided and abetted by business rivals. 
 
 For more than four months Mr. Adams’ articles 
 appeared weekly in the leading papers of Texas. F’or 
 years the enemies of Senator Bailey have conducted a 
 
 campaign based on falsehood. Jealous of his genius and 
 of the love and admiration which Texans bear to him, 
 they hoped to encompass his political ruin by linking 
 his name with the Standard Oil company through the 
 Waters Pierce. Mr. Adams has helped to rout them. 
 He has piled fact on fact with merciless methods of ac- 
 curacy and logic. One by one he has disproved they 
 charges made against Mr. H. C. Pierce and his company/ 
 The best writers and lawyers of Texas have attempted 
 to counteract the effect of these articles from the pen 
 of the author of “President John Smith,” but have 
 not been able successfully to refute one essential point 
 in the history of the case as he presents it. 
 
 Mr. Adams has placed the undeniable facts and the 
 official court records in public print, and they have been 
 read by thousands who now know the truth and who at 
 last comprehend the motives of those whose purpose has 
 been deliberately to deceive them. 
 
 The people of Texas are sincerely anxious to correct 
 by legal methods the corporate abuses which have de- 
 veloped with the growth and prosperity of the State, but 
 they have no desire to punish a corporation because of 
 its success, neither is it their intent to visit on Mr. Pierce 
 or his company a vengeance inspired by falsehood and 
 directed against Senator Joseph W. Bailey. 
 
 The story of the Waters Pierce Oil company as told 
 by Mr. Adams is far different from the one with which 
 political audiences have become familiar from listening 
 to the orators who have preached the gospel of hate. Mr. 
 Adams is secure in his fame as an author and a historian, 
 but the chapters which follow rest on more than the 
 untarnished reputation of a writer; they are fortified by 
 official court records and the sworn evidence of unim- 
 peachable witnesses. 
 
 LOUIS J. WORTHAM. 
 
BATTLING WITH A GREAT CORPORATION 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 WHAT WILL BE PROVED 
 
 A lawyer, in arguing a case before judge or jury, 
 usually begins by presenting a digest of the points he 
 proposes to prove or disprove by creditable witnesses or 
 by the citation of facts and evidence. I shall follow 
 this method of procedure, and offer this brief preface 
 to the summary of points which will then be stated: 
 
 The prosecution of the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 has been marked by a campaign of misrepresentation and 
 by a distortion and a suppression of facts which has 
 placed that trading organization in a false light before 
 the people of Texas and of the great Southwest in which 
 it was founded, and the consumers of which it has served 
 for more than a third of a century. I take it that the 
 intelligent citizens of that section of the country are de- 
 sirous of correcting those corporate abuses which have 
 developed with new and changing systems of industry, 
 but I also believe and know that they have no intent to 
 wreak vengeance on a corporation because of its suc- 
 cess, neither is it their desire to inflict unmerited punish- 
 ment on a business concern or an individual, especially 
 when such punishment is demanded by demagogues and 
 politicians seeking personal advantage by appealing to 
 passion and prejudice. 
 
 I shall prove conclusively that a campaign of this 
 character has been waged against the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company, and I shall prove that most of the leaders in 
 this crusade of abuse and misrepresentation are poli- 
 ticians who have forfeited the respect and confidence of 
 their constituents, and who now seek, offices and patron- 
 age by an attempt to charge the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany with offenses of which it is innocent. 
 
 The points and issues to which I shall give special 
 attention may thus be enumerated: 
 
 First: The industrial advantages secured by the 
 
 Waters Pierce Oil company is not the result of a trade 
 conspiracy. It is an incident in a world-wide revolu- 
 tion which has decreed that the former system, or lack 
 of system, of cut-throat competition shall be supplanted 
 by one in which each man’s hand is not constantly raised 
 against his fellows. It is an incident in that vast evolu- 
 tionary change which has decreed that industrial co-opera-' 
 tion, in some form, shall take the place of merciless and 
 destructive competition. It raises the most vital question 
 which ever has confronted civilization. It cannot be 
 solved by Texas; it cannot be finally solved by the United 
 States; it will be adjusted by irresistible evolutionary 
 happenings, and the problem is one demanding patriotic 
 thought and sober action, and not a blind response* to 
 every expedient suggested by reckless and heedless poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 - Second: The charge has been made and the general 
 impression created that the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 was founded by the Standard Oil Trust, and that from its 
 inception it has masqueraded as an independent company, 
 but that in reality it has ever been an integral part of a 
 Rockefeller conspiracy. I shall prove that the founda- 
 tion for the Waters Pierce Oil company was laid by 
 John Robert Finlay when John D. Rockefeller was a 
 school boy, and that Henry Clay Pierce pushed it to suc- 
 cess long before the Standard Oil company was able to 
 challenge opposition. I shall prove that Henry Clay 
 
 Pierce, and no one else, planned and brought about the 
 trade supremacy of the Waters Pierce Oil company in 
 Texas and the Southwest. 
 
 Third: The chief complaint against the Waters' 
 
 Pierce Oil company is that the Standard Oil Trust owns 
 a majority of its stock. I shall prove that this stock was 
 acquired by the Rockefeller interests against the protest^ 
 of Mr. Pierce, and I shall also prove that there was then 
 no law and no public sentiment against one corporatron 
 holding the stock of another. 
 
 Fourth: I shall prove that for more than twenty- 
 
 five years Henry Clay Pierce has stoutljr and successfully 
 resisted all attempts of the Standard Oil company to 
 subject the Waters Pierce to its control, and I shall also 
 prove that Mr. Pierce is the one oil merchant in the 
 United States who has been able to perpetuate the name 
 and independence of a great trading company against the 
 aggressions of the Standard — and yet he and his company 
 have been singled out for the most merciless and unfair 
 prosecution ever conducted in the name of a State. 
 
 Fifth: I shall prove conclusively that the Waters 
 
 Pierce Oil company has succeeded in Texas and in its 
 southwestern territory, not because of any association or 
 affiliation with the Standard Oil Trust or with any other 
 corporation, but that it attained its present trade advan- 
 tage by installing a vast and scientific system of distribu- 
 tion and marketing, through which it has been able to 
 supply oil and its products at prices which individuals and 
 competing companies have been unable to meet. In other 
 words, I shall show that the complaint against the Waters 
 Pierce is not that its prices are too high, but rather that/^ 
 they are too low. Its annihilation is demanded by in- 
 terests which are intent on making Texas pay more for 
 oil. 
 
 Fourth: There have been two Waters Pierce Oil 
 
 companies. The first was organized in 1878, and was 
 legally dissolved in 1900. The second and present Waters 
 Pierce Oil company was organized under the laws of v 
 Missouri on May 29, 1900, and was granted a permit to do 
 business in Texas on May 31, of. the same year. The 
 first company is dead, but a deliberate and persistent at- 
 tempt is being made to charge the present Waters Pierce 
 Oil company with responsibility for the offenses commit- 
 ted by its predecessor. 
 
 Fifth: It has repeatedly been charged and is widely 
 
 believed that the original Waters Pierce Oil company 
 was expelled from Texas on conviction of being a trust. 
 
 I shall prove that no such verdict was rendered, and 
 that the company was convicted of trivial and technical 
 violations of the law; violations which in no way impli- 
 cated it as a trust or a monopoly. 
 
 Sixth: It has repeatedly been charged and is widely 
 
 believed that the original Waters Pierce Oil company was 
 expelled from Texas mainly on account of its alleged 
 connection or affiliation with the Standard Oil trust. I 
 shall prove that all evidence intended to show that it 
 was thus connected with the Standard was excluded from 
 the jury, and that the presiding judge distinctly ruled that 
 the jury should not take into consideration the fact that 
 certain individual stockholders of the Waters Pierce had 
 signed the Standard Oil agreement of 1882. 
 
Seventli; I shall prove that the anti-trust laws of 
 Texas are so sweeping in their prohibitions that no asso- 
 ciation of individuals can conduct business under the rec- 
 ognized methods of competition, without violating said 
 anti-trust laws. I shall show that a rigid enforcement of 
 these laws would annihilate all business, and I shall also 
 prove that the prosecuting officials use discretionary 
 power in enforcing these laws, thus exercising a most dan- 
 gerous and unfair prerogative, and one which has been 
 wielded almost solely for political advantage, or for the 
 purely mercenary motive of collecting fees and commis- 
 sions. 
 
 Eighth: The accusation has been made that the 
 
 original Waters Pierce Oil company was dissolved by il- 
 legal or irregular methods. I shall demolish this charge 
 by irrefutable proof, taken from the official records of 
 the State of Missouri. 
 
 Ninth: The accusation has been made that the pres- 
 ent Waters Pierce Oil company is a fraudulent reorgani- 
 zation of the former one. I shall disprove this charge 
 by evidence so plain and complete that its validity can- 
 not be questioned. 
 
 Tenth: One of the most familiar charges against the 
 present company is to the effect that, first: It was ad- 
 
 mitted into Texas in consequence of influence unfairly 
 exercised by the Hon. Joseph W. Bailey. Second: That 
 
 it was granted a permit because of a false statement 
 signed by Henry Clay Pierce, in which statement that 
 gentleman specifically swore that his company was in 
 no way connected with the Standard Oil trust. Third: 
 That the Waters Pierce Oil company was granted a per- 
 mit to enter Texas through the deliberate deception of 
 her State officials, and that the whole transaction was 
 based on trickery and evasion. 
 
 I shall expose the absolute falsity of each and all of 
 these respective charges, and shall show that they have 
 been invented and circulated by politicians who must have 
 known the official facts to the contrary. 
 
 Eleventh: The most outrageous falsehoods have 
 
 been given wide circulation concerning the affidavit 
 signed by Henry Clay Pierce. I shall present the plain 
 and indisputable facts concerning this incident, and shall 
 reveal the plot by which a desperate attempt has been 
 made to smirch the honor and reputation of a gentleman 
 whose business record for more than a third of a century 
 
 refutes the foul charge which unprincipled demagogues 
 ! have made against him. 
 
 Twelfth: I shall indicate conclusively that there is 
 
 an organized crusade against the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany and its chief executive, and I believe that those who- 
 read these chapters will agree with me that the motive 
 of these conspirators is not to give Texas cheaper oil 
 or more industrial freedom, but, on the contrary, that a 
 few politicians seek power and patronage by attempting 
 to place on the shoulders of this corpora-tion all the of- 
 fenses and unpopularity of the Standard Oil trust, and 
 that they are bent on destroying the national fame and 
 usefulness of Senator Joseph W. Bailey by this despicable 
 method. 
 
 These chapters are printed substantially as they re- 
 cently appeared in the leading papers of Texas and of 
 the Southwest. In the preparation of these articles I 
 have carefully examined hundreds of legal documents, 
 and have read millions of words of testimony. It was in- 
 evitable that I should make a few minor mistakes in 
 the original presentation of the history of this case, 
 but none of my critics has called my attention to any 
 basic errors, and in the present revision I have made 
 such corrections as have been noted by the close students 
 of this remarkable case. 
 
 Whatever of public sentiment exists against the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company has been stimulated by the 
 constant reiteration of the charges above enumerated. 
 Many citizens have believed these charges, and the facts 
 to the contrary have not until now been presented to 
 them in connected detail. I am sure that no man in 
 Texas asks that the Waters Pierce or any other trading 
 corporation shall be punished or discriminated against on 
 account of manufactured charges or of mistaken impres- 
 sions. 
 
 The case for or against the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany rests largely on the truth or falsity contained in the 
 specific counts I have enumerated. I shall leave it to 
 the reader to determine whether or not I have demolished 
 the edifice of fabrication which has so sedulously been 
 reared, and I shall leave it to the people of Texas and of 
 the Southwest to judge of the motives of those who have 
 pushed themselves to the front by giving circulation to 
 accusations which are in direct conflict with the officially 
 recorded facts and evidence, to which you are cited in the 
 chapters which follow. 
 
 (Tbaptcr ll. 
 
 A REMARKABLE CRUSADE 
 
 The story of the crusade against the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany would have delighted Balzac. That master of narrative 
 detail would have gleaned gems from every page of its reeord, 
 but he would have been dazed by the money unit necessary to 
 its telling. The great French novelist reveled in the franc 
 mark, and his chapters are filled with figures calculated to ex- 
 press the affluence of the magnates whose schemings, triumphs 
 or downfalls he fervidly depicts, but he lived in an age when the 
 imagination was not called on for any individual wealth exceed- 
 ing a million of dollars. The combined possessions of all of his 
 
 characters would not total a typical modern fortune, and not 
 one of them ^massed from a lifetime of cunning an amount 
 equal to that which Rockefeller now receives in monthly 
 dividends. 
 
 Therefore Balzac’s wildest financial plots seem petty to 
 what has happened and is happening to the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company. His readers would have scoffed had he pictured an 
 oil magnate worth 5,000,000,000 francs. This was a thousand 
 times what then was probable. They would have laughed had 
 he depicted a court scene in which a jury brought in a verdict 
 
 — 6 — 
 
of 8,000,000 francs against a law-defying corporation. They 
 could no more comprehend such figures than they could have 
 comprehended Texas. The truth of the matter ;s that we do not 
 comprehend such figures, neither do we justly appreciate the 
 importance of the gigantic movements in which the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company has played so conspicuous a part. 
 
 Most of us fail to view this controversy from a proper per- 
 spective point. Our ears have been filled with the din produced 
 by warring politicians, and we have paid more heed to their per- 
 sonal ambitions and to purely partisan advantages than we 
 have to issues which concern not only every citizen of Texas, 
 but which are of direct interest to the dwellers in every section 
 of the United States. I hold, and shall attempt to show, that 
 the questions raised through the prosecution of the M'aters 
 Pierce Oil compay are more vital than any which have arisen 
 since the civil war. If the people of Texas succeed in wiping out 
 the trust system of industry and in replacing it with something 
 new and better, than every incident in the career of Henry Clay 
 Pierce will become invested with significance and historical 
 interest. 
 
 A PERSONAL WORD 
 
 Those who are familiar with my writings will not charge 
 that I hold a brief for trusts. For nearly twenty years my 
 work has been devoted largely to a consideration of those eco- 
 nomic questions which have arisen from the monopolization of 
 industry, commerce and money. I penned the prediction of 
 the present supremacy of trusts and banks at a time when it 
 was the common belief that no possible chain of events could 
 dethrone King Competition. This prediction was not original 
 with me, but it is nearly a generation ago that I pinned my 
 faith to the tenets of that economic school which held that 
 evolutionary causes had decreed the death of private competition, 
 and which outlined with accuracy the conditions which now 
 prevail. 
 
 The shad swims up the river in spring not because some 
 spectacled naturalist has written a book explaining why he does 
 so. The men who formed the first trust did not take their cue 
 from those German thinkers who were the first to foresee that 
 the machine was destined to revolutionize the industrial system 
 of the world. Both the shad and the business man act on instinct, 
 and instinct is simply an unthinking impulse to obey some natural 
 law. 
 
 The point I wish to make is this: Trusts do not originate 
 because of some deep-laid conspiracy; neither do they result 
 from the exercise of rare individual judgment and keen capital- 
 istic insight. The impulse which drove business men to the pro- 
 tection of a trust is exactly the same instinct which causes a 
 prudent man to seek shelter when it rains, or which inclines a 
 Kansas farmer to crawl into his dugout when a tornado heads 
 his way. The trust was the first remedy at hand for that per^ 
 petual panic called “unrestricted competition.” 
 
 THE “GOOD OLD DAYS” OF COMPETITION 
 
 No question of morals or of right or wrong was involved 
 when competition merged into combination. Business men 
 were not saints when they were fighting one another; there 
 were no halos over their heads when they were cutting prices, 
 reducing wages and were clinched in a life and death struggle 
 to determine which was the fittest to survive. By the same token 
 they did not become criminals when they declared peace and 
 combined their forces. Whether or not there shall be trusts 
 is purely an economic question. The essential difference be- 
 tween the old competitive system and the trust one which has 
 supplanted it is this: Under competition an individual or a 
 
 corporation did not dare treat the public or the wage-earners 
 fairly — business ruin was the penalty of decency or mercy. 
 Under the present trust system of industry and finance those in 
 power can thrive and at the same time treat all concerned with 
 fairness — but they prefer not to. They lack the sagacity to^ 
 maintain a benevolent despotism; they are too short-sighted 
 to temper their greed with diplomacy. 
 
 — 7 . 
 
 The public, w;hich was flayed, bruised, robbed and half- 
 starved under the cut-throat competitive era which prevailed 
 twenty-five years ago, is unable to see any remedy for the abuses 
 of the trust system except to return to that industrial anarchy 
 from which the trust evoluted. I wish frankly to state my posi- 
 tion in this matter and to advance a remedy. 
 
 Competition cannot be maintained or forced where combi- 
 nation is possible. It seems well established that there are 
 certain industries and services which can best be conducted 
 under a general system of production and distribution, in otlier 
 words, which naturally lend themselves to monopolization. 
 These are few in number, and invariably are the absolute ne- 
 cessities of existence. The vast majority of industries and ser- 
 vices are still under control of individuals and competing con- 
 cerns. I hold that so long as competition prevails in any in- 
 dustry or service that the State should encourage such com- 
 petition by all possible means. On the contrary, I hold that 
 whenever a combination of individuals or of corporations suc- 
 ceeds in throttling competition that its very success has de- 
 creed that it can best be conducted as a monopoly, but I also 
 hold that the State, the government or the people — call it which 
 you please — should then step in and acquire and conduct such 
 a monopoly. 
 
 THE IM)USTRIAL DOG FIGHT 
 
 This theory is in direct conflict with one which has been 
 more popular, namely, that it is the prime duty of a State to 
 keep its citizens in a perpetual competitive struggle. Most 
 of our statesmen hold firmly to the belief that the State should 
 act as referee in an industrial dog fight, and that it should 
 interfere only at times when one dog has a deadly hold on his 
 bloody and still savage opponent; that it should pull these 
 mongrels apart, hold the stronger one aside until the weaker 
 has recovered his breath, and that it should then set them at 
 each other in an endless chewing match. If these industrial 
 dogs attempt to patch up a peace it becomes the duty of the State 
 to send them to the pound, and to whistle up another batch 
 of canines and toss them into the competitive ring — all of which 
 is supposed to conduce to strenuous and lasting prosperity. 
 
 To abandon this rather grim simile, I will repeat that I 
 hold to the theory that whenever monopoly naturally evolutes 
 from competition the government should become the monopolist. 
 
 I stand for the public schools against a university fostered 
 and dominated by a Rockefeller; I hold that the United States 
 post-office is more worthy of admiration and more conducive 
 to patriotism than the United States Express company, and, 
 since it is inevitable that we shall have only one railroad system 
 I prefer that it shall be owned and operated by the people 
 through their government rather than by a Harriman and a 
 syndicate of speculative Wall street banks. 
 
 But we are not yet ready as a people to install public owner- 
 ship in those great functions and industries which seem naturally 
 adapted for monopolization. We are content to watch Great 
 Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other govern- 
 ments make these great initial experiments. 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN FORMER PANICS. 
 
 I wish to call the attention of those readers who honestly 
 believe that the way to go about this problem is to “smash the 
 trusts,” to a little matter of history which may have escaped 
 their attention. Those who are old enough to remember what 
 happened in 1873 will better ai>preciate the force of my com- 
 parison than those who read of its horrors in books, or listen 
 to the accounts as narrated by their elders. 
 
 There were no trusts in 1873. It was in that delightful 
 era when each merchant and manufacturer was engaged in the 
 great moral task of attempting to ruin by comjjetition each 
 and all persons and concerns in the same line of business. No 
 man knew how much his competitor had produced; no concern 
 had the slightest idea of the demands of the consumer, and 
 thus each and all went blindly on, manufacturing or buying 
 
 / 
 
an indefinite quantity of products for an indefinite and un- 
 known demand — until finally the crash came. 
 
 It was not the kind of a panic we have recently witnessed. 
 It was not made to order in Wall street — as some suspect that 
 this one originated — it was caused solely and entirely by over- 
 production in consequence of an absolutely unorganized, un- 
 scientific and senseless system of individualistic and anarch- 
 istic competition — and one which the present generation can 
 return thanks that is dead beyond the power of unthinking 
 demagogues to resurrect. 
 
 Have you paused to reflect that in the present panic not 
 a single great industry has suspended operation? True, many 
 of them have curtailed production, but it has been done in an 
 orderly manner, and the great mass of the workers have retained 
 their places. Hundreds of factories have already resumed 
 with full forces. I have not heard of a single great industrial 
 failure. The thousands upon thousands of vast manufacturing 
 plants are intact, and ready to do the work for which they were 
 created. Why has this happened? Because of the substitution 
 of organized for unorganized industry. Because we have learned 
 some industrial sense. Because we have emerged away from 
 industrial barbarism, and because we have taken at least one 
 long step in advance — a step from which we will never recede. 
 
 What happened in 1873 when competitive over-production 
 precipitated a panic? Read the record, if you did not witness 
 and suffer by it. Industry was paralyzed. Thousands upon 
 thousands of factories closed because of absolute bankruptcy. 
 Hundreds upon hundreds of banks failed ; hundreds of thousands 
 of men and women lost the last dollar they had on earth. Not 
 for a few months did this awful state of affairs exist, but for more 
 than two years the ciirse of this devastating panic rested on 
 the country, and it was six or seven years before the nation 
 staggered out from under its blighting effect. 
 
 Competition? Do you wonder that men hesitated to en- 
 gage again in such an idiotic contest? Do you wonder that 
 intelligent men sought some refuge from a state of alleged 
 civilization in which every invention, every newly installed 
 machine, every new scientific discovery, made inevitable the 
 day when black panic should bring down the whole edifice of 
 industry, burying the good and the bad in its ruin? I tell you 
 that the trust was not born of a conspiracy; it was forced on 
 the nation as the sole alternative of inevitable recurrent disas- 
 ters due to panics bred by unrestrained and unregulated com- 
 petition. 
 
 And this is the “system” which some of our good friends 
 would install after having smashed the trusts. My dear sir, 
 if you live until the name of George Washington is forgotten 
 you will not see the fruition of your desire. This nation is headed 
 in another direction. It is about to learn some method by which 
 it can preserve the good features which the trusts have taught 
 us, and it will find a way to discard the bad features which 
 are inevitable during the process of development, but it will 
 “smash” nothing, except those who persist in getting in the 
 way of the wheels of economic progress. 
 
 A iEW SIMPLE QUESTIONS. 
 
 Let me venture timidly to ask if selection has yet been 
 made of those honest and law-abiding gentlemen who are to 
 be intrusted with the task of rehabilitating competition in oil 
 in Texas and elsewhere? Who is to determine if they are com- 
 peting as hard as they can? If one of these competitors is wiped 
 out in the struggle — and many of them will be if the competition 
 be on the square — will it be permitted for the victorious sur- 
 vivor to acquire the wreck of the victim or victims? What 
 
 former model of competition are these rival concerns to pattern 
 after? How large a percentage of oil will any one of these 
 resurrected individualists be permitted to produce, buy or sell 
 before the State of Texas brands him a trust and by fines and 
 other penalties confiscates his business? What shall a competi- 
 tor do to be saved when he finds that he is so successful that 
 he is nearing the danger line? What shall be the minimum 
 of competing concerns, and how shall it be maintained? 
 
 These are not sarcastic questions. They are perfectly 
 practical ones, and those who think that the destruction of a 
 private monopoly will be followed by free private competition 
 must have answers for the above questions and a hundred more. 
 I would rather defend and champion a currency system based 
 on acorns and three-leaved clovers than to explain how a great 
 trust is to disintegrate into a thousand small establishments 
 between which there shall be that beatific warring concord 
 by which the public will get the best of it. 
 
 Considered from a broad viewpoint, the story of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company and of the business career of Henry Clay 
 Pierce should throw light on some great problems now confront- 
 ing us. It is a story filled with incidents and events which 
 have significance to the student of social economy. It begins 
 at a time when few dreamed that private effort could throttle 
 competition, and it spans the most wonderful industrial era 
 in all recorded history. The foremost generals of financial 
 strategy figure in its pages, and in its chapters we catch glimpses 
 of statesmen, politicians, judges, heroes, villains and other 
 types whose connections with the Waters Pierce company 
 have made its name familiar wherever the English language 
 is spoken. It is a wonderful story, one to which I am unable 
 to do justice, but I shall not make the mistake of assuming 
 that all of these momentous events were foreordained in order 
 that certain politicians should be able to elimb over the heads 
 of other politicians to unmerited preferment. 
 
 PURPOSE OF THIS HISTORY. 
 
 No connected narrative of the Waters Pierce has ever been 
 written. It has been told in fragments, and each succeeding 
 event or disclosure has been the signal for a fresh chorus of 
 invective and recrimination, charges and counter charges, and 
 has been attended by frantic efforts of petty demagogues to 
 gain position or advantage by attaching themselves to one 
 faction or the other. Every detail has been distorted, mag- 
 nified or misrepresented. In the resultant clamor the reading 
 and thinking public has lost sight of or has forgotten the 
 essential facts of this remarkable case. Bombast has taken 
 the place of argument, and a thousand appeals have been 
 made to passion and none to reason. 
 
 It is my purpose calmly to review this case. There seems 
 to be something about the oil industry which arouses the unfair 
 and vindictive in all concerned in it, and many of its historians 
 have not escaped this infection. In the chapters which follow 
 I shall attempt to stick close to the facts. I shall not paint 
 Henry Clay Pierce either as a saint or devil, but shall narrate 
 his most interesting and instructive business career as the 
 records reveal it. I shall tell the story of the rise of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company from its humble beginning, and shall detail 
 the successive steps by which it became affiliated with the 
 greatest of all the trusts. 
 
 I believe that a consecutive account of its doings and of 
 its complications will enable the reader better to comprehend 
 the significance of the events which have clustered about it, 
 and I hope that I may suggest certain things which will lead 
 to constructive thought and action. 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 HOW HENRY CLAY PIERCE MADE HIS STAR'!' 
 
 Instead of starting at the beginning — as all conventional 
 historians do — I prefer to imitate those curoius young women 
 who turn to the last page of a novel to learn in advance just 
 what happened to the hero and heroine. Before tracing the 
 early history of the Waters Pierce Oil company and its central 
 figure, let us glance at the record of what has happened to it. 
 
 Its present situation is without parallel in the industrial 
 and legal history of the United States or of any other country. 
 This situation has been brought about by legislative and court 
 actions which have no precedents, and it is this that invests this 
 story with its chief interest. 
 
 Here is a great corporation which has operated for a gener- 
 ation in the territory covering more square miles than all of 
 Europe. It has employed an army of men; it has handled hun- 
 dreds of millions of dollars worth of merchandise; it has steadily 
 increased its trade and its power; and yet, in the hour of its 
 highest prosperity, it has been legally destroyed in the State , 
 of Texas. Fines so large that they may be deemed confiscatory' 
 have been assessed against it; its enormous and profitable busi- 
 ness has become the bone of contention in conflicting courts; 
 its earnings are being held by the authorities as additional se- 
 curity for fines levied or which may yet be imposed upon it; 
 powerful rivals, whose identity is unknown or vaguely con- 
 jectured, are reaching out for its trade, its chief executive is ac- 
 cused of a statutory crime, and is resisting extradition to Texas 
 on the plea that selfish partisans have so distorted the facts 
 that he is denied a fair chance before a jury in the Lone Star 
 State; and for nearly a year the people of a great commonwealth 
 have had their passions appealed to by the leaders of warring 
 factions, and have been compelled to listen to a controversy in 
 which neither side has halted at unbridled invectives and direct 
 misrepresen tation . 
 
 Surely the Waters Pierce Oil company must have committed 
 some stupendous crime in order to have brought this piled-up 
 calamity upon itself? The mere fact that it is accused of trust 
 practices cannot warrant the penalties which have been inflicted 
 against this corporation. There is no question that the oi]J 
 industry of the United States is controlled by a trust, and that 
 this trust is known as the Standard Oil company. There is 
 no dispute over the fact that the Standard Oil company now 
 owns, and long has owned, a controlling portion of the stock 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 
 This is a matter of court record, but this fact does not ex- 
 plain why so crushing a series of blows has fallen on the subject 
 of this inquiry. 
 
 THERE ARE OTHER TRUSTS. 
 
 Oil is not the sole commodity or industry w'hich has passed 
 under trust control in the United States. Such vast industries 
 as copper, sugar, leather, paper, rubber, steel, dressed meats, to- 
 bacco, anthracite coal, matches, harvesting machinery, watches 
 and a score of other products are monopolized to an ex- 
 tent approximating that of oil, and in many instances their 
 magnates surpass in rapacity those at the head of the Standard 
 Oil company. These trusts levy tribute on the consumers 
 of Texas; there is no manner of doubt that they are ‘‘combina- 
 tions in restraint of trade;” they operate through subsidiary 
 compianies so thinly masked that the dullest of prosecuting 
 officials cannot escape the fact of the conspiracies, and yet 
 they have escaped punishment or even attempted punishment. 
 Their exactions are responsible for the outrageous scale of high 
 prices which has helped to bring about the present trade re- 
 action, and with brutal insolence they are bent on maintaining 
 these prices in the face of lessened consumption. 
 
 If Texas justice has held the scales evenly she has assumed 
 that the sins of the Waters Pierce are scarlet compared with 
 
 the known trusts which have been exempted from prosecution. 
 The constitution of Texas makes no distinction between “good” 
 and ‘‘bad” trusts, but there is not a paper printed in the State 
 which does not pay tribute to the paper trust every time the 
 publication comes from the presses. How does this happen? 
 Must the public be aroused to a frenzy before justice lays hands 
 on the lawless corporation? 
 
 And, finally, what was the series of crimes committed by 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company, for which it has been branded 
 the one felon among Texas trusts? Why has it been sentenced 
 to death while know'n monopolies are permitted to collect 
 unchallenged tribute from a helpless people? Is it a sin to 
 exact an unfair profit from oil, and a virtue to charge two prices 
 for beef? Is it criminal to consolidate oil companies, and patri- 
 otic to merge banks or railroad companies? Shall we send a 
 successful oil magnate to jail and a successful steel magnate 
 to the senate? Shall w'e anathematize the man who made 
 millions by consolidating oil refineries and pipe lines, and listen 
 with pleased aw'e to the words of advice and wisdom which flow 
 from the lips of the man wffio consolidated thousands of miles 
 of railways and has lured the public to buy tons of worthless 
 stocks and bonds? Shall we sneer at the benefactions of a 
 Rockefeller who made his millions by plundering the people 
 through his mastery of the oil industry, and laud the charity 
 of a Carnegie who has accumulated hundreds of millions through 
 his mastery of the steel industry? 
 
 I take it that most men desire to be fair in answering these 
 questions. I take it that the people of Texas and of the South- 
 west are more anxious to win their industrial independence 
 than they are to wreak vengeance on an isolated corporation 
 or an individual. With which preface I wall start at the begin- 
 ning and trace the record of the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 and the career of Henry Clay Pierce. If any errors appear in 
 this narrative they will pertain to trifles. There is no dispute 
 concerning the basic facts, but until now there has been no at- 
 tempt made to arrange them in sequence,_ so that the student of 
 this most remarkable case may arrive at a clear understanding 
 of the issues involved. 
 
 BOYHOOD OF HENRY CLAY PIERCE. 
 
 Henry Clay pierce was born in Watertown, New York 
 State, fifty-six years ago. His father was a physician with an 
 unprofitable village practice. The boy went to public school 
 until he was about 14 years old. A college education was out 
 of the question, but the boy had stuff in him which did not 
 require the coddling of a long curriculum. Perhaps I am 
 wrong, but it seems to me that the average youngster of today 
 does not have the chance to rise that was offered fifty years ago. 
 Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the boy of today 
 has too many chances, and that he is permitted to choose the 
 wrong ones. Young Pierce had no opportunity to read the 
 pages of scandals, flippant gossip of the degenerate rich, trashy 
 stories and other ephemeral truck with which our press and 
 periodicals are filled, hence he spent the long winter evenings 
 devouring Dickens, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Gibbon, 
 Hume, Froude and other immortal writers whose books now 
 lie dusty and untouched on the shelves of Carnegie libraries, 
 which institutions serve to meet the popular demand for the mor- 
 bid and too often debasing ‘‘litemture” ground out by the 
 modern school of the ‘‘six best sellers.” 
 
 The tales of the dawning greatness and majesty of the M'est 
 and the Southwest fascinated young Pierce. Like many another 
 lad in the grim period of the civil war he pleaded with his parents 
 to be permitted to become a drummer-boy, but fate did not 
 grant this ambition. Shortly after the close of the war, when 
 Pierce was 14 years old, a relative decided t(> move to St. Louis, 
 
 — 9 — 
 
and after many family conferences and much persuasion it 
 was agreed that the boy should make the trip and cast his for- 
 tunes in the wonderful land west of the Mississippi. 
 
 HE ARRIVES IN ST. LOUIS. 
 
 He arrived there at a time when St. Louis and other cities 
 were thronged with soldiers who had returned from Southern 
 battle-fields. There were two applicants for every position, 
 but the boy did not ask for much, and so it happened that a 
 place was secured for him in a bank. His first duties were 
 those of messenger, but he soon was promoted to the more 
 exalted position of clerk, and at the age of 17 became cashier 
 of the institution. Those who have been led to believe that 
 Henry Clay Pierce has risen to financial and industrial great- 
 ness by the grace of John D. Rockefeller must admit that he 
 made a fairly promising start to become the cashier of a 
 bank at the age of 17. Most modern boys of 17 know more 
 about base-ball percentages and the weight of foot-ball heroes 
 than they do of sight drafts, negotiable securities and of foreign 
 exchange. They are planning to enter college or to live on their 
 dads rather than to build up a great industry in an unsettled 
 territory, which already yas the fixed ambition of Henry Clay 
 Pierce. 
 
 Long before that time that busy hussy. Fate, had been 
 planning the triumphs and troubles of all of us, including those 
 of Henry Clay Pierce. Fate’s satellites. Luck, Chance and 
 Opportunity, had selected the men and the women, had arranged 
 the meetings, happenings and the crises, and had set aside the 
 broad field of his activities. It was decreed three-quarters of a 
 century ago that a man named John Robert Finlay should be- 
 come a manufacturer of “coal oil’’ from shale in Glasgow, 
 Scotland. In the course of events this shrewd and far-sighted 
 Scotchman left his native country and came to America, finally 
 settling in St. Louis. Finlay discovered in Kentucky a kind of 
 shale which was similar to that which lay in the hills to the north 
 of Glasgow, and from this he extracted with much difficulty 
 and small profits the ignitable fluid which he conveyed by 
 barges to St. Louis and sold in competition with candles 
 and the miserable gas then produced. He was thus engaged 
 at the time Henry Clay Pierce was born, and when John D. 
 Rockefeller was toddling to school in the little New York village 
 of Owego. Finlay had no competitor in St. Louis; his enter- 
 prise, in fact, was so modest and unique that only his few cus- 
 tomers and acquaintances knew that it had an existence. 
 
 THE DISCOVERT OF OIL. 
 
 It was not until February 1, 1860, that E. L. Drake'struck 
 oil from the first well ever sunk in the United States for that 
 purpose. “Drake’s Folly,’’ as it was known to the few scoffers 
 aware of that enterprise, was located near Titusville, Pa. Prior 
 to that time petroleum had been used only for medicinal purposes, 
 and great virtues were ascribed by those who skimmed it from 
 the surface of “Oil creek” in Northwestern Pennsylvania, and 
 from the greasy flood of the Kanawha, in West Virginia. It 
 was first sold as “Seneca Oil,” and its vendors pretended that 
 they had obtained the secret of its preparation from some 
 Indian chief. In the middle of the century Samuel M. Kier 
 went into the business on a larger scale. This gentleman owned 
 salt wells in Tarentum, not far from Pittsburg, and quantities 
 of oil came up with the salt water. Mr. Kier believed that this 
 oil had curative properties, and began to extract and bottle it. 
 In the years between 1850 and 1861, “Kier’s Petroleum, or 
 Rock Oil,” was sold in most drug stores. It was advertised 
 as a liniment, but was recommended for cholera morbus, liver 
 complaint, bronchitis and consumption, and the prescribed 
 dose was three teaspoonfuls three times a day. 
 
 Mr. Kier was the first one to discover that petroleum 
 was also a lubricator and a luminant, and years before John D. 
 Rockefeller invested a dollar in the oil business the experiments 
 had been made which disclosed many of the commercial proper- 
 ties of this natural product. 
 
 When Drake drilled his first well and struck a flow of oil 
 equalling twenty-five barrels a day, petroleum was selling at 
 
 $18 a barrel. There was a rush for the oil fields, wells were struck 
 which flowed 2000, 3000 and 4000 barrels a day, and at the 
 close of 1861 oil was selling at 10 cents a barrel at the wells. 
 Rockefeller had not yet dawned on the oil horizon. He was 
 in the grocery and commission business in Cleveland. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF A GREAT CORPORATION. 
 
 Shortly after oil was struck in Pennsylvania there were 
 wells sunk along the Kanawha in West Virginia, and petroleum 
 in large quantities was discovered. John Robert Finlay of 
 St. Louis was not slow in deciding that his Scotch process of 
 extracting oil from shale was obsolete. He journeyed to Pennsyl- 
 vania and West Virginia and looked over the ground, and began 
 operations to supply the Southwest with oil. This was fully a 
 year before Samuel Andrews persuaded John D. Rockefeller 
 that there was more money in the oil business than in furnishing 
 the government with army supplies. 
 
 Mr. Finlay knew that it was impossible at that time to 
 ship oil from the wells to St. Louis by rail. The tank car was 
 not then dreamed of, and rates were so high that the use of 
 ordinary cars was out of the question. In the meanwhile he 
 had successfully sunk wells along the Little Kanawha. He 
 built wooden barges, loaded them with his oil and that purchased 
 from other producers, towed them to Parkersburg, thence down 
 the Ohio River to Cairo and up the Mississippi to St. Louis. 
 It was a proud day for Mr. Finlay when his first string of oil 
 barges was anchored at the levee, and it was an event in the 
 history of St. Louis. The oil was drawn from the barges by 
 hand pumps into stout wooden barrels, and hauled to his re- 
 finery west of the then city limits of St. Louis. On the long 
 journey down the rivers much of the oil had been lost by evapo- 
 ration, but the venture was a financial success, Mr. Finlay 
 having no difficulty in selling his oil at a dollar or more a gallon, 
 fully eight times the price which obtains to-day. 
 
 This enterprising Scotchman gradually enlarged the scope 
 of his operations and had comparatively little competition, 
 but he failed to realize or grasp the opportunity which was 
 offered to him. He was content to sell the products of his 
 little refinery to the people of St. Louis, and he lacked the energy 
 to push out into the vast territory naturally tributary to that 
 city. Not so with the youthful cashier of the St. Louis bank. 
 The boy, Henry Clay Pierce, saw the possibilities in oil. After 
 his work was over he read all that was to be had concerning 
 the stupendous movements then in progress in the Pennsyl- 
 vania and Ohio oil fields. Wealthy operators were struggling 
 for the mastery of the trade in the East and middle West. The 
 wonderful brain and relentless energy of Rockefeller had begun 
 to make an impress, and the pages of the newspapers were filled 
 with tales of fortunes won and lost in that section where the 
 earth spouted wealth. 
 
 LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE. 
 
 Young Pierce believed it possible to build up an oil trade 
 which would command the patronage of the empire to the 
 south and west of St. Louis. From his wages he had saved 
 enough to make several small investments, and these had proved 
 successful. He was the proud owner of a few thousand dollars, 
 and he determined to go into the oil business. He became 
 acquainted with Mr. Finlay, disclosed his plans, and so impressed 
 that cautious gentleman that he was offered a partnership in 
 the St. Louis Oil company, w'hich had succeeded J. R. Finlay 
 & Co. 
 
 In I860, when Henry Clay Pierce was less than nineteen 
 years of age, he acquired Mr. Finlay’s interest and changed 
 the name of the concern to H. C. Pierce & Co. Thus in five 
 years the country boy from Watertown had risen to the control 
 of the leading oil company west of Ohio. He neither knew 
 nor feared Rockefeller. His sole ambition was to build up a 
 great company in the Southwest, which should perpetuate 
 his name and bring him that wealth and power which all the 
 moralists and political economists of that day held should be 
 the aspiration of every American youth. 
 
 — 10 — 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 THE CON(}l'EST OF .V WILDERNESS 
 
 John D. Rockefeller was bom in 1S39, on July S. Several 
 years ago I visited Richford, X. Y., where he was born, and 
 spent a week or more in Owego, where he lived for years and 
 went to school. I found that there was no truth in the tales 
 of his early poverty. His father, William A. Rockefeller, spent 
 little time in Owego. His business was a mystery and a source 
 of much gossip and head-wagging in the little town, but, what- 
 ever his occupation was, the income was sufficient to maintain 
 his family in comfort, and to afford the Rockefeller boys an edu- 
 cation in an excellent private academy. There never was a time 
 during John D. Rockefeller’s boyhood when he was forced to 
 earn a penny, and his father gave him most of the money with 
 which he made his business start. 
 
 Possibly this has no proper place in my narrative, but I 
 repeat it on all possible occasions for the purpose of confounding 
 those who think that there is some special merit in arising 
 from abject poverty to a position in which it is possible to levy 
 tribute on an entire nation. Again, I repeat. Rockefeller was 
 denied the blessings of boyhood poverty. 
 
 At the age of 19 we find him in Cleveland, one of the members 
 of the commission firm of Clark & Rockefeller. The concern 
 did a business of S450,000 the first year, and did better the 
 second and third years. Then the war came, but young Rocke- 
 feller did not put on a uniform and march to the front. That 
 is a matter of official record. Incidentally, it may be mentioned 
 that many of our great fortunes were founded by men who had 
 s,ufficient will power to restrain their impulse to save their coun- 
 try by fighting. In 1862 Samuel Andrews induced Clark & 
 Rockefeller to go into the oil refining business. In 1865 Rocke- 
 feller became an active partner in oil refining, and in 1870 he 
 organized the first Standard Oil company. He had invented 
 the railroad rebate, and with that as a weapon the oil trade 
 was at his mercy, but many years were to pass before his genius 
 for intrigue and organization made itself nationally felt. 
 
 MODEST START OF H. C. PIERCE. 
 
 It was in 1860, a year before the formation of the Standard 
 Oil company, that Henry Clay Pierce first saw' his name on a 
 business sign. He found himself in control of an oil trade which 
 did not extend much outside the city limits of St. Louis, and 
 he knew that he would have to fight for every foot of advance. 
 
 This was in the heyday of cut-throat competition. In 
 every line of business, from the retail grocery to great railroads, 
 banks and factories it was war to the knife. “The devil take 
 hindermost” was the business motto, and preachers, editors 
 and political economists all joined in urging the combatants 
 on to more desperate struggles. 
 
 Only a few cranks dissented from the justice of the theory 
 of the survival of the fittest, and boys were taught in school to 
 gird on their business armor and smite every rival hip and 
 thigh. No mercy, no compromise, no combination, but relent- 
 less war — with bankruptcy and disgrace for the weaker, and 
 riches and laurel wreaths for the stronger — such was the indus- 
 trial and financial program mapped out in those gentle and good 
 old days which clustered around 1870. 
 
 Hence it was that John D. Rockefeller, Henry Clay Pierce, 
 John Smith and 5,000,000 other young men started on a race 
 for wealth and honor, and all the wise editors, solemn preachers 
 and stupid philosophers were a unit in asserting that under 
 such circumstances no individual or combination of individuals 
 could get much the best of it. Why? Because, they said, 
 there would be so much competition that high prices could 
 not be maintained. 
 
 “Get it all, if you can, my boy,’’ they advised, and then 
 added, with complacent smiles, “but you can’t. Competition 
 won’t let you!’’ 
 
 Rockefeller and a few' others fooled them. John D. played 
 against a game which these wise old bander-legs indorsed and 
 declared could not be beaten, and now he has most of the chips. 
 He has killed competition with competition. In the lovely 
 little game of the “survival of the fittest’’ John D. Rockefeller 
 is IT, and those who pretend that they like the game should 
 not welch. I don’t like the game and have been saying so for 
 twenty years or more — but this is not my autobiography. 
 
 THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY IN 1870. 
 
 Young Pierce was not much concerned with the doings 
 of the Standard Oil company when he started in business. It 
 was not the household word in 1870 that it is to-day. Rockefeller 
 did only about 10 per cent of the refining in Cleveland, and 
 Pittsburg was a larger refining center than Cleveland. All 
 of the oil producers and refiners were engaged in a cat and dog 
 fight. Mr. Rockefeller was so busy with his plans for their 
 benevolent assimilation that he had not even heard of the new 
 firm of H. C. Pierce & Co. The young head of this concern 
 did not know Rockefeller and proceeded to buy oil where he 
 could get it the cheapest, and to sell it for all he could exact 
 from his customers. This is business, and all there is to business. 
 Possibly he bought some of his oil from Rockefeller, but that 
 was not then considered a crime. 
 
 It was in 1870 that Pierce made his first extensive explora- 
 tion of the Southwest in the interest of his oil company. Prior 
 to this time oil had been sent down the Mississippi in barges. 
 Kerosene and other products of petroleum were not unknown 
 in the towns along the rivers, but the great mass of the people 
 in Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana never had seen an 
 oil lamp. There were few railroads, and most of the country 
 was as wild as when De Soto looked for the first time on the 
 swelling flood of the Mississippi, yet out into this sparsely 
 settled wilderness went the beardless Pierce, preaching the 
 gospel of kerosene oil. 
 
 PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF KEROSENE. 
 
 Population had begun to pour into Southern Missouri, 
 and his mission promised to bear future profits. In each little 
 village he selected an agent, showed him how to fill, trim and 
 care for a lamp, and made arrangements for transporting a 
 regular supply of illuminating and lubricating oils to that cen- 
 ter. This was an easy matter in towns along railroads, but 
 Pierce knew that he must forestall the railroads if he was to have 
 the full reward of those who hustle. 
 
 The young oil merchant realized that the towns were small 
 and widely scattered, but he believed in the dawning greatness 
 of the Southwest. He pictured to himself this future country 
 filled with large and prosperous towns, and all of them using 
 his oil. Why not? He was the first in the field. Pierce did not 
 discover Texas, but it is a certainty that he was the first to dis- 
 cover that oil could be sold in it. You may be sure that he did 
 not reach Dallas in a Pullman car. 
 
 The jirojihetic vision of this young enthusiast led him astray 
 concerning Arkansas. The maj) showed that there was such a 
 State, and that it had towns and rivers. He journeyed through 
 it on horseback, carrying his samples and lamps on a jxick 
 mule. He forded rivers, was mired in swamps, devoured by mos- 
 quitos, attacked by wild animals, was famished for food and 
 stricken with fever, but he criss-crossed the State without 
 striking a town in which he could induce a man to rejiresent a 
 company which entertained the childish scheme that it was 
 possible and profitable to import from Pennsylvania a product 
 which would compete with Arkansas pine knots and tallow dips. 
 In a two months’ trij), crowded with discomforts aiul dangers, 
 he did not arrange for the sale of one gallon of oil. True, he has 
 
sold some oil in Arkansas since then, but the old Sunday school 
 books said that such was his just reward. 
 
 PIERCE EVTRODUCES OIL IN TEXAS. 
 
 I am unable to find that any individual or concern had made 
 it a business to ship and sell oil in Texas prior to the coming of 
 young Pierce with his lamps and his samples in 1870. It is 
 likely that a few small shipments were made and it is probable 
 that some enterprising ship owner may have unloaded a few 
 barrels of kerosene at Galveston, or that a merchant may have 
 freighted a little of this strange fluid in from New Orleans, but the 
 fact remains that the 19-year-old head of the firm of H.C. Pierce 
 & Co. was the pioneer in building up a system by which the 
 products of petroleum could be transported from Pennsylvania 
 and sold regularly in Texas. 
 
 Thirty-seven long years have passed since this boy made his 
 initial tour of the Lone Star State. He made the trip on horse- 
 back — save for the few points then connected by railroads — 
 and he did not cease until he had canvassed every village of im- 
 portance east of San Antonio. He appointed agents in Galveston 
 Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Waco, Dallas, Fort Worth, 
 Sherman and other towns, and arranged for crude means of 
 storing the oil when it was forwarded. Most of the merchants 
 approached scoffed at the claims made by young Pierce, and all 
 wondered at his enthusiasm, but none of them charged that he 
 was engaged in a Standard Oil conspiracy. 
 
 This strange quest consumed nearly eight months and ex- 
 hausted the endurance of many horses, but the young man laughed 
 at fatigue, and his day and night dreams were of an oil business 
 which should radiate in all directions from St. Louis, and which 
 should grow with the certain development of the country he 
 had explored and preempted. He remained in Texas long 
 enough to supervise the installation of the new system and then 
 returned to St. Louis by rail via New Orleans. 
 
 I have omitted an interesting and romantic event in the 
 career of Henry Clay Pierce. Shortly before the trip just described 
 he married the daughter of John Robert Finlay, the Scotch 
 pioneer of the coal oil industry in the United States, and the 
 man who founded the business which has since developed into 
 the enormous enterprise with which Mr. Pierce’s name has been 
 connected. 
 
 He had barely passed his eighteenth year when he led 
 Miss Finlay to the altar. It was an old-fashioned love match, 
 one which preceded long and happy years of ideal married life, 
 blessed by children of which the parents were justly proud. 
 In these later days, when success and wealth seem to drag 
 marital troubles and scandals in their train, it is refreshing to 
 glance back for a moment to the years when husbands and wives 
 shared willingly and steadfastly in the joys and the sorrows, 
 the triumphs and the disasters which fate allotted them. It 
 gives one faith in humanity to look back at this boy and girl as 
 they bravely faced the future, and we wonder if we have im- 
 proved on the old system of youthful marriages by postponing 
 such unions until the contracting parties have reached the years 
 which are alleged to bring discretion? I doubt if w’e have. 
 Mrs. Pierce lived to witness the realization of many of her hus- 
 band’s dreams, but passed away after a brief illness in 1889. 
 
 HIS CONQUEST IN MEXICO. • 
 
 In the early seventies Mr. Pierce carried his oil conquests 
 into Mexico. His associates doubted if it were possible to intro- 
 duce oil with profit into the huge but thinly settled republic 
 south of the Rio Grande, but the young general urged that 
 temporary losses would be amply requited by the prestige 
 which w’ould come from being first in the field. He therefore 
 traveled all over Mexico, having first mastered the Spanish lan- 
 guage, and within a year succeeded in so perfecting a distributing 
 organization that the business showed a profit. Later he erected 
 refineries at suitable points in Mexico, shipping the crude pe- 
 troleum in his own boats down the Ohio and Mississippi across 
 
 . the Gulf of Mexico, or from the Atlantic seaboard to Tampico 
 and Vera Cruz. 
 
 Those who have been led to believe that Mr. Pierce has 
 ever been only a pawm played by the mighty Rockefeller, should 
 know' that all this an<J much more had been accomplished 
 by the young St. Louis merchant years before the shadow of 
 the oil colossus reached across the Ohio. Rockefeller was then 
 engaged in a titanic struggle for supremacy in the Pennsylvania 
 oil fields. He was fighting in a mob of frenzied operators and 
 refiners, each of whom w'as as greedy and rapacious as himself. 
 It was a display of competitive savagery, and had Rockefeller 
 show'n one moment of weakening or evinced one spark of sympa- 
 thy, some other wolf would now head the oil pack. 
 
 In the lulls of the battle Rockefeller may have glanced anx- 
 iously and longingly to the West, and it is likely that the energy 
 displayed by Henry Clay Pierce was not overlooked by the future 
 oil king, but he was too wise and too great a master of industrial 
 strategy to scatter his forces in that crisis. Thus it happened 
 that Pierce w'as permitted to take commercial possession of 
 the Southwest and of the Republic of Mexico almost without 
 opposition. Later he was attacked, and many were the battles 
 fought, but he ever held the advantage of the general who 
 has had the time and forethought to fortify the high ground, 
 and to mass his troops at the w'eaker points. 
 
 PIERCE STRENGTHENS HIS FORTIFICATIONS. 
 
 The echoes of the famous “oil war of 1872” reached St. 
 Louis, and the victory of Rockefeller in that historic conflict 
 directed some attention to his personality. Pierce had then 
 become of age, but he was a veteran in the oil trade. He realized 
 that he would not always be permitted to have his own way in 
 the huge territory over which his agencies were scattered, but he 
 kept at work with an intense yet calm energy which was not to 
 be denied. Railroads were pushing into the Southwest in every 
 direction, and with the railroads went Pierce or his representatives 
 locating their oil tanks in the newly platted towns. 
 
 William H. Waters, a St. Louis capitalist, became interested 
 in Pierce and offered to invest a considerable sum in his enter- 
 prise. The younger man agreed to this, with the stipulation 
 that his management of affairs should never be interfered with. 
 Upon this understanding the firm of Waters, Pierce & Co. 
 was formed. The influx of this fresh capital inspired Pierce 
 to new efforts and gave him a chance to put into effect a scheme 
 he long had cherished. 
 
 When petroleum was first discovered in large quantities 
 it was stored in lakes formed by earthen embankments. ■ The 
 losses by percolation and evaporation were enormous, and the 
 next crude step in advance was the construction of wooden 
 tanks. The oil w'as so volatile that its valuable gases penetrated 
 these wooden walls, and no paints or preparations were sufficient 
 to confine this fluid. Then some genius hit on the seemingly 
 obvious expedient of substituting iron for wood, and the old 
 style tanks disappeared. 
 
 HE BECOMES AN INVENTOR. 
 
 Oil was still transported long and short distances in wooden 
 barrels and tanks. Special kinds of w'ood of great thickness 
 were used for this purpose, but despite this precaution the loss 
 from evaporation constituted a large item. Pierce was the first 
 -to solve this problem. It does not seem much of an invention 
 these days, but it is the simple thing which hides the longer 
 from those who seek a remedy. The young oil merchant designed. / 
 manufactured and put into use the first iron barrels ever used fo^ 
 oil or any other fluid, and with that discovery the handling of 
 oil was revolutionized. Nor did he stop there. 
 
 From the start he had been figuring on how to reach those 
 customers who lived far from railroads. Some of these would 
 buy a can of oil on those rare occasions when they happened to 
 be in a town where oil was stored, but Pierce wished to deliver 
 it regularly at their doors. He hit upon the plan of the iron 
 
 — 12 — 
 
tank wagon, was the first to design one, have it constructed 
 and put into use. More than a quarter of a century has passed 
 since the first wagon bearing his name wended its way out 
 into the coimtry districts and into the little villages and settle- 
 ments remote from railroad communication, yet the tank^/ 
 wagons which are in use today vary but slightly from the model 
 first introduced by Henry Clay Pierce. 
 
 It is only fair to give Mr. Pierce credit for these striking im- 
 provements in the methods of handling oil, and it is a matter 
 of record that he invented and applied them years before the 
 
 Standard Oil company reached out its long arm into the M’est and. 
 Southwest. Space precludes mention of the score of lesser 
 inventions made by the young oil merchant in the years prior 
 to 1880, and it would require a book to narrate the story of 
 his extension of the oil business into every city and hamlet 
 in the greater part of Missouri, all of Arkansas, Indian Territory, 
 Oklahoma, Texas, Western Louisiana and the enormous extent 
 of the republic of Mexico. At the age of 25 he was so firmly 
 entrenched in this vast section that it was necessary only to 
 defend its northern borders against competition. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 THE STANDARD REACHES OUT 
 
 The crime popularly charged against the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company is that the Standard Oil trust owns a majority 
 control of its stock. It was on September 10, 1906, that Henry . 
 Clay Pierce testified under oath before Commissioner Anthony,V 
 in St. Louis, that in 1882 the majority of the stock of his com- 
 pany passed to the Rockefeller interests. 
 
 That was all the excited public cared to know. Nine men 
 out of ten instantly construed this statement as a confession 
 of corporate guilt, and one which branded the Waters Pierce 
 a capitalistic outlaw, doomed to be wrecked and hunted down 
 by the law hounds through the jungle of the courts. The quarry 
 has been keenly trailed and closely pressed, and the brave baying 
 of the pack comes to our ears from the black depths of the 
 judicial forest. 
 
 It is of prime importance that the student of this case, 
 should know exactly how, when and under what circumstances 
 the Standard Oil acquired its interest in the Waters Pierce. 
 
 Let me state at the start that this event occurred at a time 
 when there was no law and no public sentiment against the 
 free and unlimited interchange of corporate stocks and all other 
 forms of property. In 1882 there was not a clause in any law 
 in force in Missouri — where the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 was organized — or in Texas, or in any other State or Territory 
 in which it operated, which could be construed to prevent 
 Mr. Pierce or any other stockholder from selling all or any 
 part of his or their stock to any purchaser. 
 
 Years were to pass before the National congress should 
 enact its first anti-trust law, and then yet more years before 
 the higher courts affirmed its validity. 
 
 EX POST FACTO LAWS. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States, in article 1, section 
 9, clause 3, declares that "no ex post facto law shall be passed.” 
 Reduced to plain English, this means that no legislature shall 
 be permitted to pass an act which shall reach back into the past. 
 In other words, it is forbidden to provide penalties for some- 
 thing “after the act.” It is now legal to transmit a million 
 or a billion dollars worth of property to an heir. Of course, 
 it is not right, and when we obtain more social and economic 
 sense we will pass a law estopping this handing down of fabulous 
 estates to individuals who have done nothing to merit them, but 
 in the meantime all such bequests must stand. 
 
 By the same token there was no law in 1878 or in 1882, 
 or for years afterward, preventing a stockholder from selling 
 his holdings to John D. Rockefeller or to any other individual 
 who offered a satisfactory price for them. We now have such 
 laws, and some of us believe in their justice and have faith 
 that they can be enforced. I shall not discuss that question, 
 but reiterate that in those early years our capitalists were not 
 
 so gifted with prophetic instinct that they could conform to 
 laws not then passed or even seriously urged. 
 
 And yet, mark you, unbiased reader, the great hue and 
 cry against Henry Clay Pierce is based on the fact that in 1882 
 the Standard Oil company secured control of the majority of 
 the stock of the Waters Pierce Oil compaity. I shall now relate 
 how this happened. 
 
 TRIUMPH OF ROCKEFELLER. 
 
 In the years between 1870 and 1882, John D. Rockefeller 
 was engaged in the greatest industrial conquest ever recorded 
 in history. Future ages will accord him a place with the great, 
 not because he amassed vast wealth, but because he was the first 
 capitalist who discovered and applied the truth that there is 
 greater economy and greater profit in comibination than in 
 competition. He gave the world its first great object lesson in 
 the possibilities of organized production. Single-handed he 
 waged a war against competition. He was possessed of the 
 idea that one corporation could and should control the oil 
 industry of the United States. He saw the defects, stupidities 
 and idiocies of our system of society — and proceeded to take 
 advantage of them. He placed his finger on the weakness 
 and inefficiency of our system of government — and proceeded 
 to make it ridiculous. Alone he entered the lists against the 
 fighting and equally selfish refiners of Oil Creek and Cleveland — 
 and conquered them with the new weapon of combination. • 
 
 Rockefeller revealed his plans to the great railroad mag- 
 nates. They first agreed with him, and then deserted him when 
 pressure was brought to bear by his remaining competitors. 
 He laid siege to the refiners of Pittsburg and compelled .heir 
 surrender. He moved on Philadelphia and crushed those who 
 had laughed at his plan of campaign. He routed the forces 
 led by H. H. Rogers, secured his allegiance and made him sub- 
 altern in command of his Eastern forces. He fought the Pennsyl- 
 vania and other railroads to a finish, humbled Cassatt in 1877 
 and received the sword of William H. Vanderbilt in the fol- 
 lowing year. 
 
 PIERCE AND THE STANDARD OIL. 
 
 During these events Mr. Pierce bent every energy to fortify 
 himself in the Southwest. His position was a peculiar one. In 
 tlie early days he had been a small producer in V'est Virginia, 
 and had conducted a modest refinery in St. Louis, but the day 
 of small producers and refiners had passed. The West i)roduced 
 no oil. It was not then dreamed that billions of gallons of petro- 
 leum rested beneath the prairies of Oklahoma, Indian Territory, 
 Kansas and Texas. Had some "wildcatter” sunk a well in the 
 present Glenn pool district the history of the oil trade would 
 be far different than it is. 
 
 — 13 — 
 
Mr. Pierce was compelled to buy oil where he could get 
 it, and being a business man naturally bought it as cheaply 
 as possible. He became a customer of the Standard Oil company 
 as early as 1870, and in the eight years which followed pur-', 
 chased from it and from the various independent companies 
 which survived. He closed down his refinery when it became 
 apparent that he could buy from Rockefeller and others much 
 more cheaply than he could produce the various by-products 
 of petroleum. Thus he became distinctively a merchant, a 
 distributer of oil and most of its products, and he aimed to build 
 up so perfect a selling machine that not even the mighty Rocke- 
 feller could challenge him in the territory he had pre-empted 
 before the Standard Oil company was formed. 
 
 The conquering Napoleon of the oil trade invented the 
 subsidiary company early in the ’70s. One of these masquerad- 
 ing independent concerns was known as Chess, Carley & Co., 
 with headquarters in Louisville. It had the backing of the 
 Standard, and along in 1875-6 made a fierce attack on Waters 
 Pierce & Co. The latter company had already worsted several 
 smaller concerns which had Rockefeller backing, but wise in- 
 side observers predicted that Chess, Carley & Co. would drive 
 Mr. Pierce out of Illinois and Missouri, and that eventually it 
 would absorb for the Standard the great business which had 
 been reared by the boy cashier of St. Louis. They were mis- 
 taken. 
 
 PIERCE AS A FIGHTER. 
 
 Instead of retreating, Mr. Pierce boldly carried the war 
 into Kentucky. Within a year he had whipped Chess, Carley 
 & Co. to a point where they sued for mercy, whereupon a truce 
 was agreed on, by the terms of which the Louisville concern 
 kept in its old territory. Space does not permit a recital of the 
 smaller wars which were instigated by the Standard and waged 
 against the Waters Pierce, but Pierce held his own and displayed 
 a resourcefulness and strategy which impressed Rockefeller 
 with the idea that in the young St. Louis oil merchant he had a 
 rival not to be despised. 
 
 In 1878 Mr. Pierce decided to reorganize and strengthen 
 his company. He was then buying most of his supplies from 
 the Standard, and his relations to it were those which usually 
 exist between a large concern and a customer in good standing. 
 Since he was compelled to purchase chiefly from the Standard, 
 he was naturally desirous of maintaining close business relations 
 with it, but he also proposed to retain his independence. In 
 his open letter to Governor Campbell, Mr. Pierce thus relates what 
 happened; 
 
 “In 1878 I organized a new company with a capital stock 
 of $100,000, of which Mr. Waters and I took 40 per cent, H. A. 
 Hutchins and W. P. Thompson of Cleveland 40 per cent and Chess, 
 Carley & Co. of Louisville 20 per cent. It vras understood by 
 all parties that I should retain absolute management, and that 
 my right to dictate the company’s affairs should not be question- 
 ed. Some years after the organization of the company, Hutchins, 
 Thompson and Chess, Carley & Co., without my knowledge, 
 transferred their interests to the Standard Oil company. I 
 purchased Mr. Waters’ stock, and, though strongly urged to 
 place my interest in the original Standard Oil trust, I refused to 
 do so, and in all the years which have followed I have controlled 
 the affairs of the Waters Pierce Oil company, except for a brief 
 interval when illness forced my retirement from active charge 
 of its affairs. There was then no law and no public sentiment 
 against having business relations with the Standard Oil company, 
 but I preferred to perpetuate the name and the business inde- 
 pendence of the concern I had aided to grow from humble be- 
 ginnings, and I have never taken a step aside from that policy.” 
 
 PIERCE DEFIES THE STANDARD. 
 
 The transfer of the holdings of Hutchins, Thompson and 
 Chess, Carley & Co. took place in 1882, on the formation of the 
 original Standard Oil trust. This was four years after Mr. 
 Pierce had admitted them as stockholders. As I stated in the 
 
 beginning of this chapter, there was no legal reason to prevent 
 them from selling to the Standard or to any other purchaser, 
 and Mr. Pierce had the same privilege, but he refused, and later 
 defied the Standard Oil trust to oust him or to disrupt his com- 
 pany. Mr. Pierce stoutly affirms that he did all within his 
 power to preserve the independence of the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company, and it is a matter of record that he has resisted and 
 fought the Standard on innumerable occasions. 
 
 There is no reasonable doubt that Standard Oil interests 
 have repeatedly attempted to cripple and ruin him, and it is a 
 certainty that these same interests are now engaged in an active 
 conspiracy to absorb the business of the Waters Pierce in Texas 
 and other Southwestern States. 
 
 It is the strange irony of fate that the one oil man in all 
 the United States who has succeeded in preserving a semblance 
 of independence should be singled out for the most merciless 
 and, at times, unfair prosecution ever waged against an official 
 of an industrial corporation. 
 
 THE UNFORGIVABLE CRIME. 
 
 There are minor charges against Mr. Pierce and his company 
 and I shall consider them in due time, but any candid man will 
 admit that no prosecution would have been waged unless it 
 was suspected that the Standard was an owner of stock in the 
 Waters Pierce. It was not until 1889 and 1895 that the Texas 
 legislature passed the anti-trust laws on which the original con- 
 viction was obtained — it was in 1882 that the Standard purchased 
 the stock which made Mr. Pierce a minority holder in the com- 
 pany which bore his name. I wish to ask some questions, 
 answer those which are easy, and seek information on those which 
 are hard. 
 
 It is not disputed that the Waters Pierce Oil company was 
 independent of the Standard in all the years prior to 1882. In 
 that year Hutchins, Thompson and Chess, Carley & Co. trans- 
 ferred their stock — amounting to 60 per cent of the total — to the 
 newly formed Standard Oil trust. It seems certain that there 
 was no law forbidding such transfer. I have never heard it 
 stated that there was such a law, but let us assume, for the sake 
 of argument, that there was. This suggests the first question, 
 viz: How did the sale of stock by Hutchins, Thompson and 
 
 Chess, Carley & Co. to the Standard implicate Henry Clay Pierce 
 in this alleged, crime? 
 
 How could he prevent any one of these stockholders from 
 sejliqg to the Standard Oil trust? Let us put this shoe on our 
 own foot and see how it fits. 
 
 Supposed, unbiased reader, that you and I and Smith and 
 Jones form a company to compete with the sugar trust, and that 
 each of us owns one-quarter of the stock. Now suppose that after 
 our company has attained a fair measure of success that Smith, 
 Jones and I quietly transfer our holdings to the sugar trust — 
 do you become a criminal because we have entered into a con- 
 spiracy in restraint of trade? I hardly think so. 
 
 SOME HARD QUESTIONS. 
 
 Yet this was the measure of Mr. Pierce’s offending — in 
 fact, it was far less. One of the three stockholders had given 
 Mr. Pierce an option on his holdings, which option, if exercised, 
 would have guaranteed his continued control. The sale was 
 made in disregard of this option, and Mr. Pierce awoke one morn- 
 ing to learn that 60 per cent of the stock of his company had 
 passed to the great oil trust. I doubt if it then occurred to him 
 that this event would one day brand him a criminal, and make 
 of his company an outlaw. 
 
 Since it is popularly assumed that a corporate crime was 
 committed when the legal control of the Waters Pierce passed 
 to the Standard, it is well to locate the criminal or criminals. 
 Mt. Pierce absolutely refused to sell his stock to the Standard*/" 
 and threatened to begin open war on that trust unless permittee! 
 to retain actual control of the Waters Pierce Oil company, the 
 
 — 14 — 
 
independence of which he insisted should be recognized. That 
 was his ultimatum. Did this threat make him a criminal? 
 
 What more could he do? The sale had been effected, and 
 the stock certificates rested in the great vaults of the Standard 
 Oil company. Not only did the Standard refuse to consider 
 the sale of this stock to Mr. Pierce, but it brought all possible 
 pressure to bear to force him to relinquish his 40 per cent. 
 Suppose he had consented to sell that stock to the trust and 
 taken their certificates in exchange? He would then have be- 
 come a component part of the greatest of all the trusts, and a 
 criminal per se. But he refused this chance to become a 
 Standard Oil magnate, and still some of us insist that 1882 made 
 him an outlaw. 
 
 WHEX DID PIERCE BECOME A CRIMINAL? 
 
 Xo man whose opinion is worth considering will affirm 
 that Henry Clay Pierce was a party to any corporate or moral 
 wrong through the passing of the legal control of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company to the Standard in 1882. That was more 
 than a quarter of a century ago. Suppose that public announce- 
 ment had been made at that time of the passing of 60 per cent 
 of the stock of the Waters Pierce to the Standard? Would law 
 proceedings have been brought against Hutchins, Thompson 
 and Chess, Carley & Co.? Xo. The Standard thus openly 
 acquired scores of competing and outlying concerns, and no law 
 intervened or could intervene. Corporate secrecy was not then 
 a crime. The Standard and the men who sold to it were clearly 
 within their legal rights. 
 
 If there be virtue in contending for corporate independence, 
 Henry Clay Pierce deserves praise for resisting the demands of 
 the Standard in 1882. If there be such a thing as capitalistic 
 braverj' — and there certainly is such a trait — he showed it when 
 he stood alone against the stupenduous might of the Standard. 
 
 Xote carefully what follows: At no time since the Standard 
 
 coup of 1882 has Mr. Pierce had a chance to oust the oil trust 
 
 from the domination it then obtained through broken promises. 
 The records show that he has never owned one share of Standard 
 stock, or of any oil stock other than that of the Waters Pierce; 
 that he has striven with all his energy to maintain the inde- 
 pendence of the Waters Pierce, and that he has been strong 
 enough to compel the fear and respect of the Rockefeller magnates. 
 Now, I ask, just at what time and in what way did Henry Clay 
 Pierce become a part of a Standard Oil conspiracy. 
 
 Surely the passage of the Texas anti-trust laws of 1889 and 
 1895 did not make him a criminal conspirator? His position 
 after their passage was exaetly the same that it had been every 
 day in the preceeding thirteen years. No ex post faeto law 
 ean place the brand of infamy on a man.' 
 
 WHEN THE STORM BROKE. 
 
 Not until Mr. Pierce took the stand in St. Louis on Septem- 
 ber 10, 1906, and frankly told how the Standard Oil trust ob- 
 tained an interest in the Waters Pierce in 1882, then, and not 
 until then, was the strange discovery made that he had been 
 engaged in a life-long conspiracy with Rockefeller to rob and 
 oppress the people of the Southwest. 
 
 I am not holding Henry Clay Pierce up as a hero or as a 
 martyr, but, to use blunt English, I firmly believe that he has 
 gotten the worst of it. It seems to me unjust that the one 
 man who has had the nerve, brains, energy and money to stand 
 like a rock against the brute strength and Machiavelian cunning 
 of the Standard Oil trust should shoulder its obloquy. It seems 
 to me unfair that there should be charged against him all the 
 crimes of which that merciless combination is guilty; it seems 
 to me most unfortunate that passion, prejudiee and political 
 intrigue should be invoked against him rather than a calm and 
 unbiased consideration of the essential facts, and in the chapters 
 which follow I shall state these facts as they appear in sworn 
 testimony. 
 
 dbapter VI. 
 
 SOJIE PERTINENT QUESTIONS 
 
 The fact that the Standard Oil compafiy secured posses- 
 sion of the majority of the stock of the Waters Pierce is ancient 
 history, yet nothing creates more excitement than the recurrent 
 announcement of that fact. When I was a child my mother 
 told with vivid detail the story of a fire which came near destroy- 
 ing our ancestral cottage. In response to my pleadings she told 
 that tale at least three times a week for years and despite the 
 fact that I knew every detail by heart each successive telling 
 had all the thrill of the first. 
 
 Thus it is with us older children when the headlines inform 
 us that the startling discovery has been made that the Standard 
 Oil trust owns a majority of the Waters Pierce. At the start 
 this news item made no popular hit. If the Standard or Waters 
 Pierce had wished to acquaint the people of Texas with that 
 fact in 1882, the year it happened, they would have been com- 
 pelled to advertise it on an extensive and expensive scale. Texas 
 wasn’t bothering about such matters in 1882. 
 
 I am unable to ascertain just when the first public announce- 
 ment was made of the relations existing between the Standard 
 and the Waters Pierce. Every w’ell informed oil man knew 
 it from the beginning. It became a part of a congressional / 
 document in 1888, at which time the National house of repre-*^ 
 sentatives made its first investigation of the trusts. You will 
 
 find it displayed on pages 307-313 of house report No. 3112, 
 wherein is contained the Standard Oil trust agreement, which 
 affirms that a portion of the stockholders of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company were members of the Standard Oil trust. 
 
 WHAT WAS KNOWN IN 1888. 
 
 This damning fact was made public in 1888, and it is likely 
 that the Washington correspondents of Southwestern papers 
 wired the fact to their home offices, but it is certain that the 
 disclosures created no riots. In the following year Texas passed 
 her first anti trust law. Her officials must have known that 
 the Standard owned stock in the Waters Pierce — they could 
 not well escape the faet — and yet it did not occur to them to 
 bring suit against the Waters Pierce because certain of its 
 stockholders chose to transfer their stock to the Standard. I am 
 not arguing that they should not have taken such action; I 
 am simply trying to show that it took a long time to focus 
 public wrath on the Waters Pierce. 
 
 The truth of the matter is that no one at that time cared 
 anything about it. It was in accord with the great industrial 
 movement then well under way. The year 1895 rolled around, , 
 and the State of Texas brought its first suit under the anti-trust ' 
 law against the Waters Pierce. In that suit the fact was brought 
 
 — 15 — 
 
out that the Standard owned some of its stock. This provoked 
 mild interest, but the public forgot all about it until the case 
 was heard on appeal, whereupon the repetition of the tale of 
 the alliance created some comment. As the case progressed 
 through the wonderful maze of our courts the continued revelation 
 of the fact that the Standard acquired Waters Pierce stock 
 in 1882 created a progressive sensation. It took so long for the 
 Supreme Court of the United States to pass on the case that 
 most persons had forgotten that the suit was ever started, but 
 the mandate finally came, and the public was properly surprised^ 
 and pleased to learn that the Waters Pierce had been ousted 
 from Texas. It w'as then falsely asserted — as I shall later prove — 
 that this verdict was affirmed against the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company because of its affiliation wdth the Standard. 
 
 This was early in 1900. Later in the year a new company 
 was formed and admitted into Texas, and in the subsequent 
 row over the granting of a permit the startling discovery was 
 made that the Standard had owned Waters Pierce stock since 
 1882. Five years of peace followed, and then came the Gruet 
 disclosures to the same effect. The discovery of a plot to blow 
 up the State legislature could not have created more of a sensa- 
 tion. Men who had read the same thing a dozen times before 
 declared that they had always suspected it, and demanded 
 great credit for their foresight. When Mr. Pierce took the 
 stand in St. Louis and told the old familiar story over again 
 it sounded as fresh and new as a George Cohan song, but this 
 did not estop some of our enterprising papers from springing 
 it as a “beat” when it bobbed up once more in tlie recent Bailey 
 investigation. 
 
 HARRIMAN AND FISH. 
 
 Notwithstanding the antiquity and continuous reiteration 
 of this “disclosure” there is much bitter feeling against Mr. 
 Pierce because of his alleged duplicity in failing to take the public 
 into his confidence in this matter. In passing I desire to record 
 this opinion: If a list were published to-day of all of the rail- 
 
 roads, industrial enterprises, banks, newspapers, mines and other 
 investments controlled by the Standard Oil company it would 
 be found that hundreds of thousands of men and women were 
 consciously or unconsciously implicated in the Standard Oil 
 conspiracy. Stuyvesant Fish is now making a fight to keep 
 the Illinois Central railroad from falling into the hands of Harri- 
 man. Harriman does the bidding of the Standard, operates 
 with its money, and his every important move is dictated from 
 26 Broadway. There is no dispute about this. 
 
 Now' suppose that Harriman, this Standard Oil agent, 
 succeeds in executing its plans? Suppose that Mr. Fish and 
 his associates are forced into the position of minority holders 
 of this stock, and that the policy of the Illinois Central is dic- 
 tated in future by a Standard Oil board of directors. Do Mr. 
 Fish and the other honest stockholders of this great road 
 become criminal conspirators by reason of the fact that the 
 road is merged against their w'ill with the Rockefeller combine? 
 The only difference is that the Standard moved secretly against 
 Mr. Pierce; it is compelled to operate more or less in the open 
 against Mr. Fish. It would be possible to enumerate a hundred 
 similar instances. Let us resume our history. 
 
 THE STANDARD OIL AGREEMENT. 
 
 In 1882 the owners of 60 per cent of the stock of the Waters 
 Pierce transferred their holdings to the newly formed Standard 
 Oil trust. Mr. Pierce and Mr. Waters were the only ones who 
 refused to go into that merger. The famous Standard Oil trmst 
 agreement of 1882 has been a public document for nearly 
 tw'enty years. There were three classes of parties to that agree- 
 ment. The first class included “all the stockholders and mem- 
 bers” of fourteen corporations, including the Standard Oil com- 
 pany. That constituted a complete merger, so far as these 
 fourteen companies w'ere concerned. The U (iters Tierce Oil 
 company was not included in Umt list. 
 
 The second class consisted of “the following individuals,” 
 forty-six in all, including such familiar names as John D. Rock- 
 
 efeller, William Rockefeller, John D. Archbold, H. M. Flagler, 
 Charles Lockhart, O. H. Payne, Henry H. Rogers, Charles M. 
 Pratt, H. A. Hutchins and W. P. Thompson. The latter two 
 were owners of 40 per cent of the stock of the Waters Pierce, 
 but they were also owners of large blocks of stocks in other 
 companies, all of which they transferred to the trust. 
 
 The name of Henry Clay Pierce was not on that list. He 
 has never owned a share of Standard Oil stock. 
 
 The third class consisted of “a portion of the stockholders 
 and members of the following corporations and limited partner- 
 ships,” to the number of twenty-six, the last named of which 
 was the Waters Pierce Oil company. In some instances the 
 Standard secured control of a minority of the stock of these 
 companies, and in other cases it obtained a majority control. 
 
 ACTION OF THE COURTS. 
 
 I have been criticised in some quarters for alleged reflections 
 on the courts because they have “adjudged the Waters Pierce 
 a trust on account of the purchase by the Standard of a majority 
 of its stock.” Such criticism has no basis in fact. In the first 
 case no court of competent jurisdiction has declared the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company a trust on that account. In the second 
 place, the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas distinctly ruled, as I 
 shall detail later, that the “Standard Oil trust agreement of 
 1882” did not involve the Waters Pierce to the extent of making 
 it a part of the trust. In the third place, the company w’as 
 not ousted from Texas by the Supreme Court of the United 
 States on any ruling affirming that it was a trust. 
 
 What the law is on this subject I do not know, and none 
 of us will know until the case is carried to the Supreme Court 
 of the United States. I am discussing the ethics of this question, 
 as I have a right to do, and am yet to be convinced that H. C. 
 Pierce became a criminal because Hutchins, Thompson and 
 others joined the Standard Oil trust in 1882. 
 
 When the Waters Pierce Oil company was formed in 1878 / 
 its directors were William H. Waters, H. C. Pierce, William P.\/ 
 Thompson, Horace A. Hutchins and Francis D. Carley. These 
 same directors continued in office after the Standard obtained 
 the majority of the stock in 1882, and no change W'as made 
 until 1885. Mr. Waters was nominally president, but he took 
 no active interest in the affairs of the company, the management 
 of which fell to Mr. Pierce. None of the other directors lived 
 in St. Louis, and they were merely figureheads representing the 
 holdings of the Standard. In 1882 the capital stock was in- 
 creased to $400,000, but the proportions remained the same, 
 Waters and Pierce retaining 40 per cent. 
 
 ' CHARGES AGAINST THE WATERS PIERCE. 
 
 I wish now to consider two serious charges which are made 
 against the Waters Pierce Oil company, to both of which it 
 admits, or should admit, its guilt. The first is that it operated 
 within the limits of a clearly defined territory; the second is 
 that it attempted to do all the oil business in that territory. 
 These charges give rise to the most important, interesting and 
 puzzling issues which now confront this nation and the industrial 
 world. I am not going to make any specious plea in defense 
 of the Waters Pierce. I hold, and for twenty years have held, 
 very positive and possibly peculiar views on this subject. Most 
 people dissent from these theories of mine, but this unfortunate 
 fact does not impair their accuracy, nor shall it restrain me 
 from stating them. 
 
 The most stupenduous and complicated task ever under- 
 taken by the law is the regulation of the business affairs of 
 individuals or combinations of individuals, and the most be- 
 w'ildering of all problems is to prescribe by enactments and court 
 decisions a system in w'hich competition shall be maintained 
 without any one getting the best or the worst of it. The National 
 government and every State in the Union is engaged at that 
 task, and they are no nearer a solution than when they started. 
 
 I have a sublime faith in the efficacy of just laws faithfully en- 
 forced, but law' can not accomplish the impossible. 
 
QLESTIOXS FOR DEMOCRATS. 
 
 It seems strange to me that democrats who subscribe 
 to the rights of the individual against the government; 
 who hold with Jefferson that that government governs 
 best which governs least; who pretend to be jealous of 
 any interference with the freedom of contract — it seems 
 strange to me that such democrats turn squarely about 
 and assert that a solution for our industrial evils can be 
 found in laws which forbid a man to buy from whom he 
 will, to sell for what he can get; that this democrat 
 should affirm the justice of laws which compel a man to 
 sell in a place whether he wishes to do so or not, to 
 individuals whether he wishes or not; that this democrat 
 believes in the justice of a law which makes it a crime 
 to sell goods at a high figure, and which makes it equally 
 criminal to sell them at a low figure; that this democrat 
 believes that the law should prevent two or more men 
 from fixing a price for a commodity, regardless of wheth- 
 er or not the price agreed on be fair or not; that this 
 democrat should hold that the man who overcomes his 
 competitor should be punished, also that the man who 
 spares his competitor shall be suspected of conspiracy — 
 I repeat that this democrat I have in mind has discov- 
 ered precepts in Jefferson’s teachings which have escaped 
 my notice. 
 
 It is admitted that the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 made an arrangement with the Standard by which the 
 former was to market the products of the latter within 
 a certain territory. This territory included Southeastern 
 Missouri, Arkansas, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, Texas, 
 Louisiana, west of the Mississippi, and the Republic of 
 Mexico. Mr. Pierce has kept his agreement. The Stand- 
 ard has violated it .on innumerable occasions, and I pre- 
 sume that this perfidy will be counted to its credit by 
 those who think that competition should and can be 
 coddled by the law. 
 
 FORCED COMPETITION. 
 
 In accord with that agreement Mr. Pierce has re- 
 fused to sell oil in Kansas City. Now suppose we elim- 
 inate the Standard Oil for the sake of argument. Let us 
 assume that Mr. Pierce succeeds in purchasing from the 
 Standard all of its holdings, and that the Waters Pierce 
 is absolved from all its past offenses on its promise to 
 conduct an absolutely independent and competitive busi- 
 ness. It now has no territorial limits, and Kansas City de- 
 mands that Waters Pierce products be sold in that city in 
 competition with other concerns. Very well. The company 
 erects tanks, purchases wagons and horses, installs a com- 
 prehensive delivery system and competes to the' best of 
 its ability against the old established concerns. This costs 
 money, and it is likely that the Waters Pierce will lose, 
 considerable before it wins a hold on the Kansas City 
 trade, but that city is so near the old line that suspicion 
 will be engendered unless the Waters Pierce invades that 
 place. 
 
 And then Topeka demands the competition of the 
 Waters Pierce. So does Memphis, just across the river 
 from its old Arkansas line. What excuse has the Waters 
 Pierce to refuse to serve Memphis? It can not plead lack 
 of money — every one knows that it has lots of money. 
 Tell me, please, just where shall the Waters Pierce be 
 
 permitted to stop? Surely not at Omaha? How about 
 Chicago and New Orleans? It must take them in if it 
 has the resources. Who is to determine if it can afford 
 to enter Chicago and New Orleans, Cincinnati and Louis- 
 ville, Cheyenne and Denver? I presume we would have 
 to have a commission appointed with power to examine 
 its books and determine whether or not the company can 
 be forced to extend its benevolent competition to any 
 place which demands it. 
 
 One of two things must happen if we put this 
 scheme 'into effect. If the forced expansion of the Waters 
 Pierce be successful it will eventually cover the entire 
 nation — and will then be a most vicious form of trust, 
 against which no small concern could hope to compete. 
 On the other hand its spreading out may bankrupt it; 
 but, of course, this would not be the fault of the new 
 system of industry we propose to install. 
 
 Have I overdrawn or distorted this case? Show me 
 by what right a State or a National government has the 
 power to force an individual or a corporation to go into 
 a new territory against its will, and I will prove to you 
 that either monopoly or bankruptcy is inevitable. 
 
 A CONCRETE ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 Here is a town in which ten rnilkmen are supplying 
 the inhabitants. Each of these ten milkmen has cus- 
 tomers in all parts of the town. All of them travel a 
 total of 200 miles each day in order to distribute the milk 
 and cream. One depraved milkman figures out that by 
 a division of territory all pf this milk can be distributed 
 by trotting their horses 100 miles instead of 200. They 
 make such distribution of territory. They do not raise 
 the price of milk, the customers are served more prompt- 
 ly, fewer horses are required, there is less wear and tear 
 on the wagons, the milkmen have more leisure or more 
 hours for other employment, not a single individual in 
 all that town has been wronged in the least, the milkmen 
 have invented and applied a sensible labor saving sys- 
 tem — and yet under the laws of the United States and 
 of most of the individual States they have flagrantly vio- 
 lated the anti-trust enactments and are guilty of a con- 
 spiracy in restraint of trade. 
 
 I must confess little faith and less sympathy with 
 such laws. The evils which exist and for which a cure 
 is sought can never be reached by such absurd and un- 
 scientifle methods. It is amusing to listen to men who 
 grow eloquent expounding their dread of the tyrannies of 
 State socialism and who denounce impracticabilities of gov- 
 ernment ownership, turn blithely to a defense of a plan 
 which asserts the right of a government to stop a man 
 from selling what is his, and to regulate the amount of 
 business an individual or a concern shall do without call- 
 ing down the wrath of the law. 
 
 Doubtless the preceding proves that I am a hopeless 
 visionary, but I shall be obliged if my critics will point 
 to one good result of all the anti-trust laws which cover 
 the pages of our statute books. The trust system is 
 founded not on an industrial conspiracy, but on a tariff 
 and moneyed conspiracy, and when the sane thought of 
 the nation is turned to the abuses which are tolerated in 
 Washington and the banking and gambling crimes which 
 are fostered in Wall street we shall at least be on the 
 right scent. 
 
 — 17 — 
 
Chapter Vil. 
 
 METHODS OF COMPETITION 
 
 The Waters Pierce Oil company has twice been 
 ousted from Texas. In the first instance a conviction 
 was obtained, not on the charge that the Waters Pierce 
 was a trust or iii' alliance with a trust, but rather on 
 the ground that it had been guilty of certain infractions 
 of the anti-trust law, which infractions might have been 
 committed by any individual or business concern not in 
 any way identified with a trust. In the more recent con- 
 viction and ousting of the company the verdict declared 
 that it was a trust. Not until the Supreme Court of the 
 United States passes on that verdict will we know if the 
 jury w'as justified in rendering it. 
 
 It is the popular belief that trusts and monopolies 
 have been developed by unfair methods. We hear much 
 of the phrase, “unfair competition.” I confess that I am 
 unable to conceive of such a thing as “fair” competition. 
 I assume that the expression “fair competition” means 
 that no unfair advantage will be taken by any competitor. 
 The socialist who dreams of a time when all shall serve 
 the State for the pure love of doing so may be lacking 
 in a clear understanding of human nature, but he is a 
 practical and conservative man compared with the one 
 who asserts that it is possible to force men to compete 
 “fairly.” You might as well preach in favor of “peace- 
 able” fighting. Competition means that each participant 
 will take every possible advantage of all of his oppo- 
 nents. 
 
 COMPETITION DEFINED. 
 
 The theory of competition is to the effect that a mer- 
 ciless struggle for individual supremacy brings out all 
 that is best in society. Competition affirms the justice of 
 the law of the survival of the fittesf. It turns down the 
 thumb on the fallen competitor, and places the laurel 
 wreatli on the strong victor. The one unforgivable crime 
 under competition is defeat. He who would win must 
 have good weapons; he must be selfish, keen, relentless, 
 insatiable. He must be instant to take merciless advantage 
 of the mistakes or the misfortunes of others. You can 
 not restrain competition. The moment you place a limit, 
 that moment competition ceases to exist. 
 
 What are the chief functions of competition? The 
 answer is easy. The essential functions of competition are 
 to buy in the cheapest market, to sell at the highest price, 
 to so perfect a service that customers will be attached to 
 you, to cripple your antagonist, absorb his trade and anni- 
 hilate him if possible — in brief, competition means victory 
 for the strong and defeat and business death for the weak. 
 It means the inevitable weeding out of the inefficient and 
 the unfortunate and its motto for centuries has been: “All 
 is fair in business.” 
 
 Invention and the machine doomed competition. The 
 railroad and the machine annihilated distance, and capi- 
 tal found it possible to cover a continent with its web. 
 The worker was the first to lose his independence, the 
 small merchant and factory owner followed, and the day 
 of small undertakings was past. Some of us do not be- 
 lieve this, and have faith that a way can be found to com- 
 pel a huge corporation so to conduct its affairs that little 
 fellows will be permitted to nibble at and finally destroy it. 
 
 WHAT THE WATERS PIERCE DID. 
 
 I propose to contrast the methods of two typical 
 American business concerns, viz,, the original Waters 
 
 Pierce Oil company and Marshall Field & Co., of Chicago. 
 The first was supposed to stand for all that was inher- 
 ently vicious in its methods of monopolizing business; the 
 latter is often pointed out as an establishment which has 
 attained a remarkable degree of success by fair methods. 
 
 There is no dispute that the Waters Pierce was first 
 in the field in its present territory. It Installed a vast 
 and efficient system for the distribution and marketing of 
 oil, and was permitted to occupy the Southwest practic- 
 ally without trade competition. Then the Standard bought 
 into it and made'the Waters Pierce its agent for the mar- 
 keting of its products. The complaint is that the Waters 
 Pierce would not permit outsiders to obtain a foothold 
 in its territorJ^ There is no doubt that this complaint 
 was well-founded. 
 
 How did the Waters Pierce proceed to protect itself 
 against those enterprising men who were tempted by the 
 profits which were pouring into the coffers of the Waters 
 Pierce? In the first place .the Waters Pierce had large 
 capital back of it. It could afford to lose money for a 
 while in order to hold its supremacy. Had a competitor 
 entered the lists with an equal amount of capital it might 
 have been different. Had a corporation challenged the 
 Waters Pierce with more money and higher executive 
 genius the latter probably would have been forced out. 
 That is the law of competition. 
 
 The total resources at the command of the Waters 
 Pierce, however, were insignificant compared with the 
 wealth of the nation. There was nothing to prevent the 
 formation of a company which could have fought and de- 
 feated the Waters Pierce and the Standard combined, and 
 the opportunity is still open, but no such antagonist leaped 
 into the ring. Little fellows launched their oil enter- 
 prises in Texas and elsewhere. What did the Waters 
 Pierce do when confronted with this competition? 
 
 It waged competitive war on them. That was then / 
 the recognized rule of the game. It cut the prices to a't 
 point at which there were not only no profits but actual 
 losses. That is competition. It has been competition 
 through all the centuries. I have ridden in the good old 
 days from Chicago to St. Louis for 25 cents and have 
 returned during a railroad rate war for the pleasing sum 
 of 10 cents. Did anyone insist at that time that such 
 tactics were “unfair?” No such charge was made. It was 
 one of the rules of the glorious competitive game. Beat 
 your foe at any cost and the devil take the loser. The 
 man who entered the ring with a scant supply of capi- 
 tal knew what he was up against. He did not ask the 
 government to interfere with laws compelling established 
 concerns to maintain a price list which would insure him 
 a reasonable profit. The theory was this: Unless the 
 
 little fellow had the brains with which to offset his lack 
 of means he would lose. He asked no mercy and if he 
 won extended none. 
 
 Mind you, I am not urging that this was right: I am 
 merely setting forth the rules of the game before we un- 
 dertook the “regulation of competition.” 
 
 THE PURCHASE OF COMPETITORS. 
 
 Another weapon used by the original Waters Pierce ^ 
 was the outright purchase of the property of an aggress- 
 ive competitor. If there be one fundamental right it is 
 
 — 18 — 
 
that the individual shall not be estopped from buying and 
 selling in the open market. 
 
 In defiance of popular opinion and in contempt of the 
 makeshift school of alleged political economy which has 
 been conjured up in recent years, I wish to record my 
 belief that the Waters Pierce had a moral, ethical and 
 legal right to buy anything which any one else was will- 
 ing to sell, and I will go further and declare that no gov- 
 ernment has a right to interfere with any individual or 
 combination of individuals in restraint of this freedom of 
 contract. 
 
 The right of a man to buy a competing oil company 
 or a competing railroad is as inviolate as that which per- 
 mits the enterprising village butcher to take over the shop 
 of his only rival. We are never going to settle our in- 
 dustrial problems along such stupid and unscientific lines. 
 The government has the right to confiscate property, it 
 can assert its prerogative of regulation, but it is mon- 
 strous to urge that any power on earth should intervene 
 between those who are willing to sell and those who are 
 willing to buy. 
 
 It is also charged that the old Waters Pierce made 
 contracts with small merchants and dealers under the^ 
 terms of which the latter agreed to handle Waters Pierce 
 goods exclusively for a given period. We are trying hard 
 to convince ourselves that this was a heinous offense 
 against competitors, and that it is deserving of severe pun- 
 ishment. Some States have passed laws against this prac- 
 tice. Such laws can not and should not be enforced. They 
 mean, for instance, that a jeweler can not make a contract 
 with the Elgin Watch company for the exclusive handling 
 of its products. They mean that this jeweler shall be 
 ' forced to buy and carry in stock any watch that a con- 
 cern may desire to place on the market. As an oil mer- 
 chant I have as much right to contract with the Waters 
 Pierce that I will handle its products exclusively for a 
 term of years as my neighbor, the grocer, has to make a 
 deal for the exclusive handling of a certain brand of flour, 
 or any other dealer that he will make a specialty of a 
 certain make of camera. 
 
 Such a law would make a criminal of the book agent 
 who worked for a designated publishing house. I could 
 instance a hundred examples which are parallel, but it 
 should be apparent to every thinking man that such a law 
 is the acme of legislative folly. Imagine a grocer being 
 hauled to court and later fined and imprisoned on con- 
 viction of having declined to buy and carry in stock a cer- 
 tain brand of breakfast food! All such laws prove that we 
 do not know what ails us, and that we are striking blindly 
 in the dark We need fewer laws and more thought. 
 
 .V PR.IISEWORTIIY MONOPOLY. 
 
 The proof of the inefficiency of all such laws is found 
 in the fact that the large majority of the great fortunes, 
 huge business enterprises, trusts and monopolies, have 
 been created and reared by methods which did not violate 
 such laws. On-e example will be sufficient. 
 
 A gene^ration ago there were twenty or more wholesale 
 dry goods houses in Chicago. Today there are nominally 
 three or four; actually there is one — Marshall Field & 
 Co. That great business concern transacts a volume of 
 business so great that it completely overshadows all the 
 others, and it is in a position to move resistlessly on until 
 it obtains a complete monopoly of the trade of the West 
 and South, and eventually of the nation. When Marshall 
 Field died he left a fortune which well-informed authori- 
 
 ties estimate at not less than $300,000,000, and so far as 
 anti-trust laws are concerned he made every penny of it 
 honestly. How did he do it? 
 
 He began by selling at a low margin of profit. He 
 bought out his partners one by one. He employed a 
 high degree of business sagacity, and as the years passed 
 the weaker houses succumbed under Ids “fair” competition. 
 He decided not to pay profits to manufacturers, and there- 
 fore erected his cotton and linen factories in England 
 and Ireland. He founded his silk factories in France, his 
 looms turned out carpets in Brussels, thousands of Turks 
 work directly for him in factories scattered all over the 
 sultan’s domain; there was not a nation in Europe to which 
 he did not pay taxes for the huge establishments owned 
 directly by him; he made vast investments in South Amer- 
 ica, Australia, Japan, China and from all the world the 
 various fabrics needed in his business were shipped from 
 his factories to Chicago. 
 
 Surely that was fair competition. There was nothing 
 to prevent any other wholesaler from adopting the same 
 methods, but none of them did, the result being that Mar- 
 shall Field was able to offer all classes of textiles at a 
 rate which meant fair profits to him but ruin to those who 
 were compelled to buy small quantities in the open mar- 
 ket. 
 
 I have not at hand the recent figures showing the vol- 
 ume of business annually transacted by Marshall Field 
 & Co., but I do know that it has frequently approached a 
 total of $100,000,000 a year. A net profit of 5 per cent 
 would yield him $5,000,00 annually, but the small com-^ 
 petitor would face ruin on a 5 per cent margin. Marshall 
 Field gave no rebates, he made no exclusive contracts, 
 he did not buy out his competitors — he crushed him with 
 the sheer weight of $150,000,000 honestly invested and hon^ 
 estly conducted — and in all the years of his long and won- 
 derful career I never heard a charge made that he took an 
 unfair or illegal advantage of a competitor. It was not 
 his fault if other merchants could not afford to sell as 
 cheaply as he did. 
 
 WHAT WILL HAPPEN. 
 
 Now suppose that Texas and all the other Southwest- 
 ern States succeed in their attempt to drive the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company out of existence. Assume that the 
 National government succeeds in disrupting the Standard 
 Oil company, and assume that the Supreme Court affirms 
 the constitutionality of all the anti-trust laws now on the 
 statute books of the respective States. Assume that a way 
 be found to re-establish all the puny companies which 
 have been amalgamated into the Standard, and assume 
 that all of the former conspirators are placed in prison 
 for life — what then will be the situation? 
 
 Here we will have a stupendous industry opened 
 again to a law-regulated competition. I presume that no 
 sane man proposes to fix a maximum to the amount of 
 money which an individual or a corporation can honestly 
 invest. As I understand the position of our friends who 
 are seeking to revive the corpse of competition, they 
 insist that no commodity shall be sold below the cost of 
 production and distribution, they bar rebates, exclusive 
 contracts, the purchase of competing Concerns; they 
 propose to have the books of all corporations open to in- 
 spection; they propose to proliibit overcapitalization and 
 to stop stock speculation, and they suggest other details 
 of lesser importance. 
 
 — 19 — 
 
THE FUIERE OF MARSHALL FIELD. 
 
 Well and good. This gives all of us a “fair” chance 
 to get rich in the oil industry. The little fellow comes 
 back to his own. No more spies to watch his doings, no 
 more cutting of prices; everything is to be as prim and 
 exacting as the rules of golf or of bridge whist. 
 
 But hold on! How about some reincarnated Marshall 
 Field? Who shall interfere with some individual or law- 
 fully formed and legally conducted corporation that en- 
 ters the clean-swept competitive field equipped with a 
 little matter of $250,000,000? Of course, we will not per- 
 mit the new competitor to buy up the various concerns 
 which are lined up for this peaceful scrap, but no one has 
 suggested any law to prevent such a concern from creating 
 a new town of Whiting, a more extensive and better 
 equipped Bayonne, a more mammoth Corsicana. It re- 
 quires only money to duplicate every mile of pipe line, 
 and the new concern will not object to the law making 
 these new lines common carriers. 
 
 The only advantage that the new concern has is a 
 trifling matter of $250,000,000. Shall we permit it to hire 
 the best experts? Shall we permit it to explore and de- 
 velop new fields? Shall we permit it to sell its crude oil 
 and its refined products at a margin of 5 per cent profit 
 over the cost of production, manufacturing and distribu- 
 tion? Shall we permit it to establish agencies, do an 
 interstate business, build railroads, construct tank ships 
 and perform all the other functions necessary to the prop- 
 er conduct of the oil business? There are now no laws 
 against such competitive methods. 
 
 There should be no need to call attention to what 
 will happen when such an honest competitor enters the 
 field. The concern with $100,000, or $1,000,000, or $10,- 
 000,000, or $100,000,00, will have no more show against 
 this $250,000,000 corporation or individual than the cor- 
 ner retail dry goods store has to enter the wholesale bus- 
 iness against Marshall Field & Co. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 TEX.tS MOVES .tGAINST THE WATERS PIERCE 
 
 Lt was not until 1889 that the trust issue engaged the 
 serious attention of the lawmakers of Texas. The Twen- 
 ty-first legislature passed, on March 30, 1889, the first anti- 
 trust law ever placed on the statute books of the State, 
 and this enactment was approved by the governor on 
 April 3, 1889. 
 
 In recent years the highest courts of Texas have 
 ruled that so far as anti-trust violations are concerned, 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company or any other corporation 
 can not be held liable for any acts prior to the passage 
 of the law of 1889. Legally, therefore, it had transgressed 
 no law through the methods it had employed to build up a 
 vast and wonderfully effective system for the distribution 
 and marketing of its products. 
 
 I have called attention to this fact befoye, but reiterate 
 it for the purpose of making it clear that the overwhelming 
 advantage later and at present enjoyed by the Waters 
 Pierce was originally secured in ways not frowned on by 
 public sentiment and not restrained by any law. The 
 same is true of nearly all of the great corporations and 
 huge personal fortunes which now engage the serious 
 thought of the nation. The generation which preceded 
 us erected no barrier against wealth massing, and the 
 individual or the corporation was permitted to grasp all 
 within reach free from State or National interference. 
 
 There is general complaint and resentment that the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company is employing every artifice 
 which - can be devised by shrewd lawyers to hold what 
 it has won and to thwart those who would punish it. 
 Surely we have no right to ask that this particular cor- 
 poration shall decline to take every advantage offered 
 by our fearful and wonderful law code? If the Waters 
 Pierce case and other complicated and protracted litiga- 
 tion result only in directing public attention to the farci- 
 cal character of our system of jurisprudence, they will 
 have served a most admirable purpose. 
 
 The passage of the Texas anti-trust law of 1889 
 found the Waters Pierce practically in undisputed pos- 
 session of the oil trade of the Southwest. It undoubtedly 
 could have held that advantage had it yielded strict obe- 
 dience to all of the reasonable and ethical provisions of 
 that law, but certain of its agents were guilty of acts 
 which were in conflict, not only with the law, but with a 
 changed public sentiment. 
 
 IGAORIIVGI THE LAW, 
 
 I do not believe that any State or that the nation will 
 succeed in settling this trust question through an at- 
 tempted “regulation” of competition or combinations, but 
 it is the right of the State or of the nation to try this 
 experiment, and the corporation which defies such laws 
 must expect punishment. The right of a State to dictate 
 to a corporation is unquestioned, and no dictum is more 
 firmly established than that “a corporation is an artificial 
 being, invisible, intangible and existing only in contem- 
 plation of the law. Being a mere creature of the law, it 
 possesses only those properties which the character of 
 its creation confers upon it,” so ruled by the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. 
 
 Therefore the right of Texas to impose on a cor- 
 poration, organized in another State and operating with- 
 in its borders, any restriction or regulation not confisca- 
 tory of its property, could not be challenged with safety. 
 A careful study of the record of the old Waters Pierce 
 Oil company in the years between 1889 and 1895 con- 
 vinces me that it was slow to realize that a revolution 
 had occurred. It did not comprehend that the reign of 
 unrestricted individualism was at an end, and that Texas, 
 though striking blindly, had aroused from her sleep and 
 had taken the first step for the curbing of corporate ag- 
 gression. 
 
 — 20 — 
 
I think that it can be shown, however, that the Waters 
 'Pierce Oil company in the years preceding 1895 — at which 
 time it was called sternly to account for its misdeeds — 
 was a far different corporation from the one which existed 
 after 1900, and which now is operating in all its former 
 territory save that of Texas. The Waters Pierce is not 
 a corporate angel, neither does its history disclose it as 
 the incarnation of all that is diabolical and despicable. It 
 deserves neither canonization nor crucifixion, and the main 
 question at issue is whether or not the penalties which 
 some urge should be imposed upon it are just, when all 
 the facts are taken into consideration. A great State 
 should not and will not lay aside its dignity and stoop 
 to acts inspired by motives of revenge. 
 
 THE ORIGIIVAL AXTI- TRUST LAW. 
 
 It will not be disputed that the original -Texas anti- 
 trust law was framed with the eyes of the legislators fixed 
 more especially on the Waters Pierce Oil cornpany. This 
 was natural, since the Waters Pierce was the leading 
 industrial concern in the State, and it was well understood 
 that it then controlled not less than 98 per cent of the 
 oil trade, not only in Texas but also in most of the South- ^ 
 west. It was a matter of record that some of its stock 
 was owned by the Standard Oil company, and there was 
 no question but that it raised and lowered prices prac- 
 tically at its will. It granted rebates, made exclusive con- 
 tracts and harassed its petty competitors by all of the 
 familiar methods then in vogue. 
 
 The definition of a trust in the amended act of 1895 
 is practically the same as that in the original act of 1889, 
 and for the benefit of those who do not know what then 
 constituted and still constitutes a criminal trust I now 
 quote the salient features of that enactment: 
 
 “Article 5313. A trust is a combination of capital, 
 skill or acts by which two or more persons, firms, cor- 
 porations or associations of persons, or either two or 
 more of them for either, any or all of the following 
 purposes: 
 
 “1. To create or carry out restrictions in trade or 
 commerce or aids to commerce, or to create or carry 
 out restrictions in the full and free pursuit of any busi- 
 ness authorized or permitted by the laws of Texas. 
 
 “2. To increase or reduce the price of merchandise, 
 product or -commodities. 
 
 “3. To prevent competition in manufacture, making 
 transportation, sale or purchase of merchandise, product 
 or commodities, or to prevent competition in aids to 
 commerce. 
 
 “4. Fixed at any standard or figure whereby its price 
 to the public shall be in any manner controlled or estab- 
 lished, any article or commodity or merchandise, produce 
 or commerce intended for sale, use or consumption in this 
 State. 
 
 “5. To make or enter into, or execute or carry out 
 any contract, obligation or agreement of any kind or 
 description by which they shall bind or have bound 
 themselves not to sell, dispose of or transport any ar- 
 ticle or commodity or article of trade, use, merchandise, 
 commerce or consumption below a common standard 
 figure; or by which they shall agree in any manner to 
 keep the price of such article, commodity or transporta- 
 tion at a fixed or guarded figure; or by which they shall 
 in any manner establish or settle the price of any article 
 or commodity or transportation between them or them- 
 selves and others to preclude a free and unrestricted com- 
 petition among themselves or others in the sale or trans- 
 
 portation of any such article or commodity, or by which 
 they .shall agree to pool, combine or unite any interest 
 they may have in connection with the sale or transporta- 
 tion of any such article or commodity that its price might 
 in any way be affected.” 
 
 THE INADEQUACY OF WORDS. 
 
 In a current novel Booth Tarkington makes one of 
 his characters say: “It was my innocent conception 
 
 that alm.ost anything might be so described in words that 
 those who read might inevitably perceive the thing pre- 
 cisely. If this were true, there would be little work for 
 the lawyers, who produce such tortured pages in the 
 struggle to be definite, who swing riches from one family 
 to another, save men from violent death or send them to 
 it, and earn fortunes for themselves through the danger- 
 ous inadequacies of words.” 
 
 Let us read that trust definition over again. If words 
 mean anything, it is difficult to go astray in the matter 
 of what constitutes a Texas trust. It certainly means 
 that two or more men or concerns can not sell things 
 at too low a price; that they can not sell things at too 
 high a price, and finally that they can not fix any price, 
 be it high or low, fair or unfair, honest or dishonest. It 
 means that these two men, concerns, etc., can not go for- 
 ward, backwTard or stand still. It means that co-operation 
 or combination of any kind or description is criminal. It 
 means that the only way in which the anti-trust law can 
 be evaded is for each individual to go it alone. 
 
 The plain construction and rigid enforcement of 
 such a law would make criminals of 90 per cent of the 
 business men of Texas or any other State, and its con- 
 tinued obedience would bring about a return to the prim- 
 itive barbarism of which the cave man was the first known 
 type. No such law should ever be passed. The obvious 
 certainty of its general non-enforcement places too much 
 discretionary power in the hands of the prosecuting law 
 officials. It is sure to be ignored when violated by small 
 merchants and manufacturers — and no business man ever 
 has, ever will or possibly could conform to its plain terms. 
 It therefore becomes a weapon which the law can use or 
 withhold. It makes of the prosecuting official an in- 
 spector, an industrial czar, and it tempts business con- 
 cerns to transgress to the greatest extent compatible with 
 immunity, none of them knowing just what or why the 
 law will be enforced against them. 
 
 A SWEEPING RESTRICTION. 
 
 Read again that second clause which makes it' a 
 crime for two or more individuals or a corporation “to 
 increase or reduce the price of merchandise, product or 
 commodities.” Shades of .Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill 
 and Thomas Jefferson! How can there be competition 
 if one is forbidden to lower prices? There is no reserva- 
 tion made in this clause, and in the fifth clause there is 
 a positive injunctian against establishing a standard price, 
 be that price fair or unfair. This would make it illegal 
 to manufacture a brand of cigars and sell them at a fixed 
 price of five or ten cents each. It is not necessary to 
 point out the innumerable and manifest absurdities sug- 
 gested by a study of this definition of a trust. It is an 
 indictment not against combinations, but a sweeping de- 
 nunciation of the only competitive methods known by 
 which business can be transacted in a civilized commu- 
 nity. 
 
 Had the Waters Pierce or any other corporation 
 deemed it best to bow to the plain terms of that law 
 
the first step would have been to dissolve and withdraw 
 from the State, but no one took the enactment seriously, 
 not even the officials charged with its enforcement. The 
 motive of its passage was to “throw a scare into the cor- 
 porations,” and any such legislative policy deserves severe 
 criticism. L,aws should be enforced without favor or 
 repealed. 
 
 The law was approved on April 3, 1889, and a per- 
 mit was granted to the Waters Pierce Oil company to 
 operate in Texas on July 6 of the same year. The com- 
 pany was organized in Missouri and, so far as Texas was 
 concerned, was a foreign corporation, having only such 
 rights and immunities as Texas chose to concede. By 
 accepting a permit the company tacitly and specifically 
 agreed to obey the laws of the State. 
 
 MAdiMTUDE OF THE ISSUE. 
 
 I have neither the space nor the inclination to enter 
 into a prolonged consideration of the litigation which 
 marked the years between 1895 and 1900, but 1 shall 
 attempt to note those legal incidents and developments 
 which have a bearing on the issues now pending. Bear 
 in mind that we were then in our infancy in the struggle 
 to curb and regulate corporations, and it is not to be 
 wondered at that mistakes were made on both sides, 
 and that passion and selfishness contended for the advan- 
 tage. We are yet in the primary grade in this school of in- 
 dustrial economy, and my reason for considering this 
 Waters Pierce case at such length is that it contains to 
 a remarkable degree the developments, motives and point- 
 ed object lessons which should inable us to move toward 
 a rational solution of the greatest problem which ever 
 has confronted civilization. 
 
 FIRST sun AGAIISST THE WATERS PIERCE. 
 
 On November 21, 1894, the grand jury of McLennan 
 county preferred an indictment against John D. Rocke- 
 feller, Henry M. Flagler, William Rockefeller, John D. 
 Archbold, Benjamin Brewster, Henry H. Rogers, Wesley 
 M. Tilford, Henry Clay Pierce, Arthur M. Finlay, C. M. 
 Adams, John P. Gruet, E. Wells, William Grice, E. T. 
 Flathaway and F. A. Austin, charging them with a con- 
 spiracy with William E. Hawkins. The latter was then 
 the local agent of the Waters Pierce in Waco, and sudden- 
 ly found himself in the limelight. Wells, Grice, Flathaway 
 and Austin were division agents of the Waters Pierce. 
 The charge was made that the Waters Pierce was con- 
 trolled by the Standard Oil company, and that it was en- 
 gaged in a conspiracy in restraint of trade in violation 
 of the anti-trust law of 1889. 
 
 The defense moved for a severance, which was grant- 
 ed, and elected to try E. T. Hathaway, one of its divis- 
 ion agents. Rockefeller and the other Standard Oil mag- 
 nates were not within the reach of the court, and Mr. 
 Pierce resisted extradition. Later he came to Texas and 
 voluntarily surrendered himself, as will be told. 
 
 The testimony introduced in this trial of Hathaway 
 
 was to the effect that the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 had been making exclusive contracts, giving rebates, thair 
 it had reduced prices for the purpose of suppressing com- 
 petition, that on the wiping out of such competition it had 
 radically raised prices for the purpose of recouping its 
 losses, and, in brief, that it had indulged in all of the 
 familiar methods by which a monopoly is presumed to 
 sustain itself. The fact that the Standard Oil owned a 
 portion of its stock was brought out, and the plea was 
 offered that this made it a trust. It was also established 
 that the company had purchased the Eagle refinery and 
 other competing concerns. 
 
 OTHER SIDE OF THE CASE. 
 
 It is true that the officers of the Waters Pierce, like 
 the managers of corporations generally, did not believe 
 that the Texas anti-trust law of 1889 was valid or en- 
 forcible. Nevertheless they made an honest attempt to 
 comply with its terms. They did not cease to give 
 rebates to secure or retain customers, nor to raise or 
 lower prices for increasing profits and overcoming com- 
 petition, nor to buy out competitors and resort to other 
 methods then generally in vogue to secure and hold 
 trade, but none of these acts were contrary to law nor 
 prohibited by the Act of 1889 so their lawyers argued. 
 
 W’hat the Act did prohibit were agreements or com- 
 binations for the purpose of fixing and controlling prices 
 and limiting the production of commodities. The latter 
 prohibition did not affect the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany, because it was not a producer or refiner in Texas, 
 but the company did make a diligent effort to have its 
 agents conform to the statute against the fixing of 
 prices. 
 
 While there was a large mass of testimony offered 
 in the Hathaway case and in the main ouster suit relative 
 to the giving of rebates, raising and lowering of prices, 
 etc., it really was not pertinent to the issues in the 
 case. There was evidence of only six or eight agreed 
 ments fixing prices in the entire State of Texas during 
 the four or five years following the adoption of the 
 Act of 1889, and it was also shown that these prohibited 
 transactions were never authorized by controlling officers 
 of the company, but it was on these infractions alone 
 that the Waters Pierce was convicted in the ouster/ 
 case. . * 
 
 Hathaway was convicted and fined $50. This was a 
 felony which at that time was nonbailable, and Hatha- 
 way, acting on the advice of his lawyers, appealed and 
 was sent to jail. The Waters Pierce proposed to make 
 a test case of this, and Hathaway became the first 
 Texas martyr in the cause of corporations. He re- 
 mained in the Waco jail nearly a year, and, since he was 
 well treated and liberally paid by the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company, he wore his crown of martyrdom easily. In 
 the autumn of 1896 a higher court reversed the verdict 
 against Hathaway and he was released with his rights 
 as a citizen unimpaired. 
 
 — 22 — 
 
Chapter IX. 
 
 WHY THE COMPANY W.\S FIRST OUSTED FROM T’EXAS 
 
 The first suit against the original Waters Pierce Oil 
 company, resulted, as we have seen, in the conviction, 
 imprisonment and subsequent voluntary discharge of E. 
 T. Hathawa 3 % one of the division managers of the com- 
 pan 3 ' in Texas. It tvas also productive of harm- 
 less indictments against other managers and officers of 
 the compan 3 ', and a drag-net was ineffectually thrown 
 out for the Rockefellers and other Standard Oil mag- 
 nates. These persons were not seriously menaced or 
 much anno 3 'ed thereb 3 ', but the most important conse- 
 quence of this initial litigation was the discovery that 
 there was mone 3 ’ to be made and political advantages fo 
 be gained by the prosecution and persecution of the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 
 From the filing of this first suit until the present 
 time this corporation has been made the foot-ball of^ 
 aspiring and more or less ambitious lawyers and poli- 
 ticians. It is true that the original Waters Pierce Oil 
 compan 3 ' committed certain violations of the law, for 
 which it received punishment, but it merely followed the 
 then prevailing business methods, and the punishment in- 
 flicted was greatly disproportionate to the offense. The 
 fact that other corporations have been clearly more 
 guilt 3 ' cannot legally be pleaded in its defense, nor can 
 the fact that these other recreant corporations have 
 escaped punishment have weight in any properly con- 
 stituted law court, but it was the peculiar misfortune 
 of the two Waters Pierce Oil companies — particularly 
 the present one — that their name became associated in 
 the public mind with that of the Standard Oil com- 
 pan 3 ’. and for that “crime'’ they have been booted from 
 court to court, and have been dmounced and misrep- 
 resented on the stump by certain lawyer politicians who 
 would eagerl 3 ' have accepted a retainer from either cor- 
 poration. 
 
 I have carefully studied the printed evidence for 
 and against the two Waters Pierce Oil companies, and be- 
 lieve I have sufficient intelligence properly to weigh that 
 evidence and to arrive at a reasonable estimate of their 
 corporative guilt. A careful study of this case convinces 
 me that were there direeted against the railroads, banks, 
 manufactories, corporations and business concerns of all 
 kinds in the United States a campaign such as has been 
 waged against the Waters Pierce, that hardly a man of 
 financial or moral standing would escape untarnished, and 
 that our filled prisons would outnumber our churches. 
 
 If penalties equal to’ those which have be;n as- 
 sessed against the present Waters Pierce Oil company 
 were inflicted on productive wealth proportionally guilty, 
 we should arrive at State socialism through cbnfiscation, 
 and our only millionaires would be those prosecuting 
 officials who had attained fabulous fortunes as commis- 
 sions for their services in levying fines against the crim- 
 inal corporations. 
 
 THE .SCAADAL OF COMMISSIOXS. 
 
 The original Texas anti-trust law of 1889 contained 
 a clause fixing the penalties at a minimum of $50 and a 
 maximum of $500 a day, each day to constitute a sepa- 
 rate violation of the law, and another clause contained 
 
 a provision to the effect that the county attorney bring- 
 ing the suit should receive a commission of 25 per cent 
 of all fines assessed and collected against a trust or 
 other violator. A subsequent law reduced this com- 
 mission to 10 per cent, but through some legal sub- 
 
 terfuge it is generally held by the official prosecutors 
 that the 25 per cent can be collected — and they need the 
 money. 
 
 It makes little difference what the percentage of 
 
 the commission may be, the proposition that a prose- 
 cuting official shall be spurred on to his duty by a 
 
 special money reward is absolutely indefensible, and the 
 concrete result has been to bring about a train of abuses 
 and scandals which will shock Texas when the facts are 
 known. There may be possible justification for the fin- 
 ing of the Waters Pierce or other corporation some 
 such sum as $1,600,000, but what fair man will assert 
 that the official who brought the suit should receive a 
 reward of more than $400,000, or that he should be priv- 
 ileged to divide this princely sum between himself and 
 other officials and the star witness? This is the legaliza- 
 tion of bribery; this sets the seal of approval on the sub- 
 ornation of testimony, and its inevitable effect is to 
 stimulate persecutions and to incite perjury. 
 
 A GLARING EXAMPLE. 
 
 The outcome of the first penalty suit against the 
 original Waters Pierce Oil company should have brought 
 about the repeal of that iniquitous feature of the law. 
 This suit was begun in Waco on April 1, 1895. The 
 story of its inception was interestingly told by Con- 
 gressman R. L. Henry while on the stand before the 
 recent Bailey investigating committee. The indictment 
 against Hathaway and the other managers and officers 
 of the company was pending in 1895, but was not for 
 money penalties. Mr. Henry was familiar with this 
 litigation. He was serving as assistant attorney general 
 under Governor Hogg when the indictments were pre- 
 ferred against Rockefeller, Pierce, Hathaway and other 
 Waters Pierce officials and agents, but Mr. Henry re- 
 signed and resumed his law practice, locating in Waco 
 and entering into partnership with O. L. Stribling. I 
 quote from his testimony given in the Bailey investiga- 
 tion; 
 
 “Mr. J. W. Taylor was the county attorney of Mc- 
 Lennan county at that time. I called his attention to 
 the section of the anti-trust law authorizing penalties 
 at the rate of $50 a day and asked him if he did not de-. 
 sire to bring suit against the Waters Pierce. He said 
 he did, and stated that he would turn tlie matter over 
 to my firm if we wanted to bring the suit and we would 
 divide the fees. He entered into an oral agreement that 
 the firm of Henry & Stribling was to have two-thirds 
 of whatever commission the statutes allowed, and Mr. 
 Taylor was to have one-third. 1 drew the petition my- 
 self for our firm and filed it some time in April, 1895. 
 It was for $109,500, the penalties at that time accruing 
 amounting to that much at the rate of $50 a day. We 
 brought the suit. We took depositions amounting to 
 lumdreds and hundreds of pages, etc.” 
 
 — 23 — 
 
DIVIDING THE SPOILS. 
 
 In other words there were in sight commissions of 
 S27,375, of which the private j law firm of Henry & 
 Stribling stood to win $18,250, and the public prose- 
 cutor $9,125. Assuming that the Waters Pierce deserved 
 punishment — and it was doubtless far from guiltless in 
 its operations at that period of its existence — why should 
 so tempting a bait be cast into the legal waters? It in- 
 cited, not a calm and justice-seeking prosecution, but a 
 frantic attempt to secure a conviction which should pay 
 dividends to the speculators who dragged the country 
 for the “hundreds and hundreds of pages” of depositions, 
 most of which were pointless and worthless. 
 
 The indictment against Hathaway and others, in- 
 cluding Henry Clay Tierce, was procured in Waco about 
 the same time, and evidently in aid of that penalty suit, 
 because it is a well known fact that Mr. Henry pre- 
 pared that indictment and consulted with Mr. Taylor, 
 the county attorney, regarding the same, and during 
 the trial of Hathaway. The penalty suit, however, was 
 never tried on its merits, but became complicated with 
 and later overshadowed by the ouster case brought in 
 Travis county in 1897. I will anticipate by saying that 
 this latter case was one brought by the State, and by 
 which the Waters Pierce was expelled from Texas. 
 
 In 1900 a permit was granted to the present Waters 
 Pierce Oil company empowering it to do business in 
 Texas, and Mr. Pierce went to Waco for the purpose 
 of trying to make a settlement of the still pending pen- 
 alty suit, and to dispose of the indictment against him- 
 self and others. It was the consensus of legal opinion 
 
 that the granting of a permit to the present company 
 destroj'ed any chance for the State to collect the fine, 
 or to secure a criminal conviction, but Mr. Pierce wished 
 to start clean and to avoid any chance for compli- 
 
 cation and was, therefore, eager to make a fair settle- 
 ment. 
 
 In the meantime Mr. Cullen F. Thomas had become 
 county attorney of McLennan county, and had inherited 
 the case and a chance for a portion of the possible 
 
 fees. He became involved in a dispute with Henry & 
 Stribling over the proportion of the commission which 
 each should receive in the event a compromise was 
 made with Mr. Pierce. A conference was held in Waco, 
 at which Judge Scott — the trial judge before whom the 
 penalty suit was still pending — Thomas, Henry, Pierce 
 and others were present. Mr. Pierce stated that he 
 was willing to pay $13,000 and have that case settled, 
 it being understood that Flenry & Stribling and Thom- 
 as were to divide $3000 of this for their fees or com- 
 mission, and that the remaining $10,000 should go to the 
 State of Texas. Judge Scott did not object to this. 
 County Attorney Thomas insisted that Mr. Pierce should 
 pay $25,000. There is a disagreement concerning just 
 what was said at this and future conferences, but 
 there is no manner of doubt that the failure to come 
 to an understanding was due to the fact that each of 
 the various prosecutors wanted more than the others 
 would allow, the result being that no compromise was 
 made. 
 
 POOR OLD TEXAS. 
 
 No one seemed to care much what poor old Texas 
 got out of the attempted compromise. Read any of the 
 various accounts of these negotiations and you will be 
 impressed with the inherent viciousness of a system 
 which places a money reward on the prosecution of cor- 
 porations or of any other violators of the law. Finding 
 
 it impossible to settle with the various claimants, and 
 feeling assured that the higher courts would finally rule 
 in his favor, Mr. Pierce abandoned tbe attempt and 
 let matters take their course. The courts vindicated the 
 accuracy of his judgment by dismissing the case two 
 years later. Therefore the State did not receive a 
 dollar, and, so far as I know, no one else has taken the 
 trouble to ascertain how much Texas lost by being 
 made a party to this attempt to fatten the purses of 
 private attorneys and public prosecutors at the expense 
 of an unpopular corporation. 
 
 As I have stated before, this initial performance 
 should have brought about a reform in the law, but 
 it was decreed that the vicious commission clause 
 should remain, and that time should breed a far greater 
 scandal. An honest and zealous prosecuting official 
 needs no such money stimulus. If a community can 
 not afford to pay the legitimate expenses of bringing 
 alleged law-breaking corporations to justice, it should 
 be willing to suffer rather than to sacrifice its dignity by 
 inciting speculating shysters to make the attack on the 
 promise of a division of the loot. 
 
 The case previously discussed is of slight import- 
 ance compared with the one which was filed on May 
 12, 1897, in the district court of Travis county by M. 
 M. Crane, then attorney general of Texas. The prime 
 object of this suit was to cancel the permit of the old 
 Waters Pierce Oil company and to oust it from the 
 State. Incidentally there were criminal ^indictments 
 against E. T. Hathaway, William Grice, F. A. Austin, 
 J. W. Keenan and Lewis Fries — the five division agents 
 of the company — but this was a minor matter, and in 
 the end these men were acquitted. 
 
 In all of the suits against the Waters Pierce much 
 of the same testimony has been used. The most com- 
 promising evidence deduced in the great trial of a year 
 ago was first employed in the cases of 1895-7, and the 
 most effective plea now made by the company is that its 
 record since that time has been clear, and that an attempt 
 is being made to punish the present company for the 
 sins of a corporation which legally died in 1900, and for 
 practices which the existing concern neither imitates, 
 tolerates or can be held responsible for. We will con- 
 sider that plea later. 
 
 A FAMOUS CASE. 
 
 The complaint in the forfeiture case in 1897 charged 
 that the Waters Pierce Oil company was a conspiracy in 
 restraint of trade in violation of the Texas anti-trust 
 laws of 1889 and 1895; that it had entered into a contract 
 with and had become a member of the Standard Oil 
 company under the trust agreement of 1882; that it had 
 bought out the business and good will of the Eagle Re- 
 fining company and other concerns which had been com- 
 peting with it; that it had made exclusive contracts with 
 merchants who handled its goods, also that it had granted 
 rebates to such retailers and jobbers and, in general, that 
 its general policy was to destroy competition and to 
 maintain a monopoly of oil and its products in Texas. 
 
 This famous case was a jury trial before Judge R. E. 
 Brooks, one of the ablest jurists of Texas. It resulted 
 in the cancellation of the company’s permit and its oust- 
 ing from Texas. The suit was carried to the court of 
 civil appeals, and the judgment of the lower court af- 
 firmed. A writ of error was denied by the Supreme 
 Court of Texas, but the case finally came before the 
 Supreme Court of the United States for review, with the 
 
 — 24 — 
 
result that the judgments were affirmed on March 19, 
 1900, which verdict denied the company a right to trans- 
 act any save interstate business in Texas. 
 
 There is more misunderstanding and misconception 
 over the issues involved in this case than would seem 
 possible, considering the fact that its history is spread 
 on easily obtainable court records. I have searched for 
 the essential facts in many famous cases during my writ- 
 ing career, and am aware that newspaper reporters and 
 political orators are likely to make mistakes, but never 
 before have I examined such a mass of non-facts — to 
 coin a gentle noun — as are disclosed in this one. 
 
 DELUDING THE PUBLIC. 
 
 It has repeatedly been stated, by men who must have 
 known different, that the original Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany was ousted from Texas because it was a trust, and it 
 has been reiterated or inferred a thousand times that 
 this penalty was affirmed by the various courts, includ- 
 ing the highest court in the land, because of proof that 
 the Waters Pierce was a part of the Standard Oil com- 
 pany. I now ask the reader of this paragraph if this 
 is not the impression he has gathered from what has 
 been said and written on this subject? Have you not 
 been led to" believe that the Waters Pierce was expelled 
 from Texas because it was a trust in affiliation with the 
 Standard Oil company? Is it not your impression that 
 it was convicted for cutting prices for the purpose of 
 breaking down competition; also of entering into agree- 
 ments with competing concerns or of buying them out — ■ 
 all for the purpose of holding a trade advantage? That 
 was my impression on the start and it is still the im- 
 pression of most men who have attempted to keep in- 
 telligent track of this famous case. 
 
 There is not one particle of truth as a basis for any 
 such impression. 
 
 The Standard Oil agreement of 1882 was submitted in 
 the Travis county ouster case of 1897 — the one I am 
 discussing — and it was well established that the Standard 
 owned a part of its stock. There was a huge mass of 
 testimony to prove that the Waters Pierce had cut prices 
 below a normal standard for the purpose of meeting or 
 downing competition. It was proved and admitted that 
 it had purchased the Eagle Refining company and other 
 competing plants, and there was plenty of testimony 
 to the effect that it had spared no effort to control the 
 largest possible amount of the oil business in Texas. 
 I shall not go into the details of this testimony, but it 
 is sufficient to state that the facts presented disclosed 
 a system of trading which the competitors of the Waters 
 Pierce admit that it no longer follows, but — and this is 
 the point which should be kept in mind — it abandoned 
 these practices voluntarily, and not because of its con- 
 viction before Judge P>rooks in 1897, or because of the 
 mandate of the United States Supreme Court in 1900. 
 
 LETTING IN SOME LIGHT. 
 
 Read closely what follows, and you will ascertain 
 that you have been misled concerning the issues which 
 resulted in the ousting of the old Waters Pierce Oil 
 company from Texas. After listening to all the testi- 
 mony and hearing all the arguments. Judge Brooks de- 
 livered his charge to the jury. I take the liberty of 
 eliminating some of the legal phrases and of making the 
 text clearer to the lay reader, but have preserved its 
 exact sense. Thus freely translated, the sixteenth clause 
 of his charge to the jury reads as follows: 
 
 “There has been certain evidence introduced before 
 you tending to show inducements offered by agents of 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company to parties to handle its 
 oils exclusively, and tending to show refusal of its 
 agents to sell to parties handling other than their oil, also 
 discriminations in prices against parties handling other 
 than their oils, also of the cutting of prices by the Wa- 
 ters Pierce for the purpose of breaking down competi- 
 tion. None of these things are unlawful, and the testi- 
 mony concerning them was admitted only as bearing on 
 the question of whether or not the Waters Pierce has, 
 since July 6, 1889, granted any rebates or other valuable 
 consideration for the exclusive handling of its products.’’ 
 
 Was that your understanding of the ruling of the 
 court in the case which resulted in the first expulsion 
 of the first Waters Pierce Oil company from Texas? 
 That charge by Judge Brooks eliminated from consid- 
 eration the vast bulk of the testimony which was and still 
 is popularly deemed most criminating. It refused to crim- 
 inate the Waters Pierce for employing competitive meth- 
 ods which had been used for centuries, and which will 
 continue to be used so long as there is such an institution 
 as competition. I can not reconcile Judge Brooks’ ruling 
 with the spirit of the Texas anti-trust law, which won- 
 derful enactment makes it a crime to raise, lower or fix 
 the price of a commodity, but presume that the jurist 
 held that it is beyond the province of a law absolutely to 
 prohibit the transaction of business. 
 
 CONCERNING THE STANDARD OIL. 
 
 Those who believe that the Waters Pierce was ex- 
 pelled from Texas because the Standard Oil company 
 had acquired, by hook or crook, a majority of its stock, 
 will be interested in reading Judge Brooks’ charge to 
 the jury on that feature of the case. I quote it exactly 
 as he delivered it: 
 
 “There has been introduced in evidence before you 
 a certain contract, known as the ‘Standard Oil trust 
 agreement,’ and certain evidence tending to show that 
 the defendant Waters Pierce Oil company became a mem- 
 ber of and entered into said agreement. You are instruct- 
 ed that the evidence is not sufficient to show that the de- 
 fendant became a member of said organization, if at all, 
 in a manner that violates the trust laws of this State, 
 and you will therefore disregard all testimony upon this 
 branch of the case.” 
 
 Does this indicate that the Waters Pierce was ousted 
 from Texas in 1900 because it had been convicted of be- 
 ing an integral part of the Standard Oil company? How 
 many times have you been assured that this was its crime? 
 And yet, the relations which exist today between the Wa- 
 ters Pierce and the Standard are practically the same- as 
 they were when Judge Brooks ruled that the former was 
 not a part of the oil trust. 
 
 BUYING COMPETITORS NOT A CRIME. 
 
 A great effort was made to convict the company for 
 the alleged crime of buying competing companies. Here 
 is the instruction given by* Judge Brooks pn this point: 
 
 “There has *filso been introduced in evidence before 
 you certain evidence in regard to a contract made by the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company with the Eagle Refining com- 
 pany, and also with C. W. Robinson, with J. L. Lewis 
 and Stillwell Bros., in the State of Texas, by which they 
 purchased the business of such concerns; you are instruc- 
 ed that such transactions as these are not believed to be 
 in violation of the laws of this State, and the evidence in 
 
 — 25 -- 
 
regard to these transactions will only be considered as 
 bearing upon the course of dealing of defendant company 
 in this State.” 
 
 Possibly this will come as a surprise to some of the 
 readers of this history. It would likely puzzle you to 
 name the specific violation for which the jury found the 
 
 Waters Pierce guilty, and for which it was finally expelled 
 from Texas. I liave eliminated all of the ofifenses which 
 are falsely charged against it by certain demagogues, and 
 which thousands of honest men have been deluded into 
 believing, and in the next chapter I will reveal the “crime” 
 for which the company was punished. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 DEATH OF THE OLD WATERS PIERCE OIL COMPANY 
 
 For what specific offense was the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company expelled from Texas under the decision 
 which was affirmed on March 19, 1900, by the Supreme 
 Court of the United States? 
 
 Aluch of the popular animosity against this company 
 unquestionably arises from a belief that it was then 
 adjudged a trust; that it was declared a part of the Stand- 
 ard Oil company; that it had defied the laws of Texas 
 by suppressing competition by the lowering of prices; 
 by the purchase of concerns which invaded its territory, 
 and that it was a conspiracy in restraint of trade. These 
 assertions have been made thousands of times in print 
 and on the stump, and yet, as I set forth in the last chap- 
 ter. all of these charges were withdrawn from the con- 
 sideration of the jury by Judge Brooks, who specifically 
 instructed the twelve men that there was nothing in 
 the Standard Oil agreement tending to incriminate the 
 Waters Pierce Oil cpmpany. 
 
 The plain and exact truth of the matter is that the 
 company was convicted on a trivial offense, and the ver- 
 dict did not in the slightest way condemn it for the 
 greater crimes which were charged against it. It was 
 like arresting a man for the bribery of a legislature and 
 convicting him of giving a tip to a waiter. It is the mis- 
 fortune of the Waters Pierce that the historians of its 
 troubles have used the wheels of justice on which to 
 grind their political war axes. 
 
 THE BROWNSVILLE REBATES. 
 
 Wdien the first suit was brought under the Texas 
 anti-trust law of 1889 the officials of the Waters Pierce 
 decided to obey the law to the best of their ability — 
 and I use that latter phrase advisedly — since no con- 
 cern nor partnership could literally have obeyed that 
 law had it tried. The mandate of that wonderful en- 
 actment was that prices should not be raised, lowered 
 nor fixed at any scale. 
 
 In this emergency the Waters Pierce called on its 
 lawyers and besought them to point out a way in which 
 it could continue to do business with the best chance 
 of escaping prosecution. Of course there was no way 
 to obey the law, and possibly their lawyers told them so, 
 and perhaps they should have quit business then and 
 there rather than have attempted the impossible, but 
 they were not that altruistic and here is what happened: 
 The company sent to all of its managers and agents 
 in Texas the following circular letters: 
 
 “Waters Pierce Oil Company, St. Louis, December 
 31, 1895. — Circular Letter No. 524; Subject, Texas Trust 
 
 Law. — Dear Sir: During the recent trial of ?\lanager 
 
 Hathaway at Waco there was some evidence elicited in- 
 dicating that a few agents of the company had, on sev- 
 eral occasions, agreed with retail customers to furnish 
 the latter with oils at reduced prices, on condition that 
 they would sell to customers at agreed fixed prices. Such 
 arrangements, if made, were offered without the author- 
 ity or knowledge of the company and contrary to its 
 policy and previous instructions on this point. 
 
 “Managers and agents will therefore refrain from 
 entering into any agreements whatever with customers, 
 or from even making suggestions to them regarding 
 prices at which they shall sell oil to others. 
 
 “On the other hand, in competing for or to retain 
 trade, we have the right to make rebates, sell or refuse 
 to sell certain persons, sell to different persons at dif- 
 ferent prices, sell at lower prices than competitors make, 
 raise prices, or to make contracts for supplying custo- 
 mers with all oil required by them for a definite period, 
 according as circumstances may from time to time re- 
 quire, for we are advised by counsel that such matters 
 are not violative of the trust law. Very respectfully, 
 
 “A. M. Finlay, Vice President ” 
 
 LAWYERS AND JUDGES. 
 
 The principal difference between a good lawyer and 
 the average judge is that the first delivers his opinion 
 in his private office for a private fee, and that the judge 
 delivers his opinions from the bench for a public salary. 
 The lawyer becomes a judge, the judge becomes a law- 
 yer, and no halo of unnatural wisdom rests over him 
 in either instance. Both make mistakes for the obvious 
 reason that the law is the most inexact of all the sci- 
 ences. I trust that this little homily will not impeach me 
 of disrespect for the law or of the courts. Like most 
 humans my respect is about in proportion to my ignor- 
 ance, and I cheerfully confess that to me the ways of 
 the law and of the courts are shrouded in more than 
 Egyptian darkness. 
 
 However, to tread the foggy labyrinths of the law 
 the modern corporation or individual of affairs must rely 
 on a lawyer, and the Waters Pierce was no exception 
 to this rule. Of course, a company or an individual can 
 not ask immunity on the plea that it has followed the 
 advice of legal counsel, but, on the other hand, the cor- 
 poration which follows closely the advice of able and 
 conscientious lawyers does all which reasonably can be 
 expected in an age when no one can say with certainty 
 
 what is or what is not the law. 
 -26- 
 
HOW THE LAW WAS VIOLATED. 
 
 It was brought out in the Travis county trial of 
 1897 that the Waters Pierce agent in Galveston had, at 
 various dates from 1881 until 1896, entered into contracts 
 with several merchants and brokers in Brownsville, un- 
 der the terms of which the latter received rebates in 
 consideration of their purchasing oils from the Waters 
 Pierce and selling them at the latter’s schedule prices. 
 These contracts were of varying characters, but the sum 
 and substance of the whole matter was that Judge 
 
 Brooks, in his charge to the jury, hinged the case of 
 
 the guilt or innocence of the Waters Pierce on these 
 transactions. He thus limited the discretion of the jury, 
 and I ask those who have persistently been misled con- 
 cerning why the Waters Pierce was expelled from Texas 
 to read what follows. 
 
 Judge Brooks said to the jury: “The questions for 
 
 you to determine in this case are; (1) Were any of the 
 contracts mentioned in section 10 (the Brownsville re- 
 bate contracts) of this charge made and entered into 
 
 and carried out by the defendant company in this State 
 
 since July 6, 1889, acting through its agents? (2) Wheth- 
 er such agents were acting in the scope of their authority 
 in making such contracts, or, if not, whether same were 
 ratified or acquiesced in by defendant company after 
 they were so made? (3) Whether said contracts, if any, 
 relate to interstate commerce or to business within this 
 State?” 
 
 Only that^nd nothing more. The Standard Oil 
 connection was not considered, the right of the Waters 
 Pierce to raise and lower prices was conceded, its right 
 to purchase competing firms was admitted — the one is- 
 sue was whether or not it had acquiesced in the act of 
 its Galveston agent in granting rebates to some petty 
 grocers and small jobbers in the little village of Browns- 
 ville, then isolated from the world save for the occasional 
 visit of a schooner or a tramp steamer. The company 
 denied all knowledge of these contracts and authority of 
 the Galveston agent to make them, nevertheless the jury 
 found the company guilty on that charge and forfeited 
 its permit to do business in Texas. 
 
 The case went to the court of Civil Appeals, thence 
 to the Supreme Court of Texas, where a writ of error 
 was denied. A Federal court granted a writ which 
 brought the case before the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, which upheld the lower courts on a 
 decision handed down on March 19, 1900. A word con- 
 cerning this decision. 
 
 THE SlPPtEME COURT DECISION. 
 
 It is the common belief that this decision convicted 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company of all the charges pop- 
 ularly laid against it, and it is also believed that this 
 decision affirmed the validity of the anti-trust laws of 
 Texas. Those who have been led to hold such views 
 are mistaken. 
 
 The Supreme Court of the United States declined to 
 pass upon the constitutionality of the Texas anti-trust 
 laws. It held, in effect, that when the Waters Pierce 
 solicited and received a permit on July 6, 1889, that it 
 tacitly agreed to accept the restrictions of the law passed 
 just prior to the granting of that permit, as one of the 
 conditions upon which it, a foreign corporation, was 
 licensed to do business in Texas, and that a violation of 
 these restrictions subjected its permit to cancellation. 
 In rendering the decision Justice McKenna quoted a 
 former Supreme Court ruling: “It was assumed as set 
 
 tied tliat the right of a foreign corporation to engage in 
 business within a State other than that of its creation 
 depends solely upon the will of such State.” 
 
 Therefore, the Travis county jury having found the 
 Waters Pierce guilty of a specific violation of the law, 
 the Supreme Court declined to interfere. This means 
 that Texas or any other State can impose any restric- 
 tions or qualifications on a corporation incorporated 
 in another State as a condition precedent to its trans- 
 acting any business, other than interstate, within its 
 borders. It means that it can absolutely bar a corpora- 
 tion for any cause, but — and bear this in mind — it does 
 not mean that it can confiscate its property without due 
 process of law. 
 
 Bear in mind that the question of a money penalty 
 was not before the Supreme Court of the United States 
 in that case, and it never has been on any issue yet 
 raised through the enforcement of the' anti-trust 'laws of 
 Texas. This high court has simply declined to interfere 
 with what is known as the “police powers” of the State. 
 These are practically unlimited, but it is a far different 
 thing simply to oust an offending corporation than to 
 appropriate its money and assets by fines. That great 
 question has yet to be passed upon, and when we get a 
 decision we shall know more about the constitutionality 
 of certain laws than we now do. I doubt if the average 
 jury is competent to pass on that question. It involves 
 the permanence of our entire industrial and commercial 
 system, and it will not be decided by appeals to passion, 
 nor will the demagogic oratory of office seekers have 
 any weight in tipping the scales of justice. 
 
 RESULT OF ALL PROSECUTIONS. 
 
 I shall prove conclusively before I get through that 
 the only legal offenses charged against the Waters 
 Pierce Oil companies were committed prior to 1898. 
 These condemned transactions were in accord with com- 
 petitive methods which were in general practice and 
 which had been handed down through the ages, and not 
 until 1889 was there any law against them and not until 
 later years was there any public sentiment opposed to 
 them. And yet, what was practically the sum total of 
 the “crimes” affirmed by the courts against the Waters 
 Pierce up to 1900? The making of the Brownsville 
 contracts, which involved in the aggregate an insig- 
 nificant sum. That’s all. 
 
 True, there was one joint indictment at Waco against 
 Mr. Pierce, J. D. Rockefeller and a score of others, but 
 the charges against them were so trivial and vague that 
 no State would honor a requisition. More than that 
 there was then no marked antipathy or public senti- 
 ment against Mr. Pierce or his company. When the 
 news came that the Supreme Court had affirmed the 
 judgment ousting the Waters Pierce there was more of 
 surprise than of rejoicing. Three years had passed since 
 the suit was brought, and most citizens had forgotten 
 the issues involved. • 
 
 There was no popular demand for the expulsion of 
 the company from Texas. The affairs of the Waters 
 -Pierce had not at that time become involved in the 
 politics of the State. There were no “Bailey” and “anti- 
 Bailey” factions, and the people had not then bein 
 incited to a campaign for the destruction of all corpora- 
 tions regardless of what should be reared on their 
 wrecks. The science of extracting “commissions,” “fees” 
 and of creating fat receiverships was yet in its infancy. 
 We were not then suffering from any overdose of pros- 
 
 — 27 — 
 
perity, and there was no wild crusade for the annihila- 
 tion of the oil enterprise which had served Texas well. 
 Do I fairly state the situation which then existed? I 
 derive it from a careful study of the newspaper com- 
 ments and the speeches made at that time. 
 
 There was a desire to punish the Waters Pierce 
 fairly for what it had done, but I can not find any intent 
 to wreak wholesale vengeance on it. However, the de- 
 cision of the Supreme Court of the United States made a 
 compromise out of the question. It killed the former 
 Waters Pierce Oil company of Texas. 
 
 OUK WEIRD LAW CODE. 
 
 Please follow closely what follows, and excuse this 
 intrusion of a purely personal opinion. 
 
 To the best of my ability I have attempted to call 
 public attention to the glaring absurdities and ridiculous 
 technicalities of our system of law. Balzac once declared 
 that a country which had 40,000 laws had no law. We 
 have many times that number of laws, and only a 
 statistician knows how many conflicting decisions. This 
 is a condition which exists in no other country on earth, 
 and so long as it continues the administration of justice 
 will be impossible. The present muddle in the Texas 
 and Federal courts over the Waters Pierce receiver- 
 ship case is only 6ne of a thousand instances which 
 would be laughable were they not serious. I know of one 
 piece of litigation in Texas in which the attorney fees 
 on both sides have averaged $50,000 a month for more 
 than two years. 
 
 I am not to blame for this legal anarchy, and neither 
 is Mr. H. C. Pierce nor any other individual. Put the 
 blame where it belongs — on the lawyers who have ruled 
 our legislatures for a hundred years, and who refuse to 
 make a concerted move for a simple codification of 
 laws, and whose lack of initiative is based on the purely 
 selfish motive that the more complicated and obscure the 
 laws the more their employment and reward. This is 
 blunt and perhaps impolitic, but it is the truth, and 
 every intelligent student of affairs knows it. Keep right 
 on sending lawyers and more lawyers to your legisla- 
 tures to pass more and more laws, create new and more 
 complicated systems of courts, but in the name of com- 
 mon sense don’t complain if they sink you deeper and 
 deeper into the legal mire, and charge you roundly 
 for the service. 
 
 So long* as this chaos continues corporations and in- 
 dividuals will take advantage .of it. That is the new 
 competition — to sail one's commercial ship through the 
 tortuous channel without striking a legal rock — and we 
 are paying good lawyer pilots fees of $100,000 and $1,000,- 
 000 for their services in single instances. You and I pay 
 these fees in the final analysis, my friend — don’t you for- 
 get that — and we will continue to pay them until enough 
 of us have the sense and influence to install a simpler 
 and better system. In the meantime a corporation has 
 a perfect right to apply for its advantage every law, de- 
 cision or technicality whicfi its counsel can discover. 
 Why not? Is it unlawful or immoral to seek all the pro- 
 tection and advantage the law allows? The corpora- 
 tion which fails to do this will be overwhelmed by its 
 competitors. This is the first rule of the new competi- 
 tion. 
 
 THE DEAD WATERS PIERCE COMPANY. 
 
 I say that in 1900 the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 was killed so far as Texas was concerned. The Supreme 
 Court of the United States administered the coup de 
 grace. It affirmed the judgment barring the company 
 from Texas. There was some doubt about this at first, 
 and the lawyers of the company as well as the law of- 
 ficials of Texas thought it possible that life was not en- 
 tirely extinct, and the Waters Pierce attorneys set about 
 finding a way in which the corporation could be rein- 
 stated on paying a “good round penalty.” They learned 
 that there was no way. It was legally impossible to 
 reinstate a corpse. 
 
 Now I wish again to remind my critics that the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company which was convicted in 
 Travis county in 1897 was dead. The jury said so, the 
 Court of Civil Appeals said so, the Supreme Court of 
 Texas said so, the Supreme Court of the United States 
 said so, the attorney general and all his advisors looked 
 up all the precedents and said so, and the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company finally admitted that it was dead. Very 
 well. 
 
 Therefore that Waters Pierce Oil company which 
 was later granted a permit to do business in Texas 
 could not have been the same company. Possibly it may 
 have been its ghost, but I do not understand that the 
 law recognizes ghosts, especially corporation ghosts. 
 No, it was a new company, legally incorporated on May 
 29, 1900, under the laws of the State of Missouri, and 
 regularly admitted two days later under the laws of the 
 State of Texas. Therefore, it can not be charged with 
 the sins of the former Waters Pierce Oil company which 
 was buried by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
 THE LIVE WATERS PIERCE COMPANY. 
 
 “But,” protests my critic, “it was really the same 
 old Waters Pierce Oil company. It had the same name, 
 practically the same stockholders, and it went right 
 ahead with its business the same as if nothing had hap- 
 pened. It secured readmission by a trick and a fraud.” 
 
 1 thought we had agreed that the first Waters Pierce 
 Oil company was dead. The Supreme Court declared 
 
 it dead. You say that it did not really die. Then the 
 
 Supreme Court and all of the officials of Texas were 
 mistaken. Therefore the original company really was 
 not expelled from Texas. Therefore there was no rea- 
 son why it should have applied for admission. No, that 
 does not stand the test, my critical friend. I shall have 
 to insist that the old Waters Pierce Oil company was 
 
 and is as dead as Caesar, and I shall prove in the next 
 
 chapter that the new Waters Pierce Oil company acted 
 strictly within the law when it applied for and received 
 a permit to do business in Texas. 
 
 I do not say that it was ethically right that a new 
 Waters Pierce Oil company should arise from the tomb 
 of the old. I say that it was the LAW that it should 
 and did, and I call the attention of certain of my able 
 critics to the fact that their quarrel is not with l\Ir. H. 
 C. Pierce or myself, but with the L.'kW which they insist 
 shall be respected. 
 
Chapter XI. 
 
 ADMISSION OF 'FHE NEW COME ANY 
 
 The Statement has been made unnumbered times 
 that the Waters Pierce Oil company secured readmis- 
 sion into Texas in 1900 through fraud. This statement 
 has been so persistently reiterated by men of high official 
 standing that it has been accorded credence by thou- 
 sands of citizens who wish to be fair, but who have 
 never had an opportunity to study the facts. Much of 
 the ill-feeling against Mr. Pierce and his company has 
 been engendered by the widely circulated charge that 
 the Waters Pierce re-entered Texas in consequence of 
 an underhanded plot, and that Mr. Pierce committed per- 
 jury to insure its success. 
 
 In this article I shall so fully and explicitly prove 
 the absolute falsity of this charge that the most reckless 
 of politicians will hesitate before again giving it pub- 
 licity. Let me say in advance that if fraud was commit- 
 ted it was in defiance of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States — a defiance which has remained unre- 
 buked by that High and alert tribunal and it must have 
 been accomplished with the consent and connivance of 
 certain of the exalted officials of the two great States 
 of Texas and Missouri — none of the two great States 
 since, been accused or suspected of crime or dereliction 
 in duty. 
 
 This baseless charge is largely responsible for plac- 
 ing the Waters Pierce in a false position before the peo- 
 ple of Texas and of the Southwest. By it the company 
 has lost prestige, has suffered vast financial loss, has 
 been branded as an outlaw and its officials have been 
 taunted and reviled as criminals. The people of Texas 
 are the last in the world to harbor an unjust suspicion 
 or to inflict unmerited punishment. They have been 
 misled on some points and deliberately deceived on 
 others and I shall prove it. 
 
 CHAKGE AGAINST WATERS PIERCE. . 
 
 The false charge most generally made against this 
 company may thus be stated: It is claimed that, upon 
 
 its ousting from Texas, Mr. Pierce began to conspire for 
 reinstatement, and all other expedients having failed he 
 proceeded to go through the form of dissolving the old 
 company. Mr. Pierce is said then illegally to have re- 
 organized the company in Missouri, and through some 
 form of duplicity obtained incorporation papers. Also, 
 in the meantime, he had enlisted the support of Sen- 
 ator Bailey, who, under his employ, went to Austin and 
 used his political influence to induce the Texas State 
 officials to “give the Waters Pierce another chance.” 
 •As a sequel to this misuse of influence, it is alleged that 
 Mr. Pierce went to Austin armed with the “alleged” 
 incorporation papers, and after a conference with the 
 officials agreed to sign a specially prepared affidavit cer- 
 tifying that the W'aters Pierce had no affiliation of any 
 kind with the Standard Oil company. Mr. Pierce signed 
 this affidavit — so the charges run — which act, in combi- 
 nation with the pleadings of Senator Bailey, induced 
 the State officials to grant the company the coveted per- 
 mit, and through this fraud the Waters Pierce obtained a 
 new lease of life by which it could plunder Texas. 
 
 If these charges can be substantiated, no punishment 
 is too severe for Mr. Pierce and the company which 
 bears his name. If these charges be false, a great in- 
 
 justice has been done to Mr. Pierce, and every honest 
 man in Texas will regret that unscrupulous politicians 
 have used these falsehoods in an attempt to secure per- 
 sonal advantage. 
 
 I now propose to tell the facts as briefly as possi- 
 ble consistent with clearness, and I challenge the most 
 severe critic to pick one flaw or dispute one item in the 
 following narrative of how the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany obtained a permit to do business in Texas after 
 the original company was ousted by mandate of the Su- 
 preme Court of the United States. 
 
 THE CRITICAL POSITION OF THE COMPANY. 
 
 As I stated in the last chapter, there was no general 
 desire in 1900 to inflict on the Waters Pierce so severe 
 a punishment as expulsion from Texas. Fully 90 per 
 cent of all the oil used in Texas was handled by this 
 company, and had it been barred at the time of the de- 
 cision incalculable hardship would have been wrought 
 on the consumers of the State. It was a stupendous en- 
 terprise, equipped with a plant and a distributing sys- 
 tem which could not be replaced in a day or a year. 
 No intelligent man in possession of the facts urged that 
 Texas should blot this vast business out of existence. 
 
 Still the old company ^was dead so far as Texas was 
 concerned. Because a few gallons of oil had been al- 
 lowed a rebate in Brownsville the company had been 
 caught in a legal trap, and investigation showed that it 
 was impossible to reinstate the old company in Texas. 
 
 No word of mine can add anything to the respect 
 which the people of Texas bear to the memory of T. 
 S. Smith — “Honest” Tom Smith — then attorney general 
 of Texas. Had he lived he would have been elevated 
 to the highest office in the gift of the State, and I as- 
 sume that those who knew and loved him will be ready 
 to accept his written word as contained in his official 
 acts and correspondence, and will estimate it at its proper 
 worth against the utterances of certain characters who 
 have been conspicuous in this controversy. 
 
 CONSIDERATION SHOWN THE WATERS PIERCE. 
 
 The original permit from Texas to the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company was granted on June 6, 1889, and was for 
 ten years. It therefore expired on June 6, 1899. Before 
 that date the company formally applied for a new per- 
 mit. Attorney General Smith advised the refusal of 
 such a permit on two grounds, viz., that a suit for its oust- 
 ing had been affirmed by the higher courts of Texas, 
 and was then pending before the United States Supreme 
 Court, and, second, that the company had failed to give 
 notice of its increase of capital from $100,000 to $400,000. 
 This made a difference — as I understand it — of $95.51 due 
 the State for taxes, and an attempt has been made to 
 prove that the Waters Pierce Oil company deliberately 
 attempted to defraud Texas out of this amount. Per- 
 haps it did — I shall not discuss it in detail — but the gen- 
 eral reputation of this corporation was that it had at 
 least a selfish wisdom which should absolve it from 
 the charge of risking its corporate life for such a petty 
 sum, or a hundred times it. 
 
 The permit was refused. How tlmn did it happen that 
 the company continued to do business in Texas from 
 
 — 29 — 
 
June 6, 1899, until May 31, 1900, without a permit? It 
 did do that, and it did it by grace and permission of 
 Tom Smith, and he granted such permission because he 
 knew that it was in accord with the zvishes of the other 
 State officials and in harmony with the almost unanimous 
 sentiment of the State. 
 
 THE POLICY OF TOM SMITH. 
 
 When the Supreme Court handed down its decision 
 on March 19. 1900, decreeing the expulsion of the Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company from Texas, Attorney General 
 Smith gave the company an extension of time until May 
 15 in which to adjust its affairs. It was then believed 
 by both sides that an arrangement could and should be 
 made by which the Waters Pierce would pay some rea- 
 sonable penalty and be permitted lo resume. On May 
 9 J. D. Johnson, the leading attorne}' of the company, 
 thus wrote to Attorney General Smith : 
 
 "We have about reached the conclusion to proceed 
 by mandamus against the secretary of state, and avail 
 ourselves of your very kind undertaking to join us in 
 letting the public know that the suit is an amicable one. 
 for the sole purpose of testing the only legal question 
 involved, namely, the right of the authorities of the 
 State of Texas to grant to the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany a new permit to do business within the State, in 
 view of the perpetual hijunction rendered against it in 
 the suit at Austin.” 
 
 Does this indicate any decided degree of rancor? 
 Hardly. Please read closelv the following paragraph 
 in Mr. Johnson’s letter to Attorney General Smith. 
 
 “Pending the mandamus proceeding I shall make 
 all necessary preparations for reorganization of the coin- 
 pan}-, in the event the Supreme Court holds that the in- 
 junction is conclusive, and that a new permit can not be 
 issued to the company.” 
 
 What do you think of that? You have been told 
 that Mr. Pierce and his lawyers met in St. Louis and 
 secretly plotted to circumvent the officials of Texas. 
 You have been told it times without number, and partisan 
 orators have talked themselves red in the face in denun- 
 ciation of the atrocity of this crime — and now we learn 
 that the leading lazvyer of this zvicked company calmly 
 notified the attorney general of Texas just zvhat it pro- 
 posed to do. Surely this was a strange way to conspire, 
 unless it be assured that Tom Smith was a party to the 
 conspiracy. If so, it would seem that he should have de- 
 stroyed this letter. Let us glance at extracts from At- 
 torney General Smith’s letter in reply. 
 
 In a letter dated May 15, 1900, addressed to J. D. 
 Johnson, Attorney General Smith agreed to extend the 
 time until May 31. It was understood that if the Wa- 
 ters Pierce did not act by that time an application would 
 be made for the appointment of a receiver. In another 
 letter dated the same day the attorney general said: 
 
 THE POLICY OF TEXAS. 
 
 “It is not the policy of this State to confiscate the 
 property of any one, simply because we believe we 
 have an advantage, neither is it the policy of this State 
 to oppress either citizens or corporations, but to insist 
 and require that its laws be strictly observed, and busi- 
 ness be done in this State in compliance with the law. 
 Having been assured by both you and Mr. Pierce that 
 the purpose of your company was to in good faith do 
 business according to law, and to strictly observe the 
 law of this State, I feel that it would be right to grant 
 you this extension.’ 
 
 This manly declaration is one which well may serve 
 as a model today, and in its execution no rights will 
 be lost to the State of Texas. F'or the benefit of those 
 who insist that I present both sides of this case I cheer- 
 fully add the concluding paragraph of Tom Smith’s let- 
 ter: 
 
 “It is just to you to say further, and I hope you 
 will advise Mr. Pierce to this effect, that I have today 
 received a letter from Luling, Texas, in which it is 
 stated that the company there is doing business like it 
 used to do; that they sell to all the people alike through 
 their agent and afterwards allow some a rebate of from 
 1 to 2 cents a gallon, thus giving one merchant an advan- 
 tage over others. I think this should be looked after by 
 Mr. Pierce. Very truly yours, 
 
 “T. S. Smith, Attorney General.” 
 
 Whether or not the Luling agent was guilty I do 
 not know. If guilty, he violated his orders, since the 
 Waters Pierce instructions in and after 1897 were im- 
 perative against “doing business like it used to do.” 
 
 THE NEW WATERS PIERCE OIL COMPANY. 
 
 The attorneys of the company learned on Febru- 
 ary 27, 1900, that there was no hope for a modification of 
 the order of the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 They also learned that there was only one way in which 
 a solvent corporation could be dissolved and later re- 
 organized in Missouri, and that was by the unanimous, 
 consent of its stockholders. That was the law. Wheth- 
 er or not it was a just law is not a part of this discussion. 
 The company desired to do business in Texas; there was 
 no official or popular opposition worth considering 
 against its readmission; there was only one way in which 
 it could come back, and that was through dissolution and 
 reincorporation, and this had to be done by the unani- 
 mous consent of the stockholders. The manner in which 
 this was obtained will be discussed later; I wish now to 
 stick to this branch of the history. 
 
 The fact that Mr. Pierce obtained such unanimous 
 consent is fair proof that he was in actual control of 
 the company. Those who profess doubt and surprise 
 that the Standard Oil company, owning as it did a ma- 
 jority of the stock of the Waters Pierce, should yield 
 actual control to Mr. Pierce— such doubters should study 
 what he did between May 27 and June 1, 1900, and they 
 will be thoroughly convinced that there was nothing 
 theoretical about his control. 
 
 On May 28, 1900, the directors of the original Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company met for the last time. On a 
 motion for dissolution, Henry Clay Pierce voted every 
 share of its stock in the affirmative. There is not the 
 slightest doubt of the legality of this action, but it would 
 have been impossible had not absolute control been 
 lodged in one man. 
 
 On the following day. May 29, the State of Missouri 
 granted incorporation papers to a new Waters Pierce 
 Oil company, said papers being duly signed by Secretary 
 of State Lesueur. There is not the slightest doubt of 
 the legality of this act. 
 
 Two days later. May 31, application was formally 
 made in Austin for a permit to the new Waters Pierce 
 Oil company, and after due investigation and considera- 
 tion the State officials of Texas issued such permit. 
 There is not the slightest doubt of the legality of this 
 act. 
 
 rONFORMING TO THE LAW. 
 
 Able lawyers directed every move in the obsequies 
 
 — 30 — 
 
of the old Waters Pierce Oil company, and these same 
 able lawyers supervised every detail of the ushering into 
 existence of the new Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 
 “A legal trick! A cunning subterfuge!” exclaims my 
 honest but misguided critic. Never were you more mis- 
 taken, my dear sir. There was no legal trick about it. 
 There was not a move which was not made openly; there 
 was not an act which was not fully warranted by care- 
 fully considered laws; there was not an official signature 
 to any of the documents which could have been withheld 
 under the law; it was impossible legally to have prevented 
 the dissolution of the old company; it was impossible to 
 prevent the incorporation of the new company in Mis- 
 souri, and it was impossible to estop the granting of a 
 permit to it in Texas. 
 
 Where then was the legal trick? What was the cun- 
 ning subterfuge? Through a technical violation of the 
 anti-trust laws of Texas there was inflicted on the old 
 Waters Pierce Oil company a sentence of death in that 
 State. The owners of its assets appealed in turn to 
 technical processes made and provided for in the statutes 
 of Missouri and Texas. They were impelled to do this 
 by the most mandatory law in existence — the law of 
 self-preservation. 
 
 If the law officials of Missouri and Texas over- 
 stepped their official powers, why were they not prose- 
 cuted and impeached? No such move was contem- 
 plated or even threatened by those who knew the law 
 and the facts. I submit, therefore, to any fair-minded 
 man, that it is rank injustice to Mr. Pierce and to his 
 company that the official acts which resulted in the pres- 
 ervation of their interests in Texas should be denounced 
 as fraudulent. I shall not spare Mr. Pierce when he is 
 deserving of criticism, but shall leave it to others to 
 object that he availed himself of the law at a time when 
 another law was threatening a punishment absurdly out 
 of proportion to the offense for which his company had 
 been convicted. 
 
 THK PAIM’ PL.IYKl) liY SENATOR BAILEY. 
 
 At this point my critic naturally asks me another 
 question. 
 
 “If it was impossible under the law,” he demands, 
 “to keep the new Waters Pierce Oil company out oi 
 Texas, why was it that Mr. Pierce called on Senator 
 Bailey to use his influence with the State officials for 
 the purpose of securing a permit?” 
 
 This is a fair question and I shall answer it blunt- 
 ly. Unless Mr. Pierce intended to retain Senator Bailey 
 as one of his lawyers he had no right to ask him to in- 
 tercede with the Texas authorities in behalf of the old 
 or the new company. The evidence seems conclusive 
 that Mr. Pierce wished thus to retain Senator Bailey, 
 but it is equally true that the latter refused to accept a 
 
 fee, and that his intercession on Mr. Pierce’s behalf was 
 based on his desire to grant the. disinterested request 
 of a mutual friend who wished to oblige Mr. Pierce. 
 
 I shall refuse to go into details of this incident which 
 have already been fully aired and over which men 
 honestly disagree, but I wish to make a few observations. 
 Certain of these gentlemen who are most active in de- 
 manding the annihilation and confiscation of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company insist that it shall be judged by 
 their own specially constructed code of morals and 
 ethics. They demand that, in this ijarlicular instance, 
 there shall be applied and rigidly enforced the stern 
 and unyielding letter of the written and unwritten law; 
 they single the Waters Pierce Oil company out as the 
 one corporation which shall be condemned for doing 
 what all corporations have done and are yet doing, and 
 they insist on magnifying various mole hills of irreg- 
 ularity into mountains of criminal conspiracy. 
 
 How sincere are those who are insisting most loudly 
 that a legislative officer should have no corporation 
 affiliations? Has it become a political tenet in Texas 
 that no corporation lawyer will press his claims for 
 office, and will all lawyers, if elected, agree to hold 
 righteously aloof from the slightest contact with corpora- 
 tions? I think not. At the first opportunity Texas will 
 elect her regular quota of corporation lawyers to her 
 legislature, and among the candidates will be several 
 who now are striving for recognition by a hypocritical 
 pretense of horror that a United States Senator used his 
 influence in 1900 on behalf of the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany. 
 
 BEWARE OF POLITICAL HYPOCRITES. 
 
 I hope to live to see the time when the influence of 
 corporations is not all-powerful in any branch of our 
 government. Only the most optimistic can see the 
 dawn-light of such a day. We are in the midst’of an era 
 when corporations dictate nominations and elections, try 
 to select judges and defy the masses to reach them with 
 their votes, and we have quite a bit of road to travel be- 
 fore we come to a sharp turn. In such a time, with a 
 United States senate filled with men who rose to power, 
 either by serving corporations or by being served by 
 corporation lawyers, it would seem to me that an undue 
 amount of criticism has been leveled at Senator Bailey 
 for the favor he attempted to do at the reciucst of a 
 personal friend. 
 
 I say “attempted to do” for the reason that he act- 
 ually had no more to do with securing a permit for the 
 new Waters Pierce Oil company than I did. The com- 
 pany entered Texas because the law permitted it to do 
 so, and because the officials of Texas did their duty under 
 the law. 
 
 -- 31 -- 
 
Cbaptet XII. 
 
 SOME UNANSWERABLE OFFICIAL PROOF 
 
 In the last chapter I established beyond reasonable 
 doubt, that the dissolution of the original Waters Pierce 
 Oil company was strictly legal; that there is no flaw in 
 the method by which the State of Missouri granted pa- 
 pers of incorporation to the present Waters Pierce Oil 
 company; and finally, that the officials of Texas had no 
 alternative save to grant a permit to the new company 
 on May 31, 1900. 
 
 I propose now to cinch these statements by unan- 
 swerable proof — proof so clear and convincing that even 
 the most reckless partisan will hesitate before again 
 asserting that the Waters Pierce Oil company entered 
 Texas in 1900 illegally or through fraudulent methods. 
 
 Attorney General Smith was criticised, in certain 
 quarters, for advising that a permit should be granted to 
 the new company. The same charges were made then 
 as now. He therefore addressed the following letter 
 to the secretary of state of Missouri: 
 
 “Hon. A. A. Lesueur, Secretary of State, Jefferson City, Mo. 
 
 “Austin, Texas, August 16, 1900.— Dear Sir; Some 
 question has been raised in the State of Texas as to the 
 regularity and legality of the dissolution of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company, which was incorporated under the 
 laws of Missouri on the 7th day of May, 1878. 
 
 “1. I wish you would please advise me officially, 
 whether or not, according to the laws of Missouri, the 
 said dissolution of the Waters Pierce Oil company on the 
 28th day of May, 1900, was regular; and whether or not 
 it was according to the laws and statutes of the State 
 of Missouri; and whether or not said company ceased to 
 exist after said affidavit of dissolution was filed in your 
 office. 
 
 “2. Will you please also state to me, officially, 
 whether or not the incorporation of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company as shown by its articles of association filed 
 in your office May 29, 1900, was' the incorporation of a 
 new company, or whether or not it was simply a con- 
 tinuation of the old Waters Pierce Oil company, char- 
 tered May 7, 1878. Very truly yours, T. S. Smith, 
 “Attorney General for Texas.” 
 
 HERE IS THE PROOF. 
 
 These are the very questions which are raised in 
 certain quarters today. Only one man in. all the world 
 was competent to answer them, and he did answer them, 
 and from his official declaration there is no appeal. I 
 quote the salient parts of the reply of Hon. A. A. Le- 
 sueur, secretary of state of Missouri, to Attorney Gen- 
 eral T. S. Smith of Texas: 
 
 “1. The dissolution of the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany on the 28th day of May, 1900, was, in my opinion, 
 regular and according to the laws and statutes of Mis- 
 souri. Upon the filing of the affidavit of dissolution in 
 the office of the secretary of state, such company ceased 
 to exist, and it is competent under our laws and the 
 practice of this State to incorporate another company. un- 
 der the same name. 
 
 “2. The Waters Pierce Oil company, having been 
 legally dissolved by unanimous consent of its stock- 
 holders, became upon the filing of an affidavit, as here- 
 tofore stated, extinct, and the organization of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company under the articles of association, filed in 
 
 this office May 29, 1900. was the incorporation of a 
 new company, the existence of which, under our laws, 
 dates from and begins with the issuing of the certificates 
 of incorporation on the date mentioned. May 29, 1900. 
 
 “For these positions I have an overwhelming number 
 of precedents. 
 
 “A. A. Lesueur, Secretary of State.” 
 
 I submit in all candor, that such testimony removes 
 this branch of the case from the range of argument, but 
 it probably will not prevent irresponsible and unprinci- 
 pled demagogues from repeating the stale falsehood that 
 the dissolution was illegal, and that the new Waters 
 Pierce Oil company is a fraud and a fake. There is no 
 effective law against lying. 
 
 Let me add the final convincing proof that Texas 
 could not legally refuse a permit to the new Waters 
 Pierce Oil company. 
 
 HERE IS MORE PROOF. 
 
 On July 19, 1900, Secretary of State Hardy of Texas 
 wrote to Attorney General Smith and stated that certain 
 of the newspapers were misadvising the public concern- 
 ing the granting of the permit, and asked Tom Smith 
 for an official opinion. I quote extracts from the reply 
 made by this able and honest attorney general: 
 
 “You (Secretary of State Hardy) had no discretion 
 and could not in law decline to file the certified copy 
 of the charter, and to issue the permit to do business 
 in Texas to said oil company, which was incorporated 
 May 29, 1900, in the State of Missouri. * * * The 
 proposition of law to be decided was, did the charter 
 filed by you on May 31, 1900, show the formation of a 
 new and distinct company or was it a continuation of the 
 original corporation? 
 
 “The facts in this case show that there was not a 
 mere change of membership, but a change in the corpo- 
 ration itself, with only one of the former incorporators 
 in the new corporation. It is true that the new corpora- 
 tion took the name that the old corporation had, but no- 
 where do I find any prohibition that a new corporation 
 can assume the name once held by a former corporation 
 which had been dissolved. 
 
 “I therefore concluded and so advised you that you 
 had no discretion to decline to file the charter offered 
 by the Waters Pierce Oil company, and to issue the per- 
 mit required by law. * » * jf you had declined to 
 
 issue the permit, there is no question in my mind that 
 the supreme court would have compelled you to do so by 
 mandamus. 
 
 “T. S. Smith, Attorney General.” 
 
 With this official opinion from Tom Smith, respected 
 and loved in life by all who knew him, and revered as 
 one whose acts were above suspicion, I shall rest the case 
 of the legality and regularity of the means by which the 
 present Waters Pierce Oil company was admitted to do 
 business in Texas. 
 
 H. C. PIERCE AND THE STANDARD OIL. 
 
 Upon the organization of the Standard Oil trust in 
 1882, the owners of 60 per cent of the stock of the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company transferred their holdings 
 to the Rockefeller combine. One-third of this stock 
 was merged in the great oil trust in open disregard of a 
 
 — 32 — 
 
tacit agreement that H. C. Pierce should have first 
 call to purchase it. I do not understand that there was 
 a written option, but am assured that Mr. Pierce had a 
 verbal agreement which seemed to guarantee his own- 
 ership or control of 60 per cent of the stock. No student 
 of the methods of the Standard Oil trust of those days 
 will be surprised to learn that it ignored this implied 
 option. 
 
 It is immaterial to discuss whether or not this pass- 
 ing of a majority of the stock of the original Waters 
 Pierce Oil company to the Standard was the result of a 
 carefully matured plan conceived and executed by the 
 Cleveland magnates. Certain it is that Mr. Pierce had no 
 part in it, and it is a matter of record that he protested 
 against it; also that he stoutly declined to transfer his 
 holdings to the trust. It was the first time that a man 
 of any prominence had resisted the plans of John D. 
 Rockefeller. Mr. Pierce not only refused to sell, but he 
 demanded that the name and individuality of his company 
 be preserved, and that he — a minority stockholder — be 
 permitted to manage the company and dictate its policy. 
 
 THE ONE INDEPENDENT COMPANY. 
 
 My critic demands proof of this statement. The 
 mere fact that the Standard Oil trust permitted the Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company to continue its corporate indi- 
 viduality during a long period, at any time in which the 
 Standaod had the legal power to blot it out of existence, 
 proves beyond question that it either did not dare or did 
 not care to refuse the demand made by Mr. Pierce. 
 
 “Hold on,” my critic demands. “You admit, do you 
 not, that during all these years the Standard had the 
 power to dictate the policy of the Waters Pierce or to 
 absorb it legally? You admit, do you not, that the 
 Standard could have ousted Mr. Pierce from the board 
 of directors, that it could have put its direct representa- 
 tives in control, and that Mr. Pierce dictated its policy 
 only by fhe consent or tolerance of the Standard? Very 
 well. There can be no independence where a stronger 
 body has the power to destroy or withhold it.” 
 
 Indeed! Then the States have no independence be- 
 cause of the overshadowing power and authority of the 
 National government? Then Mexico is not an inde- 
 pendent republic because it is within the power of the 
 United States to march an army across its border, cap- 
 ture its capital and absorb its territory and people? Then 
 Switzerland is not independent, because it is powerless- 
 to resist by force the great nations which surround it? 
 
 There are two ways in which independence can be 
 had and enjoyed, namely: A strong power can win its in- 
 
 dependence by force and hold it through fear of its prow- 
 ess, and, second, a weaker power can secure a grant of 
 independence for any of the possible reasons which may 
 impell its giving, and it continues independent so long 
 as it actually rules its own affairs and executes a dis- 
 tinctive policy. Deny that this second class of independ- 
 ence exists and you assert that it will be forever im- 
 possible for the United States to foster an independent 
 Cuban republic. 
 
 DHO IS INDEPENDENT? 
 
 The argument I am advancing is not a specious quib- 
 ble invented for the purpose of squaring the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company with those who criticise it. Where 
 and what are the independent business concerns in the 
 United States today? I declare without hesitancy that 
 [industrial, commercial and financial independence in this 
 
 country is almost a myth. How many individuals will 
 stand up and assert their actual independence? How in- 
 dependent is the grocer, the butcher, the small banker, 
 the mechanic, the laborer or even the farmer? In a day 
 when practically every man who would work nr do 
 business must accept the mandate of numberless known 
 and unknown dictators “higher up.” I take it that there 
 is something of humor in the horror which certain par- 
 tisans simulate over the disclosure that Mr. Pierce has 
 neglected to hurl himself against the Standard Oil com- 
 pany and become a martyr in the cause of oil inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 In a recent statement President Gary of the United 
 States Steel corporation admitted that this vast com- 
 pany had the power to crush every independent iron 
 an4 steel company in the United States, but added 
 that the policy of the company “is to permit the com- 
 petition of the weak concerns and to conserve their 
 independence.” In other words, he grants them their “in- 
 dependence,” but it is nevertheless a real independence, 
 though of a secondary grade. 
 
 A EEW SIMPLE QUESTIONS. 
 
 In all candor I request the reader to ask himself 
 what Mr. Pierce should have done when he learned that 
 the majority of the stock of his company had passed 
 to the Standard Oil trust. John D. Rockefeller, the in- 
 dustrial reincarnation of Napoleon, had conquered the 
 oil fields, ruled the refineries, had humbled the railroad 
 magnates and had trampled down competition. Pierce 
 was at the head of a company which did not produce one 
 gallon of oil in the United States'. He did not own or 
 operate a single refinery except in Mexico. He was mere- 
 ly a merchant of oil and its products, a distributing mid- 
 dleman, and almost from the start was compelled to 
 obtain every gallon of his supplies from those who were 
 operating in the Eastern fields. 
 
 Mr. Pierce was a great man in his own territory, 
 but he was a pigmy in the national oil industry com- 
 pared with Rockefeller. The latter controlled oil pro- 
 duction, monopolized refining and owned its wonderful 
 secrets and chemical processes; the great systems of 
 pipe lines were his; he had perfected a railroad rebate 
 scheme which made competition impossible, and, to cap 
 the climax, he had acquired, fairly or unfairly, a major- 
 ity interest in the Waters Pierce Oil company. Under 
 such circumstances, how brave would you have been, 
 unbiased reader, in defying the Standard Oil company? 
 Would you have refused to merge your stock with it 
 on the polite request of the mighty Rockefeller.^ Mr. 
 Pierce did. 
 
 Would you, a minority stockholder, have insisted 
 that you be permitted to dictate the policy of the com- 
 pany? That surely was a nervy bluff, but H. C. Pierce 
 made it and got away with it. Would you have gone 
 further? Would you have cut loose entirely from the 
 Standard and competed against it with an aggressive and 
 defiant independent company? You could not have used 
 the prestige of the Waters Pierce, because the Stand- 
 ard legally controlled that. From whom would you have 
 bought your oil? Where would you have raised the 
 money to build huge refineries? Who would have dis- 
 covered for you the wonderful processes then employed 
 by the Standard? How long before the great trust would 
 have crushed you as easily as a trip hammer does a 
 fly? You would have been ruined in a few months. 
 
ATTITUDE OF THE STANDARD. 
 
 The truth of the matter is that Mr. Pierce demanded 
 of the Standard all that he had a right to ask, and it 
 conceded more than it was obliged to yield. I pre- 
 sume that the Standard magnates granted independence 
 to the Waters Pierce Oil company because they figured 
 that there was more money in yielding to Mr. Pierce 
 than in opposing him. They were not unaware of their 
 growing unpopularity. They knew their might, but they 
 also knew it would be impolite to crush Mr. Pierce in an 
 open way. He had proved himself a brave fighter, a 
 splendid organizer and a merchant of rare genius. The 
 Standard was certain to secure a producers’ and manu- 
 facturers’ profit on every gallon of oil sold to the Wa- 
 ters Pierce and in addition to that it was sure to obtain 
 66 per cent of the dividends earned by that company. 
 The boon of independence was a small price to pay for 
 peace and the use of the magnificent organization reared 
 by Henry Clay Pierce, and the Standard could well af- 
 ford to concede the terms demanded by that gentle- 
 man. ■ 
 
 I have no patience with the childish criticism that 
 Mr. Pierce did not take the public into his confidence 
 and tell all he knew. Why does not the Texas company 
 take the public into its confidence? What do you know 
 about the actual ownership of the various corporations 
 you patronize? You do not know even the ownership 
 of the railroads on which you travel. Half of the people 
 who dwell in cities do not know who owns the houses 
 in which they live. No man of sense goes about adver- 
 tising his private business and yet the people of Texas 
 have been compelled to listen for years to the senseless 
 complaint that Mr. Pierce did not keep them posted 
 at all times concerning his exact relations with a great 
 corporation which had stolen a march on him, and against 
 which he was striving with all his strength to maintain 
 the highest possible degree of independence. 
 
 This is only one of a score of ways in which the 
 W’aters Pierce Oil company and its head are singled out 
 for special criticism and abuse. This is not fair, it is not 
 honest, and the time will come when the motives back 
 of these inspired attacks will be thoroughly understood, 
 and when the plain people of Texas will know that they 
 burned their fingers in pulling out of the fire chestnuts 
 which others devour. 
 
 WHEN TROUBLE CAME. 
 
 You may be sure that the Standard Oil company did 
 Its best to make all the money it could out of the people 
 of the Southwest. You ma} be sure that the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company was not conducted as a charitable 
 
 institution. You may rest assured that no private corpo- 
 ration ever was conducted for the benefit of the dear pub- 
 lic, and you may take my word for it that this same dear 
 public will pay more than things are worth until voters 
 havQ more sense than they now have. During all this 
 uproar I cannot find that one public official has even 
 attempted to suggest a plan by Which the “people” are 
 to get cheaper oil. Perhaps, however, the triumph of 
 the “Bailey” or “anti-Bailey” faction is of more conse- 
 quence to the future greatness of Texas than the trifling 
 detail of whether it will have a cheaper oil or no oil 
 at all. 
 
 I regret that I can not write an accurate history 
 of what happened in the offices of the Standard Oil com- 
 pany when the news came that the Supreme Court of 
 the United States had decreed the expulsion of the 
 original Waters Pierce Oil company from Texas. It 
 probably never will be written, at least not all of it, but 
 certain facts are obvious, others are spread on little 
 known legal records, and other facts have come to me 
 from various sources. I will first state the obvious 
 facts. 
 
 The expulsion of the original Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany from Texas came as a surprise to the Standard Oil, 
 as it did to all those connected with the litigation, but 
 it did not catch the great combine napping. Mr. Pierce 
 had confined his operations strictly to his original ter- 
 ritory, but this did not prevent the Standard fr^m en- 
 couraging competition in that territory. That is official. 
 It has been proved that during all these years, the 
 Standard fostered alleged independent companies which 
 harassed the Waters Pierce in Missouri and the South- 
 west. I do not pretend to say just why the oil trust did 
 this. The ways of the Standard are beyond the ken of 
 average mortals, but we do know that it never keeps all 
 of its eggs in one basket, and it i^ quite likely that Mr. 
 Rockefeller looked forward to a day when the Waters 
 Pierce might get into trouble, or when it might be ad- 
 visable to extinguish its independence. 
 
 Therefore the Standard kept substitutes in training. 
 It is whispered that certain of these substitutes are in 
 very active training right now, and that they will be able 
 to take over the entire business of the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company, in the event that the higher courts affirm the 
 verdict rendered last summer in Austin. 
 
 The position assumed by the Standard oil company in 
 this crisis is so interesting and important that it should be 
 considered in a connected narrative, and in the next chap- 
 ter I will present the scattered facts and obvious surmises 
 which have come to us from the carefully guarded con- 
 ferences held in that mysterious building, 26 Broadway. 
 
 Chapter Xlll. 
 
 MR. H. C. PIERCE AND THE STANDARD 
 
 There is no law in Texas against the sale of Standard 
 Oil products within its borders, there never has been, 
 and there never will be so long as the present Constitu- 
 tion of the United States is in existence. Doubtless this 
 
 statement will surprise many readers whose information 
 on this subject has been derived from the eloquence of 
 political orators and from partisan editorials, but you 
 may accept it as a fact that no State has the power to 
 
 — 34 — 
 
override the interstate commerce clause contained in our 
 Federal Constitution. 
 
 Texas can impose any reasonable restrictions she 
 chooses on her own or on outside corporations, but she 
 cannot exclude a useful commerce commodity from her 
 _limits. Texas can exclude trusts, but she cannot ex- 
 clude a trust-made product. You or I or any other in- 
 dividual can purchase any commodity produced by the 
 most vicious trust, can ship it into Texas, use it, sell it 
 or give it away, and no law passed by the Texas legis- 
 lature can interfere with us. By the same token, any 
 duly chartered corporation, provided with a Texas per- 
 mit. can purchase from the Standard Oil company any 
 of its products, ship them into the State and sell them — 
 provided, of course, that such corporation does not vio- 
 late the anti-trust laws of Texas in such sales. 
 
 The point is this: Texas cannot inquire into the source 
 from which an individual or a corporation obtains his or 
 its supplies She may know or suspect that the Whiting, 
 Ind.. and Bayonne, N. J., oil refineries are owned by a 
 trust. She may bar that trust from operating in Iver lim- 
 its, but she cannot bar vaseline and oils, and her mer- 
 chants have as much right to patronize the Standard as 
 they have to buy these necessities elsewhere. Keep this 
 in mind, because it is not only the law, but it is com- 
 mon sense, and it has all to do with the issue now under 
 discussion. 
 
 SCOPE OF THE ST.VYDARD OIL COMPANY. 
 
 The Standard Oil trust is the most protentous men- 
 ace which ever confronted our nation. With the profits 
 extorted from the monopolization of a great natural prod- 
 uct as a basis, a clique of men has seized eontrol of the 
 strategic wealth of the nation. Massed in their hands art 
 banks, railroads, vast manufacturing industries, newspa- 
 pers, universities — a stupendous engine fed by gold and 
 directed by brain and influence — and we must conquer 
 it or be conquered by it. 
 
 How shall we begin? Shall the separate States de- 
 cree by law that no Standard Oil product shall be sold 
 in their limits? Such a remedy is not only childish, but 
 impossible. In the first place, it is illegal; in the second 
 place, its enforcement would precipitate a calamity. Blot 
 from existence today the property and the products of the 
 Standard Oil company and you will set our civilization 
 back ten or twenty years. The average man assumes 
 .that this trust depends for its profits on its control of 
 kerosene, lubricating oils, vaseline and a few other prod- 
 ucts with which he is more or less familiar. He does 
 not know that it extracts from crude petroleum more than 
 2,500 valuable and now indispensable products. There are 
 dyes, drugs, waxes wtihout number, chemicals used in 
 the arts and sciences and a bewildering series of extrac- 
 tions known only to those who have spent their lives in 
 this wonderful study. 
 
 Bar these from Texas and you will wipe the State 
 off the industrial map. No, my impatient friend, you 
 must go about this reform in some other way. There is 
 no doubt that Texas is a great State and it is a settled 
 fact that she can do wonderful things by law, but it is 
 my candid opinion that the curbing of the Standard Oil 
 company is a job for Uncle Sam to tackle, and the soon- 
 er he takes his coat off and goes about it, the better it 
 will be for all concerned. While he is about it the trust 
 must be permitted to continue to produce the commodi- 
 :ies which are now a part of our civilization. The Whit- 
 ng refinery is all right; Bayonne is all right; vaseline 
 s a good thing to have about the house; we should dis- 
 
 like to see our oil cans permanently empty — let’s keep 
 all these excellent things and at the same time get after 
 the Rockefeller crowd and fight it intelligently. 
 
 SCOPE OF WATERS PIERCE OIL COMPANY. 
 
 At the time of the expulsion of the original Waters 
 Pierce Oil company from Texas it was buying most of 
 its supplies from the Standard. It was compelled to do 
 this. No producer other than the Standard could have 
 supplied it with the quantity required to meet the de- 
 mands of the Southwest. Even had Mr. Pierce owned all 
 of the stock of the first Waters Pierce Oil company he 
 would still have been compelled to purchase from the 
 Standard Oil trust. 
 
 Let us study the situation for a moment. Mr. Pierce 
 owned 1,250 shares of the original Waters Pierce Oil 
 company out of 4,000, the Standard owned the remain- 
 ing 2,750. Therefore, Mr. Pierce was entitled to and re- 
 ceived nearly one-third of the profits. You may be sure 
 that the Standard did not relish the continuance of any 
 such arrangement, and that it repeatedly attempted to 
 buy out Mr. Pierce or tried to reduce his holdings. 
 
 It naturally follows that the Standard would not dis- 
 criminate in favor of the Waters Pierce. The merest 
 novice in business can understand that the Standard would 
 charge the Waters Pierce the highest possible price for 
 oil. That policy enhanced its first profit, and it divided 
 this with no one. Mr. Pierce naturally contended for the 
 lowest possible price, and undoubtedly many were the 
 conflicts between him and the sales department of the 
 trust. Having made the best terms possible for the pur- 
 chase of his supplies he then was compelled to make a 
 retail profit, two-thirds of which went into dividends to 
 the Standard. 
 
 The trust wanted more. It always wants more, but, 
 in this instance, it hesitated to reach for it. Why? Be- 
 cause it feared to attack Mr. Pierce. He was the pioneer 
 in the Southwestern field; he knew every foot of the 
 ground, and in an open conflict he would have had the 
 sympathy and support of the people. 
 
 FEAR OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The Standard has a wholesome respect for the peo- 
 ple of Texas and the Southwest — a respect mingled with 
 fear. So long as Mr. Pierce was compelled to share the 
 odium of an enforced connection with the Standard Oil 
 company, the latter was not in danger, but to crush him 
 openly would precipitate an entirely different crisis. 
 Therefore the Standard yielded to the demands made by 
 Mr. Pierce, and reluctantly permitted him to draw one- 
 third of the retail earnings. It took the balance, and 
 all of the wholesale profits. 
 
 Probably the Standard Oil magnates were of the 
 opinion that Mr. Pierce was a man of great political in- 
 fluence in Missouri, Texas and in most of territory cov- 
 ered by his company. I do not know how they obtained 
 this .idea — for Mr. Pierce knows little and cares less about 
 practical politics — but the evidence is conclusive that 26 
 Broadway regarded Mr. Pierce as one in a position to 
 pull the wires and command the influence required to per- 
 petuate the Waters Pierce Oil company in the South- 
 west for an indefinite period. 
 
 They were disillusioned wlien his company was oust- 
 ed from Texas. Their lawyers assured them that the 
 mandate of the Supreme Court of the United States was 
 final, and that the Waters Pierce Oil company could nev- 
 er obtain another permit to do business in Texas. This 
 greatly reduced the territory of one of their largest custo- 
 
 — 35 — 
 
mers. Mr. Pierce had developed an enormous business in 
 the Republic of Mexico, and purchased practically all of 
 his supplies for serving it from the Standard. The elim- 
 ination of Texas left a gap in the oil map. It seemed sure 
 that other states would follow the example set by the 
 Lone Star state. It was a bad mess. 
 
 “A DEAD COCK IIV THE PIT” 
 
 So far as the interests of the Standard Oil company 
 were concerned, Mr. Pierce might just as well have been 
 bankrupt in Texas. He was seemingly out of it. True, 
 he had been a good customer and a good dividend earner, 
 but he was “a dead cock in the pit.” Texas had killed 
 him. Probably the Standard officials wept no bitter and 
 scalding tears over his assumed fate. He had drawn 
 in dividends a very considerable sum which, under other 
 circumstances, would have gone into the treasury of the 
 Standard. He was the one man who had forced the great 
 trust to recognize the independence of a distributing oil 
 company. His territory was disrupted, his prestige im- 
 paired, and his future ruined — thus argued the wise men 
 in conference at 26 Broadway. 
 
 They were in ^this mood when Mr. Pierce came to 
 New York to confer with them. This was after Mr. 
 Bailey had rendered his “valuable services in behalf of 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company,” consisting of a brief 
 conference with Secretary of State Hardy and Attorney 
 General Smith, who assured Mr. Bailey that there was 
 absolutely no way in which the old and dead company 
 could be reinstated in Texas — which cheerful news the 
 Congressman imparted to Mr. Pierce, and then went to 
 Washington to attend to his duties, and took no further 
 part in the developments which followed. It is true that 
 Mr. Bailey suggested that it might be possible to or- 
 ganize a Texas corporation to take over and conduct 
 the business of the oil company in that state, but this 
 had already been considered by Mr. Pierce and his law- 
 yers, and had been urged by Attorney General Smith, 
 as I have previously explained and proved. This was ob- 
 viously a possible alternative, one which a legal fledgling 
 might have mentioned, and it is as contemptible to score 
 Joe Bailey for suggesting it as it would be laughable 
 to give him credit for marked perspicuity. 
 
 THE NEW YORK CONFERENCE. 
 
 Now I am not going to tell just what Mr. Pierce 
 said to the Standard Oil executives in this New York 
 conference, or what they said to him, for the very ex- 
 cellent reason that I personally know nothing about it, 
 but I do know that Mr. Pierce had discovered that it 
 was possible to dissolve the old Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany in Missouri, where it was incorporated, and to or- 
 ganize a new Waters Pierce Oil company in the same 
 State. This contemplated procedure was based on a 
 Missouri law which permitted a solvent company to be 
 dissolved by unanimous consent of its stockholders. Any 
 other way involved the appointment of a receiver and 
 endless complications, including indefinite disbarment 
 from Texas. 
 
 I do not know if Mr. Pierce revealed this plan to the 
 Standard officials. Between the lines of the printed rec- 
 ords of the testimony later given by Mr. Pierce and oth- 
 ers, it is not difficult to discern the motives which swayed 
 the two interested parties at the critical time. This I be- 
 lieve; there never was a' day, from the date that the 
 Standard Oil company secured control of the majority 
 of the stock of the Waters Pierce Oil company, that it 
 was not the fixed ambition of Henry Clay Pierce to re- 
 
 gain control. His every act has proven this. Pride, in- 
 tense love of independence, caution, judgment, self-inter- 
 est — every consideration impelled him to strive for com- 
 plete control of the great company to which he had de- 
 voted a life of effort. 
 
 Better than any other man, Henry Clay Pierce re- 
 alized the danger which lurked in this enforced alliance 
 with the Standard Oil company, and I believe that more 
 than any other man he was anxious to terminate it. 
 
 “He could have terminated it easily enough,” ob- 
 serves my critic. “Admitting that the Standard refused 
 to yield control does not excuse Mr. Pierce. If he was 
 actually anxious to break entirely away from the trust, 
 he would doubtless have found it ready to pay him a fair 
 price for his holdings.” 
 
 This observation has been made a thousand times. 
 
 I care nothing for the opinion of the few timid ones who 
 honestly advance this plea, and I have only contempt 
 for those hypocrites who smugly voice it. No man with 
 blood in his veins would shirk the fight which was forced 
 on Mr. Pierce. Some energetic philosopher has declared 
 that “God Almighty hates a quitter,” and those who think 
 likewise must pay a tribute of respect to this man who 
 still stands by his guns. It was Mr. Pierce’s right to re- 
 fuse to let the Standard eliminate liim from the oil busi- 
 ness, and it is still his right to defend himself with every 
 weapon provided and authorized by law. 
 
 THE STANDARD READY TO QUIT. 
 
 As I have said, the Standard Oil magnates had lost 
 much of their faith in the future usefulness of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company as their customer in Texas. Its 
 stock no longer seemed like a profitable investment. 
 Therefore they were in a mood to consider the proposi- 
 tions which Mr. Pierce had to offer, namely, that the 
 Standard Oil company would part absolutely with its 
 holdings in the Waters Pierce. 
 
 Not until the men who participated in this con 
 ference choose to make public just what took place will , 
 it be possible for the historian to work on reliable data. 
 There are certain things which we do know, and all of 
 them point to the conclusion that Henry Clay Pierce 
 was in absolute control of the situation when the old 
 Waters Pierce Oil company was dissolved, and also that 
 his absolute domination was unquestioned when the new . 
 Waters Pierce Oil company was incorporated in Missouri ; 
 and Texas. 
 
 There are two explanations given of what took place 
 at the New York conference, and men can honestly hold 
 to either of them. The theory which has been most per- 
 sistently and at times unfairly advanced in Texas is that 
 Mr. Pierce conspired with the Standard officials, and that 
 a plan was carefully matured for the deception of the peo- 
 ple of Texas. The other theory is that Mr. Pierce sin- 
 cerely believed that he had made terms which permanent- 
 ly eliminated the Standard Oil company, and that he was 
 deceived in so thinking. 
 
 Those who hold that Mr. Pierce conspired for the 
 joint benefit of the Standard Oil company and himself 
 must predicate their belief on the assumption that he was 
 a stupid and reckless fool with criminal instincts. They 
 must fly in the face of the fact that he was a brilliant 
 executive, progressive, but conservative, spotless in repu- 
 tation and extremely proud and jealous of his Jionor. I 
 ask any reasoning man to explain how it happened that 
 a man thus constituted, a man who for years had been 
 ambitious to regain control which had been wrested from 
 him— how it happened that this cultured man of millions 
 
 — 3R— 
 
willingly became the catspaw of the Standard Oil com- 
 pany in a conspiracy intended to perpetuate its dominion 
 over him and the company which bore his name? 
 
 WHAT HAD MR. PIERCE TO GAIM 
 
 Do you think that Henry Clay Pierce would have 
 volunteered such artifices for the purpose of insuring to 
 the Standard company its continued dividends on two- 
 thirds of the stock of the Waters Pierce Oil company? 
 He was not called on to make the move. The legal pro- 
 cedure for the dissolution of the old company and the 
 incorporation of a new one had been ascertained and did 
 not need his initiative in any of their details. He was 
 not the president of the old company, and it was not 
 necessary that he should place himself at the head of the 
 new one — assuming that the- conspiracy would save his 
 interests jointly with those of the Standard Oil com- 
 pany. 
 
 In the first place, Mr. Pierce would not have entered 
 into any conspiracy to save the interests of the Stan- 
 dard. In the second place — admitting for the sake of 
 argument that he could have repudiated his life-long am- 
 bition — he would have been cautious enough to remain 
 in the background. 
 
 WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. 
 
 Mr. Pierce returned to St. Louis after his conference 
 with the Standard Oil officials. May 27, 1900, there was 
 
 held a meeting of the stockholders of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company. In this meeting Mr. Pierce held person- 
 ally or by proxy every share of the stock of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company, and voted every share in the affirm- 
 ative on the motion for the dissolution of the company. 
 He was legally authorized to make an appraisal of the 
 
 assets of the company, to buy them in, and to award 
 the actual owners of the stock their just proportion from 
 such sale. 
 
 What did this mean? It meant that the great Stan- 
 dard Oil company had placed its interest in the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company absolutely at the mercy of Henry 
 Clay Pierce. The old company died when he cast the 
 votes in favor of its dissolution. The oil trust received 
 from Mr. Pierce in cash and ’notes its full proportion of 
 the value of its assets. They were out of it. They had 
 no more legal interest in the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 than they have in my house. The alliance terminated 
 with the dissolution of the original Waters Pierce Oil 
 company. 
 
 What next happened? A new Waters Pierce Oil 
 company was formed with a capital stock of $400,000, of 
 which Henry Clay Pierce subscribed for every share at 
 par, paying into the treasury of the company his per- 
 sonal check on the Fourth National Bank of St. Louis 
 for $400,000, which check was duly honored at the bank 
 and the St. Louis clearing house. Mr. Pierce transferred 
 four shares of stock, one to each of the four men whom 
 he elected as directors in the new Waters Pierce Oil 
 company, retaining the remaining 3,996 shares. Such was 
 the status of affairs when application was made in Austin 
 for a permit to do business in Texas. 
 
 There is no question that Mr. Pierce was then legally 
 free of any alliance with the Standard Oil company. The 
 latter had consented to dissolution, it had received money 
 for its holdings in the old company, and it owned not 
 one share of stock in the new company, nor did it have 
 the slightest legal claim against the corporation which 
 was organized May 29, 1900, and May 31, 1900, licensed to 
 transact business in Texas. 
 
 Chapter XIV. 
 
 WHICH EXPOSES A FAMILIAR FALSEHOOD 
 
 May 29, 1900, Henry Clay Pierce was in absolute con- 
 trol of the situation. He was president and total owner 
 of the newly incorporated Waters Pierce Oil company, 
 and in his pocket was the charter granted by the State 
 of Missouri. For the first time in eighteen years he was 
 not corporately associated with the Standard Oil com- 
 pany. It did not own one share of the new company and 
 there was no legal method by which it could force him 
 to part with any portion of the stock for which he had paid 
 its par value. There were other reasons which later im- 
 pelled Mr. Pierce to yield to certain demands made by 
 the Standard Oil company, and these will be considered, 
 but there is convincing proof that he was legally inde- 
 pendent when he applied for a Texas permit in Austin. 
 
 Immediately on the receipt of the Missouri incorpora- 
 tion papers, Mr. Pierce and his leading counsel, J. D. 
 Johnson, hastened to Austin. It had been falsely stated 
 a thousand times that Congressman Bailey was with them 
 and that it was through his pleadings and influence that 
 the company was readmitted into Texas. Let me again 
 remind those who are looking for the trust, that Mr. 
 Bailey was not with Mr. Pierce and Mr. Johnson on this 
 
 —3 
 
 iii.portaiU occasion. He was in Washington attending to 
 his duties in congress. He had not been in Texas for 
 more than three weeks, he had not been in .\ustin for 
 a month, and he had not been advised of the Waters Pierce 
 plans then in progress of execution. It is too much to 
 hope that this reiteration of a palpable fact will kill this 
 particular falsehood. 
 
 Mr. Pierce, Mr. Johnson and Judge George Clark of 
 Waco called on the Texas state officials during the fore- 
 noon of May 31. More than a month prior to this, and 
 at the time when Senator Bailey rendered his alleged 
 services to the old Waters Pierce Oil company in Aus- 
 tin, Mr. Pierce had a conference with Attorney General 
 T. S. Smith. During -their talk the question of dissolv- 
 ing the old company and of organizing a new one was 
 considered. The attorney general strongly urged upon 
 Mr. Pierce that, if such steps were taken — which then 
 seemed inevitable — that he organize the new company in 
 Texas. This . frank and ruggedly honest official argued 
 that the company would gain popularity in Texas by mak- 
 ing that State its official home. 
 
 Mr. Pierce explained that there were cogent reasons 
 
why a new company should retain its original Missouri 
 headquarters, but agreed to give the suggestion of the at- 
 torney general careful consideration. 
 
 Compare this authenticated interview with the re- 
 tierated falsehood that the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 sneaked back into Texas through fraud, that it “stole a 
 march” on the officials, and that Senator Bailey acted 
 as the go-between. 
 
 ORA>TI>G THE PERMIT. 
 
 Mr. Pierce and his lawyers were sure of their ground 
 when they came to Austin a month later. May 31, 1900. 
 They were not begging for admission into Texas. They 
 were not supplicants for the favors of the Texas state 
 officials. Back of them stood the Constitution of the 
 United States and the numberless decisions of competent 
 courts. They w'ere in no need of the influence of services 
 of Senator Bailey or of any other public official. They 
 were in Austin demanding that the new company be 
 granted a permit. The attorney general and the secre- 
 tary of state were fully aware that they had no discre- 
 tion in the matter. It was their sworn duty to give credit 
 to the official acts of a sister and a sovereign State, and to 
 grant the permit. 
 
 Read the last paragraph again. It contains nothing 
 but the truth, and I defy my critics to pick one flaw in 
 its blunt declarations. Now compare them with what 
 you have been educated to believe. Compare them with 
 the familiar untruth that Joseph W. Bailey was there in 
 Austin with $3,300 of Mr. Pierce’s money in his pocket, 
 and that he persuaded Tom Smith and Secretary of State 
 Hardy to prove recreant to their trusts. Now that you 
 know the truth, what do you think of the men who have 
 purposely deceived you? What has been their motive? 
 They had one. Who was to gain thereby? There is an 
 ■obvious answer. 
 
 When informed by Mr. Pierce that a new Waters 
 Pierce Oil company had been incorporated, Attorney Gen- 
 eral Smith seemed pleased. He assumed that his advice 
 had been taken, and that the company had obtained its ■ 
 charter in Texas. 
 
 “Wait until you read. General Smith,” Mr. Pierce 
 suggested, handing him the certification of incorporation. 
 The attorney general took one glance at the papers and 
 saw the great seal of the State of Missouri. An expres- 
 sion mingled of sorrow, disappointment and anger 
 showed in his face. 
 
 "You have ruined me politically, Mr. Pierce!” he ex- 
 exclaimed. “This is a Missouri charter. The people of 
 Texas do not understand the legal technicalities at issue, 
 and will blame me and hold me personally responsible 
 if a permit is granted. If I can find any shadow of law 
 to keep you out of Texas I will apply it.” 
 
 He found no such law, for the simple reason that 
 there was none. The fruitless search ended. Attorney 
 General Smith reluctantly advised Secretary of State 
 Hardy that the statutes compelled the granting of the 
 permit. The papers were prepared and turned over to 
 Mr. Pierce. The new Waters Pierce Oil company was 
 from that moment legally authorized to transact busi- 
 ness in Te.xas. 
 
 THE FAMOUS AFFIDAVIT. 
 
 The favorite stock falsehood of the syndicate which 
 seeks popular favor by inventing “crimes” and laying 
 them at the door of Mr. Pierce and his company, is about 
 as follows; It is charged that the state officials of Texas 
 granted Mr. Pierce a permit because he signed a specially 
 
 prepared affidavit in which he specifically swore that the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company had no connection with or re- 
 lation to the Standard Oil company, and that upon the 
 signing of this affidavit and because of it, the permit was 
 granted. 
 
 This fiction does not agree with the other stock 
 falsehood to the effect that Senator Bailey sneaked the 
 company into Texas, but that is a trifling inconsistency 
 for certain of those who are engaged in this campaign. 
 
 Here are the facts: It was not necessary for Mr. 
 
 Pierce or anyone else to sign any affidavit to any form, 
 kind or description in order to obtain a permit for the 
 new Waters Pierce Oil company in Texas. This famous 
 affidavit was an integral part of the Texas anti-trust law 
 of 1899. It was a blank form, designed by some mem- 
 ber of the legislature to me unknown, and doubtless mod- 
 ified in committee, was later made a part of the act, duly 
 passed by both houses of the legislature and signed by 
 the governor of the state. The public printer then pro- 
 vided the secretary of state with blank copies of these 
 affidavits. The law of 1899 specifies in section 8, as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 “It shall be the duty of the secretary of state, on 
 or about the first day of July of each year, and at such 
 other times as he shall deem necessary, to address to 
 the president, secretary or treasurer of each incorporated 
 company doing business in this State a letter of inquiry 
 as to whether the said corporation has all or any part 
 of its business or interest in or with any trust, combina- 
 tion or association of persons or stockholders, as named 
 in the preceding provisions of this act, and to require 
 an answer under oath of the president, secretary or treas- 
 urer, or any director of said company. A form of g,ffida-, 
 vit shall be enclosed in said letter of inquiry, as follows:” 
 
 Then follows the affidavit, which I shall consider 
 later. 
 
 WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPEIVED. 
 
 I am not quoting from some newspaper clipping. 
 The above citation is not an extract from the political 
 speech of some designing demagogue. I have quoted the 
 law; I have cited the facts; I have placed before you the 
 unquestioned legal record as contained in the statutes 
 of the state of Texas, and I shall brand this particular af- 
 fidavit lie so deep that the accusation that I am paid 
 for telling the truth will not efface the scar for a month 
 or two. 
 
 Mr Pierce could not have signed the affidavit before 
 the permit was granted — at least, such a signing would 
 have been farcical. The corporation did not exist in 
 Texas until the permit had been granted. No member 
 of the corporation had to sign the affidavit until July 1. 
 More than that, it was not obligatory on Mr. Pierce to 
 sign it at any time. Any officer or director would have 
 served the purposes of the law exactly as well, and it is 
 a matter of fact that at a later date J. P. Gruet signed 
 the same affidavit — for which “crime,” by the way, he has 
 never been called to account in any manner known to 
 the public. 
 
 Here is what happened in the office of the secretary 
 of state of Texas in Austin, that afternoon in May 31, 
 1900; The permit had been granted, Mr. Pierce and his 
 associates had chatted with the various officials present 
 and were about to leave the building when some assist- 
 ant or clerk .attached to Secretary Hardy’s department 
 approached with a blank copy of the affidavit and sug- 
 gested that Mr. Pierce sign it. 
 
 — 38 — 
 
The latter read it and handed it to his lawyers. They 
 examined it and stated that while the law did not contem- 
 plate that he should sign it at that time— or at any time, 
 for that matter — that there was no reason why he should 
 not place his name to it. It was filled in, and Mr. Pierce 
 signed it. There was no mention of the Standard Oil 
 company or of any other company — there was no place 
 where such a detail could have been inserted. I now 
 quote from this much discussed affidavit its essential 
 declaration; 
 
 -AFFIDAVIT. 
 
 "The State of Texas, County of Travis: I, Henry 
 
 Clay Pierce, do solemnly swear that I am president of 
 the corporation known and styled Waters Pierce Oil 
 Company, duly incorporated under the laws of Missouri, 
 on the 29th day of May, 1900, and now transacting or 
 conducting business in the State of Texas, and that I am 
 duly authorized to represent said corporation in making 
 this affidavit, and I do further solemnly swear that the 
 said Waters Pierce Oil company, known and styled as 
 aforesaid, has not since the 31st day of January, 1900, nor 
 at any day since that date, and is not now a member of 
 or party to anj-^ pool, trust, agreement, combination, con- 
 federation or understanding with any other corporation, 
 partnership, individual, or any other person or association 
 or persons, to regulate or fix the price of any article of 
 manufacture, mechanism, merchandise, commodity, con- 
 venience, repair, any product of mining or any article 
 or thing whatsoever.” 
 
 In passing, permit me to remark that under a strict 
 interpretation of that anti-trust law, 10,000 violations are 
 committed every business day of the week in Texas, and 
 
 that this number will increase in proportion to its popu- 
 lation and prosperity, but it is not permitted that Mr. 
 Pierce shall be judged by that palpable fact, and he does 
 not ask it. 
 
 In determining whether or not Mr. Pierce could 
 truthfully sign that affidavit please consider the follow- 
 ing points: 
 
 1. He was the sole owner of the stock and assets 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company at the time he made 
 that affidavit. 
 
 2. That company had been organized in Missouri 
 only two days before, and had entered into no combina- 
 tion or alliances of any kind such as were inhibited by 
 the anti-trust law of 1899 and specified in the affidavit. 
 
 3. The old Waters Pierce Oil company was legal- 
 ly dead, and the affidavit specifically stated that it ap- 
 plied to a company organized May 29, 1900. 
 
 4. The company specified in Mr. Pierce’s affidavit 
 had been admitted into Texas only a few minutes before 
 he signed the affidavit, and if Mr. Pierce had “conspired’' 
 it must have been in the presence of the state officials of 
 Texas. 
 
 In his open letter of Oct. 15 of last year to Governor 
 Campbell, Mr. Pierce declines to stand on the quibble 
 “that the Waters Pierce Oil company mentioned in the 
 affidavit was an infant only two days old. I waive that,” 
 he asserts, “and declare that I could have truthfully 
 signed it at any time thereafter, and, if it were required 
 by law, would unhesitatingly sign it today.” 
 
 That involves legal issues which I am not compe- 
 tent to discuss. I ask the reader: Have I demolished 
 
 the familiar “affidavit lie?” Will it be repeated so glibly 
 in the future? I hope not, but tliere is no demand for 
 facts in certain quarters. 
 
 Chapter XV. 
 
 HOW TEXAS HAS LOST MONEY 
 
 The Texas permit to the present Waters Pierce Oil 
 company was granted by Secretary of State Hardy on 
 May 31, 1900. On the following day Mr. Pierce and his 
 attorneys were in Waco, where they made an ineffectual 
 attempt to compromise certain cases which were pend- 
 ing in the courts against the old company. On account 
 of the disagreement between the law firm of Henry & 
 Stribling and Cullen F. Thomas, county attorney of Mc- 
 Lennan county, over the divisions of fees, no terms were 
 agreed on. These suits were later dismissed or decided 
 in favor of Mr. Pierce, with the result that Texas did not 
 get a dollar, and that the State treasury was depleted by 
 the large amount expended in the prosecution. 
 
 Texas received the news that a new Waters Pierce 
 Oil company had been admitted to do business in the 
 State with calm indifference, but certain politicians saw a 
 chance to brew a row for their personal advantage. They 
 were aided by some of the papers. Congressman Bailey 
 was a candidate for the United States senatorship, and 
 had a commanding lead. The attack centered on him 
 and on Attorney General Thomas S. Smith, and there is 
 no doubt that the slanders circulated against that brave 
 
 and ruggedly honest official hastened his death. Never in 
 the history of American politics was a man accused more 
 unjustly than Tom Smith for performing his plain duty 
 under the law. The legislature of his State speedily ac- 
 quitted him of any wrongdoing, but the wound was in his 
 heart, and he died. 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OF ABUSE. 
 
 Not until the Democratic State convention met in 
 Waco, in the summer of 1900, was there inaugurated the 
 existing campaign of abuse and misrepresentation against 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company. I have spent many 
 months in a study of this subject; I have talked with hun- 
 dreds of sincere and well informed men in every section 
 of the Lone Star State; I think I know the sober senti- 
 ment of the people of Texas, and I thoroughly believe 
 that the reckless and wicked campaign which has centered 
 around this corporation has deplorably lowered the 
 standard of political morals; that it has engendered eva- 
 sion and hypocrisy; that it has been forced to the front 
 by selfish partisans to the ignoring of economic questions 
 and political measures which are of real importance, and 
 
 — 39 — 
 
which should be discussed and settled by the voters of 
 Texas. 
 
 It may be assumed that in the years prior to 1897 
 the original Waters Pierce Oil company took advantage 
 of its commanding supremacy, and that its agents, with- 
 out the knowledge of its officers, committed acts which, 
 in a few instances, were against the letter and intent of 
 the laws passed by Texas for the regulation of the af- 
 fairs of corporations. There is no doubt that the com- 
 pany should have been punished for such infractions of 
 the law, and it is a matter of fact that Mr. Pierce was 
 willing and even eager to pay some penalty, even when 
 it was obvious that he could escape all fines by legal tech- 
 nicalities. It was unfortunate for Texas and for the 
 Waters Pierce that the decision of the appellate courts 
 left no alternative save a dissolution of the old company 
 and the organization of a new one. 
 
 There was not an official in Austin in 1900, from 
 Governor Sayers down, who did not realize that it was 
 imperative that the business organization of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company should not be destroyed. There was 
 not an intelligent business man in Texas who was not 
 aware that the blotting out of that company would be 
 an absolute calamity. It was practically the sole distrib- 
 uting oil agency in Texas. It was transacting not less 
 than 95 per cent of tlie oil business in the State, and was 
 operating from more than 300 stations. 
 
 It would have taken years to have duplicated its 
 plant, and — mark this statement — a new company, no 
 matter who its stockholders, would have been compelled 
 to have purchased most of its supplies from the Standard 
 Oil company, which monopoly would have exacted as 
 much or more than formerly, and there is little doubt 
 that Texas would have paid more for its oil. This sit- 
 uation prevails today. The Standard Oil company will 
 directly or indirectly furnish the greater portion of the 
 oil, no matter what Texas does with the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company. Cunning politicians may climb into office 
 by misrepresenting the Waters Pierce, but the price of 
 oil is not determined by the complexion of the State 
 legislature, or by the fees paid to prosecuting officials. 
 You can not hit John D. Rockefeller by shooting at Henry 
 Clay Pierce, and it is distressing to see such a waste of 
 ammunition, and such a mistake in aim. 
 
 THE WACO CONVENTION OF 1900. 
 
 It was at the Democratic State convention in Waco 
 that the Waters Pierce Oil company was forced into 
 politics. Certain politicians used it as a club to ham- 
 mer the aspirations of Mr. Bailey. They did not hesi- 
 tate to drag in the name of Tom Smith. Then and there 
 it was discovered that it was possible to arouse passion 
 and prejudice by linking the names “Standard Oil,” “Wa- 
 ters Pierce” and “Joe Bailey.” Delegates who certainly 
 knew the facts, and others who had helped make this his- 
 tory, deliberately falsified the record in their convention 
 speeches, and from that day to this the people of Texas 
 have been deceived and bewildered by men wnose mo- 
 tives have been utterly selfish. 
 
 It is beyond my comprehension that men in high of- 
 ficial position and of fair repute have dared ignore the 
 plain and authenticated records, and have unblushingly 
 faced their constituents with falsehoods on their lips. 
 The success of their vicious campaign has been based on 
 the fact of the intense hatred and suspicion of the public 
 against the Standard Oil company. In the old colonial 
 days the whisper of a witch was sufficient to set the fires 
 
 blazing on Salem’s hills; in recent years in Texas it has 
 been equally easy to damn a man or a corporation by as- 
 serting a Standard Oil connection. The plundered pub- 
 lic has sought not proof but victims. It has been willing 
 to believe anything from any source. Unable to reach 
 out and grasp Rockefeller or Rogers by the neck, it has 
 lent a willing ear to the foulest of slanders, and a plea 
 for fairness has often been denounced as a confession of 
 guilt.. Happily for Texas, this era is drawing to a close. 
 
 The prairie fire of prejudice was .lighted in the Waco 
 convention, and it spread to many sections of the State. 
 Various papers echoed the charges made against .Attor- 
 ney General T. S. Smith, and the enemies of Joseph W. 
 Bailey invoked against him the festered obloquy and pop- 
 ular damnation of Standard Oil. It mattered nothing that 
 Tom Smith was the soul of honor; it mattered nothing 
 that the official records of Texas and Missouri disproved 
 the charges circulated — demagogues had at last found a 
 method of warfare to their liking, and they plied the 
 torch in fields dried by passion and ignorance. They 
 were mistaken, however, in their estimate of Texas. They 
 went down to defeat in the first encounter with the sober 
 judgment of the representatives of the people. They 
 have won some skirmishes since — petty victories wliich 
 have cost Texas most dear— but they are facing a de- 
 feat which will forever put a ban on their methods. 
 
 THE FIRST BAILEY INVESTIGATION. 
 
 In January, 1901, the Texas legislature appointed a 
 committee of seven to investigate charges preferred 
 against the State officials and Congressman Bailey, “sur- 
 rounding the readmission of the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany and the alleged connection of certain officials there- 
 with,” 
 
 The resolution was introduced by D. A. McFall. It 
 specified, among other things, that the dissolution of the 
 Waters Pierce and its reincorporation “perpetrat- 
 ed upon the State of Texas a fraud which has 
 brought her laws and courts into disrepute both at home 
 and abroad, and shame and humiliation upon her peo- 
 ple. ’ It also charged that "the perpetrating of said al- 
 leged fraud had the passive assistance of certain State 
 officials and the active assistance of Congressman Joseph 
 W. Bailey, who is now a candidate before the legislature 
 for the high office of United States senator.” 
 
 Attorney General Smith at once addressed a letter 
 to the -legislature in which he earnestly asked “that his 
 official acts, as well as his every connection with the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company be fully, thoroughly and rig- 
 idly investigated as though he had been particularly 
 named in said resolution, and be youi conclusion what 
 it may, he prays a specific declaration as to him, to the 
 end that if he is guilty of wrong, the people of Texas, 
 to whom he is responsible, and whose sovereignty he 
 recognizes, shall be advised.” 
 
 There was submitted to the investigating committee 
 the unimpeachable evidence which proved that the Wat- 
 ers Pierce Oil company was granted a permit to do busi- 
 ness in Texas by legal methods specifically provided by 
 the laws of Missouri and Texas, and in accord with the 
 Constitution of the United States. The official docu- 
 ments, which I have previously quoted, were shown to 
 the committee — documents which the average citizen of 
 Texas did' not know had an existence until I presented 
 them in these papers. It was absolutely demonstrated 
 by them that Congressman Bailey had no part in secur- 
 ing a permit for the newly organized Waters Pierce. It 
 
is true that .Mr. Bailey did not then make public his 
 personal financial transactions with Mr. Pierce— whether 
 or not he should have done so is purely a matter of in- 
 dividual opinion. The question if it was proper that Mr. 
 Bailey should have borrowed a sum of money from Mr. 
 Pierce is one of propriety, and it has nothing more to do 
 with the legality of the admission into Texas of the_ Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company than has that other moot 
 •question of whether it is proper for Senator Bailey to 
 wear a dress suit. 
 
 If Mr. Bailey had gone to Tom Smith and told him 
 all that was brought out years later on the second investi- 
 gation, it would not have changed in the slightest degree 
 the force and effect of the Missouri and Texas laws gov- 
 erning the admission of corporations. This seems an 
 obvious statement and one not susceptible of contradic- 
 tion, but it is extremel}' difficult to hammer it into cer- 
 tain critics. As I have said before, their fight is with 
 the law. They are opposed to the enforcement of the 
 written laws on Texas statute books, and their quarrel is 
 not with Mr. Pierce, but with the law which he invoked, 
 and which Attorney General Tom Smith and Secretary 
 of State Hardy respected and obeyed. 
 
 V1>PICA1T0> OF TOM SMITH A>D CO-NGRESSMAA 
 BAILET. 
 
 The committee listened patiently to such testimony 
 as was offered, did its best to bring before it those 
 persons who had circulated vague charges, and having 
 performed its duty to the best of its ability, returned a 
 report the essence of which was as follows; 
 
 "All the witnesses and all the documents submitted 
 completely and fully exonerated Hon. Joseph W. Bailey 
 and our State officials from all just cause of censure, and 
 your committee, therefore, recommend the adoption of 
 the following preamble and resolutions: 
 
 “Whereas, The committee of the house of represen- 
 tatives appointed to investigate the charges against Hon. 
 Joseph W. Bailey and certain State officials in connec- 
 tion with the readmission of the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany into this State, have performed their duty; and, 
 
 “Whereas, By the most diligent inquiry, they have 
 not been able to find a single fact or circumstance dis- 
 creditable either to Hon. J. W. Bailey or to any State 
 official, but on the contrary, all of the evidence before 
 said committee completely and overwhelmingly exoner- 
 ates Hon. J. W. Bailey and all State officials from all 
 charges of misconduct; therefore be it 
 
 “Resolved by the house of representatives. That we 
 denounce the malicious imputations and insinuations 
 against the integrity of Hon. J. W. Bailey and our State 
 officials, as the most cruel, vindictive and unfounded at- 
 tack ever made upon the character of a faithful public ser- 
 vant in Texas.” 
 
 This bitter rebuke to the pioneers of the campaign 
 of falsehood and villification was signed by six of the 
 seven members of the committee, and passed by the prac- 
 tically unanimous vote of the legislature. Mr. Decker, 
 the minority member, thought that the language of the 
 resolution tended “to curtail the right of free speech and 
 condemn honorable men of Texas, who have honestly 
 believed that Mr. Bailey did wrong in aiding the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company in obtaining a permit to do business 
 in Texas, and that Attorney General Smith should have 
 advised that the oil company go to the courts to obtain 
 its relief.” 
 
 Mr. Decker did not protest against the finding of the 
 committee, but was sincerely anxious that there should 
 
 be conserved "the right to discuss and criticise the pub- 
 lic acts of officials and those seeking high and honorable 
 offices at the hands of the people, so long as such criti- 
 cism is kept within the bounds of reason and not backed 
 up' bj-^ malice.” 
 
 EFFECT OF THE VIADICATION OF TOM SMITH. 
 
 The Texas legislature of 1901 had before it all of 
 the essential facts now known concerning the granting 
 of a permit to the new W'aters Pierce Oil company, and 
 its vindication of Attorney General Smith and other State 
 officials set the seal of legislative approval on that act. 
 Any body of intelligent men today, with the same evi- 
 dence before them, would return the same verdict, yet 
 this does not estop the Cranes, Crawfords, Cockes, Sen- 
 ters and others from repeating their parrot cry of "the 
 fraud by which the Waters Pierce Oil company entered 
 Texas in 1900.” 
 
 The action of the legislature had a quieting effect on 
 those who sought to take political advantage of the com- 
 plications of the Waters Pierce. The anti-trust law 
 of 1889 was in full force and effect. It was the most rigid 
 and exacting of all the laws against corporations ever 
 passed by Texas. It prescribed a maximum fine of $5000 
 a day for violation of its restrictions, and provided that 
 suits could be filed by the attorney general of the State, 
 or by any one of the county attorneys of the two hundred 
 and forty odd counties. 
 
 The anti-trust law of 1889 offered to the prosecuting 
 officials the tempting inducement of a fee of 25 per cent 
 commission on all penalties assessed against a convict- 
 ed corporation. Here was a bait of $1250 a day for any 
 county attorney who could collect sufficient evidence to 
 convict the new Waters Pierce Oil company of violations 
 of the law of 1.889. Surely there was every incentive to 
 proceed against the company if it was the lawless con- 
 cern in those years that the people of Texas have been 
 asked to believe. And yet, what is the record? 
 
 RECORD OF THE “LAWLESS TRUST.” 
 
 From May 31, 1900 — the date on which the new Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company was admitted to do business in 
 Texas — until March 31, 1903 — the date on which the law 
 of 1899 was replaced by a more lenient one — two years 
 and ten months, with a total of 1033 days, there zvas not 
 a suit hied against the company in any county in Texas.. 
 .\ny county attorney possessed of knowledge that the 
 Waters Pierce was violating the law had a chance to im- 
 pose on it penalties of $5,165,000, of which his share 
 would have been $1,291,250. He was not required to 
 spend a dollar of his own money in securing testimony. 
 He could have farmed the job out to private law firms and 
 detective agencies, could have offered a division of profits 
 to star witnesses and employes of the Gruet type, who 
 are willing to prove recreant to their trusts, and could 
 have done all these things and more while drawing his 
 regular salary from his county. How does it happen that 
 no county attorney took advantage of this opportunity to 
 get rich and at the same time cover himself with glory? 
 
 I am forced to the conclusion either that the county 
 attorneys of Texas in the years from 1900 to 1903 were 
 astoundingly blind to their chances, or to the conclu- 
 sion that they could find not pretext for a suit against the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company. Every man of sense knows 
 that the latter was the case. There were scores of coun- 
 ty attorneys who would have jumped at a chance to mulct 
 the Waters Pierce or any other rich violator of the law. 
 
 —41 — 
 
That was the sure path to a fortune and high political 
 honors. It is a fact that many of these officials scoured 
 their counties for testimony which would warrant them 
 in bringing suit against the oil company. 
 
 In all fairness I submit that the failure of any county 
 attorney or attorney general to bring suit against the 
 Waters Pierce during this period of 1033 days is con- 
 clusive proof that Mr. Pierce was keeping his word to 
 the people of Texas that the new company would obey 
 the law. I do not say that there may not have been 
 trifling violations of certain technical features of the law 
 on the part of certain of the hundreds of agents who were 
 representing the company in Texas. It would be remark- 
 able if every agent followed his written instructions, and 
 if some, in their eagerness to make a favorable showing, 
 had not overstepped at times the exact limit of their au- 
 thority. The law does not contemplate perfection in 
 agents. It recognizes that they are human beings. 
 
 WHY SUITS WERE NOT FILED. 
 
 You may rest assured that there were alert and cap- 
 
 able county attorneys in Texas who were perfectly fa- 
 miliar with the methods by which the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company transacted its business. You may be sure that 
 these officials were aware that no violations occurred 
 which would warrant the bringing of a suit for penalties 
 or for ouster. You may be sure that the officers of the 
 company made every effort to abide by the laws of Texas. 
 They were not fools. They had been expelled once on 
 account of unauthorized acts of one of their agents. They 
 could obey every valid feature of the anti-trust law of 
 1889 and still maintain their trade advantage and make 
 fair profits. 
 
 It was good business policy to conform to the law. 
 It was common sense to avoid prosecutions. Despite 
 the constant surveillance of the law officials of Texas, 
 undisturbed by the ceaseless scrutiny of politicians eager 
 to take advantage of a misstep, the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company performed its peaceful mission as a retailer of 
 the products of oil from the time of the admission of the 
 new company until and for years after the anti-trust 
 law .of 1903 went into effect. Not until September 22, 
 1906, was a suit filed against it. 
 
 Chapter XVI. 
 
 THE STRANGE STORY OF GRUET 
 
 In 1886 or 1887 a young man named J. P. Gruet went 
 to work for the Standard Oil company. He had marked 
 ability and advanced rapidly in the avocation he had 
 chosen. Several years later Henry Clay Pierce asked 
 the manager of one of the Standard Oil departments to 
 recommend to him a competent young accountant. J. P. 
 Gruet received the recommendation and went to work for 
 the original Waters Pierce Oil company on September 
 15, 1890. 
 
 It was natural that Mr. Pierce should look to the 
 Standard for capable men. In fact, he could draw on no 
 better source. The Standard Oil company was then, as 
 it is now, the foremost business training school in the 
 world. It had attracted to itself the master organizers 
 of the United States. There are several Standard Oil 
 companies. The careless reader and lazy thinker knows 
 only one — a greedy and merciless monopoly which illus- 
 trates all that is vicious in commercialism. 
 
 I prefer to let Miss Ida M. Tarbell describe and de- 
 fine the other Standard Oil company, which she graphic- 
 ally does in her recent article in the American Maga- 
 zine. I presumed that it will not be charged that Miss 
 Tarbell has renounced her life work, and that she is 
 now in the employ of the oil trust, but anyone else would 
 likely be denounced by narrow partisans for expressing 
 the following obvious truths: 
 
 “It is folly to talk about ‘destroying’ the Standard 
 Oil company, ‘putting it out of business,’ ‘dissolving it,’ ’’ 
 boldly asserts the woman who has spent a lifetime in 
 exposing its career. “The aim of this prosecution is not 
 to create chaos, it is to stop abuses. The Standard Oil 
 company is an integral part of the commerce of this na- 
 tion. It is the most magnificent example of efficient or- 
 ganization on a large scale that has ever been worked 
 
 out in any country. It is a thing of which we ought to 
 be able to be proud.’’ 
 
 The “destroyers’’ and “dissolvers” are very noisy if 
 not numerous in Texas, and I shall let them settle this 
 matter with Miss Tarbell, 
 
 THE INTERESTING MR. GRUET. 
 
 Charles Dickens would have welcomed J. P. Gruet 
 into his family of characters. All the world hates a 
 traitor and an informer — all save a novelist in search of 
 a villainous type — and since I am guilty of books I am 
 not perhaps properly qualified to pass judgment on Mr. 
 Gruet. The plottings of Uriah Heep and the schemings 
 of all the other characters in the world of fiction seems 
 petty and commonplace compared with the results at- 
 tained by this real person. He will stand out in history 
 as the trusted “hired man” who shook a commercial and 
 financial edifice of billions to its very foundations; as 
 one, whose betrayal of a confidence created the greatest 
 sensation in a generation inured to sensations. 
 
 Mr. Gruet first served the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany in the capacity of auditor. In his testimony be- 
 fore the Bailey investigating committee he boastingly 
 asserted that he reorganized the business of the Waters 
 Pierce after he joined ^he company. In his charges 
 against the Waters Pierce company. Attorney General 
 Davidson properly classed Gruet as one of the directors 
 representing the Standard Oil company interest. It is a 
 matter of record that Gruet later declined to give testi- 
 mony against the Waters Pierce if the Standard Oil com- 
 pany were made a party to the suit. These facts seem to 
 substantiate the theory held by some that Gruet ever 
 played or intended to play into the hands of his first 
 employer, the Standard Oil company, or that he was used 
 
 — 42 — 
 
as a tool by some conspiring faction in that great com- 
 bine. Only a few persons know the truth, and only hints 
 of it have been divulged. 
 
 This we know: Gruet held successively several re- 
 sponsible positions in the original Waters Pierce Oil 
 company and its existing successor. He also held a con- 
 fidential position under Mr. Pierce, and for years re- 
 tained the complete confidence of that gentleman. He 
 had access to all the papers and documents of the com- 
 pan>', and was in direct charge of the more important 
 ones. In addition to an annual salary of $7,500 paid by 
 the company, he was in receipt of a special annual sti- 
 pend of $2,500 paid personally by Mr. Pierce. 
 
 THi; PECULIAR ME. CRUET. 
 
 Years prior to the dissolution of the original Waters 
 Oil company Mr. Pierce had become interested in many 
 important outside investments and enterprises. Since 
 the organization of the present company he has con- 
 cerned himself only with its larger affairs, leaving to the 
 officials and directors the direct contact with details. 
 There is a popular impression that Mr. Pierce has spent 
 most of hisrtime in recent years in -the personal super- 
 vision of a campaign intended to extract the last penny 
 from Texas, and his spare moments in resisting extradi- 
 tion. This impression is erroneous. 
 
 Certain other matters have made demands on his 
 time. Not many years ago he effected the reorganization 
 of the Mexican Central railroad and he has recently 
 brought about its partnership with the Mexican govern- 
 ment. In this vast enterprise he has invested not less 
 than $12,000,000. He is a stockholder and director in 
 six other railroads of importance, is heavily interested in 
 as many banks and is a giant figure in that world of great 
 affairs not inclusive of oil. 
 
 Mr. Gruet had no call from Mr. Pierce for extra com- 
 pensation, but received it because of that gentlemen’s 
 friendly interest. Mr. Pierce spent most of his time in 
 New York; Mr. Gruet remained most of the time in St. 
 Louis. The latter had one unfortunate habit, which I 
 would not mention did it not have a probable bearing on 
 what happened. At intervals Mr. Gruet indulged in pe- 
 riods of intemperance — a fact which Mr. Pierce did not 
 discover for years. ^Ir. Gruet had a remarkably accurate 
 premonition of each of these lapses from the dismal rou- 
 tine of the oil business, and for some time before he 
 ' severed his connection with the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany he took a most peculiar precaution. 
 
 THE CAUTIOUS MR. GRUET. 
 
 It was his practice — so I am told by those who should 
 know — to collect from the files and vaults of the com- 
 pany — to which he had easy access — a mass of letters, 
 documents, vouchers and confidential correspondence of 
 a character similar to that which later fell into the hands 
 of Attorney General Hadley of Missouri, and which 
 formed the basis of a contract by which Mr. Gruet hopes 
 to receive one-third of $400,000 which the officials of 
 f Texas hope to secure in fees from the $1,600,000 fine 
 which they hope the Waters Pierce Oil company will be 
 forced to pay. It was the habit of Mr. Gruet to take 
 this collection of papers from the office of the company 
 to his house, or to some other location, and he would 
 then absent himself from his duties for longer or shorter 
 periods. 
 
 On his return from these unofficial vacations he 
 would bring with him this confidential data. It is not 
 definitely known how many times this remarkable pro- 
 
 ceeding took place, but from 1900 to 1904 Mr. Gruet was 
 supreme in the department responsible for the care of 
 these papers, and no one in the secret cared or dared 
 to acquaint Mr. Pierce with this strange procedure. It is 
 likely that Sherlock Holmes would easily have discov- 
 ered the motive which influenced J. P. Gruet. 
 
 In 1904 an upheaval in the official affairs of the Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company deposed Gruet from the direct- 
 ory, his place being taken by R. P. Tinsley, who directly 
 represented the Standard Oil interest in the company, 
 and who took advantage of the serious illness of Mr. A. 
 M. Finlay, who was then president of the company, to 
 make himself supreme for a time in the affairs of the 
 Waters Pierce. 1 am anticipating the sequence of my 
 narrative, *nd shall consider the Tinsley interregnum in 
 detail later, but introduce him now for the purpose of 
 throwing a side light on J. P. Gruet. 
 
 Tinsley soon became acquainted with the fact of 
 Gruet’s unfortunate habits, and shortly tliereafter Gruet 
 was requested to resign, and did so. Mr. Pierce learned 
 the details of the usurpation of the autocratic Tinsley, 
 brought about the deposition of that Standard Oil repre- 
 sentative, and resumed control of the policy of the Wa- 
 ters Pierce, electing his son. Clay Arthur Pierce, presi- 
 dent to succeed Mr. A. M. Finlay, who became vice Pres- 
 ident. Mr. Pierce at this time heard the story of J. P. 
 Gruet’s unfortunate indiscretions, listuied to the pleas 
 and promises of that person, forgave him and placed him 
 in a responsible position. 
 
 Not long after this act of leniency, Air. Pierce placed 
 Gruet in charge of a company which the former had 
 formed for the purpose of conserving certain investments 
 to which he could not give proper time and attention. 
 Gruet professed and perhaps felt delight over this pro- 
 motion. 
 
 IVHAT WAS GRUET’S MOTIVE? 
 
 One day Gruet disappeared. He had been trans- 
 ferred from St. Louis to New York, so as to be in closer 
 touch with the man who employed and had confidence 
 in him. The first inkling that Mr. Pierce had of his 
 treachery was the receipt of a formal letter of resigna- 
 tion from Gruet. This letter offered no explanation of 
 any kind. Mr. Pierce attributed it to the whim of a man 
 under the influence of liquor and probably abandoned all 
 hope of his reformation. Gruet returned to St. Louis, 
 soon disappeared from there, and later was discovered 
 in another city and was taken to a sanitarium. His son, 
 J. P. Gruet, Jr., was then in St. Louis and in the employ 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company. He also tendered 
 his resignation, but Mr. Pierce wrote him to the effeef 
 that he was not held responsible for the faults of his 
 father, asked him to recall his resignation, which he did, 
 and remained with the company until the announced re- 
 creancy of the elder Gruet. 
 
 About this time J. P. Gruet made a claim for a 
 large amount of money which he asserted was due him 
 from Mr. Pierce on some vague and palpably absurd pre- 
 text. Mr. Pierce had not yet made public this corre- 
 spondence, but it is reasonable to assume that it was of 
 a purport similar to tliat by which Senator Bailey was 
 later threatened in an attempt to extort from him S‘25, ()()() 
 for the evidence which Gruet was alleged to have in his 
 possession. 
 
 Certain it is that Mr. Pierce could have settled with 
 J. P. Gruet for a money consideration, and certain it is 
 that Air. Pierce declined to pay Gruet a dollar as the 
 
 — 43 — 
 
price of his silence. Those who have been educated to 
 believe all sorts of charges against Henry Clay Pierce 
 must give him credit for the stand he took at that time. 
 He was well aware of the fact that Gruet was in a position 
 to reveal every detail of the affairs of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company, but Mr. Pierce believed then, as he does 
 now, that there was no illegality in the fact that Standard 
 Oil interests actually owned a majority of the stock of 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company, provided that the mi- 
 nority interest was permitted to dictate the policy of the 
 company. 
 
 It is possible that Mr. Pierce was and is in technical 
 error in taking that position. It is certain, however, that 
 capable lawyers were confident that his position was le- 
 gally unassailable, and so advised him. It *is idle for 
 me to undertake to argue this question. It is purely a 
 matter of law, and the whole case of the guilt or inno- 
 cence of the Waters Pierce rests on that point — a point 
 novel in the history of American jurisprudence, and one 
 which is yet to be determined by our highest court. 
 
 But Mr. Pierce was fully aware that the public would 
 care little or nothing about the niceties of the law. He 
 was thoroughly alive to the fact that he and his com- 
 pany would come in for severe public condemnation the 
 moment the fact was made known that the Standard Oil 
 company had managed in some way or other to acquire 
 the same proportion of stock in the new Waters Pierce 
 Oil company which it had in the old. He was aware that 
 it would be impossible to impeach or refute the testi- 
 mony on this point which Gruet could give. Gruet had 
 grown up with the company, had held positions which 
 made him more conversant with the actual details of the 
 Waters Pierce in recent years than was Mr. Pierce him- 
 self. The latter soon became aware that important docu- 
 ments were missing, and realized to a certainty that they 
 were in Gruet’s possession. 
 
 MU. PIERCE DEFIES GRUET. 
 
 Mr. Pierce has ever had able counsel. Better even 
 than Mr. Pierce they knew the complications which 
 would follow the disclosures which Gruet threatened to 
 make His treachery meant abuse for Mr. Pierce, and 
 tlie breeding of passion and prejudice by den\agogues who 
 would take advantage of it. It meant vast money loss, 
 possible extinction as a corporation — all this and more 
 was in prospect, and a petty sum of money, compared to 
 the amount imperiled, would have closed the lips of Gruet 
 — but Mr. Pierce unhesitatingly refused to pay him a dol- 
 lar, and invited Gruet or his agents to do the worst. 
 
 No one who saw J. P. Gruet on the stand at Austin 
 during the Bailey investigation will make the suggestion 
 that he was inspired by contrition or by a stern sense of 
 public duty. Even those who hated Senator Bailey most 
 bitterly for partisan reasons, and who had halted at the 
 use of no weapon to accomplish his defeat, gazed with 
 contempt on J. P. Gruet, and instinctively distrusted 
 every word he said. He had made the deal with the pros- 
 ecuting officials of'Texas by which he was to have one- 
 third of the fees from all fines in the pending suits 
 against the Waters Pierce Oil company, and his appear- 
 ance before the Bailey investigating committee served a 
 double purpose; it gave him a chance for revenge against 
 the man who had refused to be blackmailed, and it also 
 allowed Gruet to rehearse his story under favorable cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 He began with an air of careless insolence and stud- 
 ied bravado. Under cross-examination the sneer left his 
 
 lips. When confronted with the fact that certain of his 
 stolen documents had been changed to suit his ends by 
 erasures, and that others were downright forgejies, and 
 by the proof that there was reason to suspect him of 
 more than treachery to those who had ever been fair 
 and generous to him, J. P. Gruet offered the most pitiable 
 spectacle ever presented to a Texas audience. It was his 
 first and probably his last appearance as a witness, unless 
 the defense drags him forward at some future time and 
 exhibits his venality for sentimental effect on a jury. 
 
 GRUET THE IIVFOEMER. 
 
 Such was and is Gruet — Gruet the betrayer of the 
 man who placed unmerited confidence in him — Gruet the 
 man who was forgiven for his “unfortunate infirmities,” 
 and who wronged the man who forgave him — Gruet who 
 hawked about documents stolen from the vaults of 
 his employer — Gruet who finally made a bargain and en- 
 tered into partnership with a prosecuting official, sworn 
 to enforce law with justice, and sworn to do his exact 
 duty in consideration of a salary paid by the voters and 
 taxpayers of the State of Texas. 
 
 Detectives and police officers sometimes find it neces- 
 sary to use a criminal to secure the ends of justice, but 
 I know of no instance in which such minor officials have 
 entered into a compact with a self-confessed crook, such 
 compact having for one of its ends the placing of money 
 in their own pockets. It has remained for Texas to create 
 a situation in which a high official of that State has cared 
 and dared to use a Gruet for the purpose of personal 
 gain through the operation of the machinery of the law 
 — in which a contract was made between those sworn to 
 defend the law and a miserable creature who had broken 
 not only the law but also the sacred bonds of trust and 
 friendship. 
 
 WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS! 
 
 It is not yet time to write all of this story. Much 
 of it we do not yet know, and I have neither space nor 
 patience to score certain officials as they richly deserve, 
 but cannot refrain from glancing at one picture for a 
 moment. 
 
 Early in 1907 Texas resounded with the charges pre- 
 ferred against Senator Bailey. Gruet had placed the 
 stolen and mutilated documents in the possession of the 
 attorney general’s office. The legislature was in session. 
 On January 16, 1907, the House of Representatives called 
 on the attorney general for the Gruet documents, and in 
 response to that call. Jewel P. Lightfoot, assistant to 
 Attorney General Davidson, proudly entered the hall. 
 The documents were read, and the following occured, as 
 reported by the Galveston-Dallas News: 
 
 Mr. Davis, of Brazos — “I would like to ask the attor- 
 ney general what it cost his department — if they paid 
 Mr. Gruet any amount of money to surrender these doc- 
 uments?” 
 
 Mr. Lightfoot — “Not a cent; not a cent.” (Applause.) 
 
 Now, at that very moment there were on file in the 
 attorney general’s department vouchers showing expense 
 payments to Gruet amounting to $414.16. That was not 
 the worst of it. It later developed that the attorney 
 general’s office had entered into a contract with J. P. 
 Gruet; that this contract was made months before Jewel 
 P. Lightfoot was applauded for his declaration that Gruet 
 had not been paid a cent; and that the State of Texas 
 had been paying the expenses of this informer, to the end 
 that Lightfoot and others should share in the division 
 
of more than $400,000 in possible fees and commissions 
 to be secured through Gruet’s testimony. 
 
 Lightfoot made this contract with Gruet on August 
 29, 1907, and I print it in full for the purpose of giving 
 the honest people of Texas a dim insight into a transac- 
 tion which reveals one of the motives back of the persist- 
 ent prosecution of the Waters Pierce Oil company — and 
 I will say, in passing, that the future will prove that 
 this is not an isolated scandal. Here is the compact 
 entered into between the sovereign State of Texas — 
 through one of her high and salaried officials — and Gruet, 
 who plundered the vaults of his employer: 
 
 THE GRUET CONTRACT. 
 
 “St. Louis, Mo., August 29, 1906. — This witnesseth: 
 That, whereas, Mr. John P. Gruet, secretary of the Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company, is in possession of much valu- 
 able information concerning the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany and the Standard Oil company and their business 
 methods, I have this day employed the said Gruet to as- 
 sist the attorney general’s department of Texas in de- 
 veloping a case against the said \Vaters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany for committing a fraud on the State of Texas by 
 juggling of stocks of the W'aters Pierce Oil company at 
 the time of its reorganization in 1900, and for’ subsequent 
 violations of the anti-trust laws of the State of Texas. 
 
 “It is understood and agreed to by the said Gruet that 
 he will assist in the preparations of depositions to be pro- 
 pounded to witnesses in the shape of interrogatories, and 
 take necessary steps to procure testimony of witnesses 
 for the purpose of the State, and will attend the trials 
 of the said cause at Austin until judgment is finally ren- 
 dered, and will testify to all facts within his knowledge 
 concerning said companies and their business methods, 
 and will also attend the trial of H. Clay Pierce, in the 
 event a true bill is returned against him. 
 
 "In consideration whereof, the State of Texas will pay 
 the actual necessary expenses of said Gruet in attending 
 the said trials, and as a further compensation fbr time 
 lost and valuable assistance as above detailed, the said 
 Gruet shall receive one-third of the commissions allowed 
 by law to prosecuting officers in anti-trust suits, provided 
 said penalties are collected; otherwise he shall receive 
 one-third of only such amount as may be collected, and in 
 event no judgment is secured or penalties collected, then 
 his compensation will be his actual expenses, as above 
 set out. 
 
 “In the event of the death of said Gruet before final 
 judgment is rendered, his interest in whatever commis- 
 sions collected shall be paid to the estate of the said 
 Gruet. 
 
 J. P. LIGHTFOOT, 
 Assistant Attorney General.” 
 
 It is to be regretted, first, that, Mr. Lightfoot deemed 
 it necessary to assure the legislature that Gruet had re- 
 ceived nothing from the attorney general’s department; 
 second, that he did not see fit to embark his own money 
 in that Gruet enterprise, rather than make Texas bear 
 the financial load; and, third, that he ever entered into 
 such a disgraceful compact. But there it is. Read it 
 again and ponder over the question if it has any bear- 
 ing on the campaign of falsehood which has been waged 
 against the Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 
 MORE LIGHT ON GRUET. 
 
 Since the prosecution depends largely on the pic- 
 turesque Gruet for a verdict against the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company, and since the all-important question of 
 whether the officials will pocket that $400,000 fee hinges 
 largely on Gruet’s testimony, I may be forgiven for a 
 gingerly use of the muck-rake — and no other tool is fitted 
 for this purpose. 
 
 Note, please, that Gruet entered into that contract 
 with Assistant Attorney General Lightfoot on August 
 20, 1906. Later he denied that he signed any such con- 
 pact,* and still later he admitted that he did sign it — 
 what he will assert in the future is a matter open to con- 
 jecture. If Gruet feels a certain sense of shame over such 
 a contract, how about the other parties to that transac- 
 tion? But I will not discuss that point. Bear in mind 
 that Gruet signed the famous contract on August 29, 1906. 
 
 On October 6, 1906, about six weeks after Gruet had 
 entered into that business deal with the prosecuting of- 
 ficials of Texas, he made a deposition on written inter- 
 rogatories, taken by the attorney general of Texas and 
 his assistants, at Austin, before D. J. Pickle, notary pub- 
 lic, in the case of the State of Texas vs. the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company. 
 
 The following cross-interrogatory, propounded by Mr. 
 Pierce’s lawyers, was asked of Gruet: 
 
 “State if you have any agreement or understanding of 
 any kind, oral or written express, or implied, with any person, 
 either in the State of Texas, the State of Missouri or elsewhere, 
 by or under which it has been agreed, or is understood'by you, or 
 by or under which you expect to receive any compensation, or by 
 or under which you are to receive or understand you 
 are to receive, any part of any penalties which may be re- 
 covered in this suit against the defendant, or to share 
 with any other person any part of such penalties, if re- 
 ceived. If so, state when and where such agreement or 
 understanding was entered into and with whom, the 
 terms and conditions thereof, and whether such agree- 
 ment or understanding is in the form of a written paper, 
 signed or unsigned by you or any one else. State what 
 is the amount of the compensation you understand you 
 are to receive; and, if a part of the penalties, what part 
 of the penalties you are to receive?” 
 
 Keep in mind that Gruet had entered into his com- 
 pact with Lightfoot on August 29, and that Gruet an- 
 swered this question on the following October 6. Keep in 
 mind that prosecuting officials were present who knew 
 that Gruet had signed such a contract, and then study 
 Gruet’s answer to the pointed questions asked him, and 
 consider that he was under oath to tell the truth, the 
 whole truth and nothing but the truth. Here is Gruet’s 
 reply: 
 
 “I am to receive compensation for my actual travel- 
 ing expenses. I am also to be reimbursed for my loss of 
 time in coming to Austin whenever requested.” 
 
 Only that and nothing more. No official of the at- 
 torney general’s office deemed it necessary to refresh 
 Gruet’s memory, and months passed before the truth was 
 learned from another witness. I d.oubt if a scene like 
 it ever occurred in a court of justice, and Texas will one 
 day awake to the infamy attached to this alliance. 
 
 NATURE OF THE GRUET DISCLOSURES. 
 
 Just what Gruet told Attorney General Hadley of 
 Missouri is not known, but it is likely that he answered 
 all questions that official cared to ask. Hadley was too 
 politic to place this self-besmirched person on the witness 
 stand in any of the inquiries which have been held, and 
 has handled his questionable tool at arms’ length. The 
 documents and correspondence — or copies of the same 
 — used by Hadley were intended to prove that busi- 
 ness relations existed between the Waters Pierce and the 
 Standard Oil, but all of this data was unimportant com- 
 pared with the statements to that effect frankly made by 
 Henry Clay Pierce when he took the stand before Com- 
 
niissioner Robert A. Anthony in St. Louis on September 
 10, 1906. 
 
 Gruet revealed nothing, and it is not in his power 
 to disclose any essential truth not already made public 
 by Mr. Pierce. In the spring of 1905 the Missouri attor- 
 ney general brought suit against the Standard Oil com- 
 pany, the Republic Oil company, and the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company. The resultant cases are still before the 
 courts, and I shall not consider them in detail, but the 
 testimony of Mr. Pierce was of overshadowing impor- 
 tance. 
 
 FRANK ADMISSIONS OF HENRY CLAY PIERCE. 
 
 Those who predicted that Mr. Pierce would beat 
 about the bush and take technical advantages of the law 
 to evade answering questions were in error. He not 
 only gave direct and unequivocal answers to all fair 
 (]ue‘stions asked him, but he also volunteered information 
 which has been used against him and his company. 
 
 The most remarkable thing about Mr. Pierce’s testi- 
 mony is this: The prosecuting officials of Missouri and 
 
 Texas assert that it is in the nature of a confession 
 which implicates Mr. Pierce and the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company in trust relationship with the Standard Oil com- 
 pany. On the contrary, the attorneys of Mr. Pierce and 
 of his company assert that his testimony affirms the le- 
 gal independence of the Waters Pierce Oil company, and 
 that the higher courts will so rule. The public is di- 
 
 vided in sentiment, but the issues raised are purely le- 
 gal, therefore individual opinions have no weight. 
 
 There are certain features in Mr. Pierce’s testimony, 
 however, which are most interesting outside of their 
 legal aspects, and I shall touch on certain of them in 
 the two concluding chapters. 
 
 It is worthy of note that both sides to fhis contro- 
 versy have thus far accepted practically without reserva- 
 tion the truth of the statements made by Mr. Pierce be- 
 fore Commissioner Anthony, as brought out by direct 
 questions and the rigid cross-examination by Attorney 
 General Herbert S. Hadley. It is also worthy of note 
 that the Texas prosecution relied largely on the use of 
 this testimony to secure a verdict before the Travis Coun- 
 ty jury which brought in a decision ousting the company 
 from Texas, and imposing on it a fine in excess of $1,- 
 600,000. 
 
 It is no reflection on the intelligence of this jury 
 to state the obvious fact that the great question at issue 
 was entirely beyond the scope and comprehension of a 
 layman, or a body of laymen. It is an open secret that 
 few well-versed lawyers anticipate that this verdict will 
 stand the test of the United States Supreme Court, and 
 it is the consensus of expert opinion that the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company will not be “destroyed” or its prop- 
 erty confiscated, but whether these things happen or not, 
 I take it that fair-minded men are unwilling that Mr. 
 Pierce shall be judged by those who insist on taking 
 political advantage of complications which have been 
 forced on him. 
 
 Chapter XVIL 
 
 MR. PIERCE AS A WITNESS 
 
 Preceding chapters have contained many of the facts 
 brought out in the examination of Henry Clay Pierce 
 Iiefore Commissioner Anthony in St. Louis, beginning on 
 September 10, 1906, and I propose now to supply the 
 more important missing links as furnished by his testi- 
 mony, paying especial attention to his narration of his 
 relations to the Standard Oil officials. 
 
 I have indicated by conclusive facts and in connec- 
 ed detatil that whatever of alliance existed between the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company — old and new — was not of 
 Mr. Pierce’s seeking, and that his constant ambition has 
 been the attainment of absolute independence. He as- 
 serts that he has maintained for his company its tech- 
 nical or legal independence — a claim which the courts 
 have yet to pass on, and one on which the fate of that 
 corporation largely depends. 
 
 Possibly Mr. Pierce should have taken the public 
 completely into his confidence years before he took the 
 stand in St. Louis. Possibly he should have disclosed 
 the details of his various negotiations and conflicts with 
 the Standard Oil officials and perhaps he should have 
 outlined the exact terms demanded of the oil trust and 
 granted by it. Such a policy would have astounded the 
 business world, but it would have shielded Mr. Pierce 
 against demagogues and would have destroyed at its 
 inception a new but flourishing industry — the quest for 
 fees and commissions by trust-hunting prosecutors. 
 
 Certain critics ask why it was that Mr. Pierce did 
 not denounce and expose the Standard Oil company and 
 its officials when on the witness stand. I do not know. 
 Possibly it was because able lawyers assured him that , 
 there was no law estopping the Standard or its members j 
 from investing in the stock of a retail distributing t 
 
 agency. Again he may have felt a certain hesitancy in t 
 
 excoriating interests which held a majority of the stock , 
 in the company which he had founded. 
 
 Those who insist that Mr. Pierce shall launch thun- 
 derbolts against the oil trust should reflect that condi- 
 tions are such that the Waters Pierce must for years 
 remain the customer of the Standard Oil company, no 
 matter who owns the stock of the former. The Craw- 
 fords, Cranes, Cockes, Senters and others have scaled 
 the calm heights of altruism, and are above such vulgar 
 problems as the oil supply, but the unfortunate and prac- 
 tical Mr. Pierce still gropes in the valley and must ob- 
 tain oil and its products from the sordid monopoly which 
 is fostered by national laws not of his making. 
 
 MR. PIERCE AND THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY. 
 
 When asked to state the relations “between the 
 Standard Oil company and the present Waters Pierce Oil 
 company,” Mr. Pierce thus testified under oath: 
 
 “When the license of the first Waters Pierce Oil 
 company to do business in Texas was revoked, and I 
 
sought to settle with the State, so that we could con- 
 tinue our business there, I was told very frankly by a 
 prominent citizen of Texas," referring undoubtedly to the 
 then Congressman Bailey, “that the people of that State 
 would not tolerate the methods of the Standard Oil com- 
 pany, and that no corporation controlled by that com- 
 pany would be permitted to carry on business in Texas. 
 I explained this situation fully to the executive commit- 
 tee of the Standard Oil company, and they agreed that I 
 should organize a new company; the stock of which I 
 should hold, and that I should manage and control the 
 company absolutely free from any dictation or direction 
 of the Standard Oil company.” 
 
 It will be observed that Mr. Pierce does not say 
 that it was agreed that he should own all of this stock, 
 but that he should “hold” it. He later stated his legal 
 attitude in this matter in the following terms, when' 
 cross-examined by Attorney General Hadley of Mis- 
 souri; 
 
 “It is well known that people in whose name stock 
 appears, whether they own it or not, do legally own and 
 control and vote the stock so long as it stands in their 
 name, and the mere fact that they have parted with the 
 certificate does not take from them the power to vote 
 and control the stock.” 
 
 The question of the legal independence of the Wa- 
 ters Pierce Oil company rests to a considerable extent 
 on the tenability of the proposition above stated by Mr. 
 Pierce, who thus continued his testimony: 
 
 I>TERFEKE>TE OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY. 
 
 “In order that the company should conduct its busi- 
 ness in strict accord with the laws of every State in 
 which it was operating, I placed the attorney of our 
 company on the executive committee, with instructions to 
 examine all reports and transactions, to the end that no 
 law should be violated. I earnestly desired the company 
 to respect and obey the laws, and I felt under special ob- 
 ligations to comply strictly with the laws of Texas. 
 
 “Up to the spring of 1904 the Standard Oil company 
 made no attempt to interfere in any way with my man- 
 agement and control of the Waters Pierce Oil company, 
 but at that time they transferred the stock which stood 
 in my name to M. M. Van Buren, and began in other 
 ways to assume a control over the affairs and operations 
 of the company. I protested against this conduct as a 
 violation of their cbntract with me, and as contrary to 
 the representations I had made to the people of Texas. 
 After frequent interviews and discussions on this point, 
 the management and control of the company were again 
 committed to my direction, and my son. Clay Arthur 
 Pierce, is now president of the company, and conducting 
 it as an independent business.” 
 
 The testimony developed the fact that on the organ- 
 ization of the present company, on May 29, 1900, that 
 Mr. Pierce was the absolute owner of all of the stock 
 of the company. On September 4, a little more than 
 three months later, Mr. Pierce endorsed 2748 shares of 
 stock in blank, which shares were delivered to Mr. Garth, 
 cashier of the Mechanics’ National bank of New York. 
 The following colloquy ensued between Attorney Gen- 
 eral Hadley and Mr. Pierce: 
 
 Mr. Hadley — Why did you transfer that stock? 
 
 Mr. Pierce— I transferred that stock because it was 
 understood that I would do so. 
 
 Mr. Hadley — At the time of the organization of the 
 new company? 
 
 Mr. Pierce — Not verbally, or by any understa nding, 
 but tacitly so understood. 
 
 Mr. Hadley — With whom? 
 
 Mr. Pierce — I think I shall have to refer that to my 
 attorney, Mr. J. D. Johnson. 
 
 Mr. Hadley — Your testimony is now that within a 
 few months after the organization of the new company 
 j'ou parted with the controlling interest to some party 
 whose identity was not disclosed to you and whose iden- 
 tity is not disclosed now? 
 
 Air. Pierce — Practically that is correct. 
 
 Air. Hadley — When did you become aware of the 
 identity of that mysterious person? 
 
 Air. Pierce — In June, 1904, I received a telegram 
 from my son stating that the stock had been presented to 
 the secretary and transferred from my name to the name 
 of AI. AI. Van Buren. 
 
 Air. Hadley — Did you know who M. M. Van Buren 
 was? 
 
 Air. Pierce — I had never heard of him. 
 
 Later in the proceedings the following testimony 
 was given: 
 
 Air. Hadley — When was the conference with the 
 executive committee of the Standard Oil company at 
 which the executive committee agreed that a new com- 
 pany should be organized of which you should own all 
 the stock? 
 
 Air. Pierce — I am not able to state the exact time, 
 but these conferences were held very frequently during the 
 winter and spring of 1900. 
 
 Air. Hadley — And prior to the organization of the 
 new company? 
 
 Air. Pierce — Yes. 
 
 Mr. Hadley — .And do you wish now to be understood 
 as saying that all the understanding that you had at that 
 time with the executive committee of the Standard Oil 
 company in reference to the stock of the new company, 
 was that it should be held in your name? 
 
 Air. Pierce — My present recollection is that that was 
 the case; that I had no personal understanding with any 
 of the members of the executive committee prior to the 
 organization of the Waters Pierce Oil company as to 
 what disposition was to be made of the stock which was 
 to be issued to me, and for which I was personally to 
 pay. 
 
 A STRANGE BUSINESS TRANSACTION. 
 
 For reasons which only Air. Pierce can explain — and 
 which doubtless will yet be made public — he later trans- 
 ferred in blank a majority of the stock of the company, 
 with the explicit understanding that he was to retain 
 voting power on all of the stock, this insuring his abso- 
 lute control so long as this compact was kept. Air. 
 Pierce’s testimony indicates that he took no part in these 
 negotiations. 
 
 “I was told by my attorney,” he stated to .Attorney 
 General Hadley, “that he had made such an arrangement 
 with the general counsel of the Standard Oil company. 
 
 I know nothing of the arguments used by the dis- 
 tinguished general counsel of the Standard in his con- 
 ference with Air. J. D. Johnson, who represented Air. 
 Pierce, but assume that they were forceful and know 
 that they were effective. Of course. Air. Pierce could 
 have rejected them and have defied the oil trust. He 
 could then have presented his 4000 shares of stock to 
 the first man he met on the street, and would have lost 
 little by such generosity. He chose the more prosaic al- 
 ternative of accepting the best bargain which could be 
 
 — 47 — 
 
made with an invincible antagonist, and that bargain in- 
 cluded a pledge of independence for the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company which was not to be disputed. 
 
 I believe I have stated the nature of this transaction 
 with fairness to all concerned in it. It does not make 
 a hero of Mr. Pierce, neither does it picture the Standard 
 as the heavy villain. The transaction was merely busi- 
 ness; a not uncommon specimen of the devices on which 
 the whole structure of our commercial edifice is based. 
 
 THE STANDARD VIOLATES ITS AGREEMENT. 
 
 From 1901 until some time in 1905, Mr. H. C. Pierce 
 suffered from ill-health. His condition was very serious 
 at the period when a crisis was precipitated in the affairs 
 of the company. J. P. Gruet, a director and secretary of 
 the company, became — to quote from Mr. Pierce’s testi- 
 mony — “because of unfortunate infirmities disqualified 
 longer to hold the position.” Mr. Pierce did not know 
 the nature of Gruet’s “infirmities,” neither did he know 
 that he was plotting treachery and blackmail. Gruet was 
 a Standard Oil representative on the board, and it was 
 conceded their right to fill his place, subject to the ap- 
 proval of Mr. Pierce. 
 
 Mr. W. H. Tilford of the Standard, suggested Mr. 
 R. P. Tinsley, and Mr. Pierce sent proxies for the total 
 capital stock of the company from New York to St. 
 Louis, with instructions to elect Tinsley in place of 
 Gruet. This was on April 20, 1904, up to which time no 
 attempt had been made to abrogate the agreement made 
 with Mr. Pierce by the Standard Oil interests. In all 
 elections he voted all the stock, and the company was 
 under his control, or the control of his direct representa- 
 tives. 
 
 Mr. Tinsley had long been in the employ of the Stan- 
 dard. He did not come to St. Louis immediately after 
 his election, but assumed his duties at about the same 
 time that certain of the Standard Oil officials ordered the 
 2748 shares, which Mr. Pierce had indorsed in blank, 
 transferred on the books of the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany from Mr. Pierce to M. M. Van Buren, son-in-law of 
 John D. Archbold, a conspicuous Standard Oil magnate. 
 This was their legal right, but it violated the pledge 
 made to Mr. Pierce, whose physical condition at that 
 time was such that he was unable to transact business, 
 much less successfully to combat a cabal which had been 
 formed at 26 Broadway. 
 
 It was understood that Mr. Tinsley should fill the po- 
 sition of auditor or comptroller. He was elected to the 
 vice presidency, but Mr. Pierce had a distinct agreement 
 with Mr. W. H. Tilford, representing the interests of 
 the Standard, that under no circumstances was Tinsley to 
 interfere with the management of the company. Owing 
 to Mr. Pierce’s ill health, Mr. Andrew M. Finley had 
 been elected president. He lacked the force and aggres- 
 sive characteristics of his predecessor, and was unable to 
 assert his authority against the new Vice President Tins- 
 ley, who began by refusing to fill the position of comp- 
 troller which had been assigned to him, and who ended 
 by driving Mr. Finley to nervous prostration and a trip 
 abroad to recover his shattered health. 
 
 TINSLEY IN FULL CONTROL. 
 
 Whether or not Tinsley proceeded on the assumption 
 that he was authorized to represent the majority of the 
 stock, then in the name of M. M. Van Buren, the testi- 
 mony does not disclose, but certain it is that he grasped 
 the reins of power and ruled with a high hand. In the 
 
 absence of President Finley, and during the serious ill- 
 ness of Henry Clay Pierce, no efficient opposition could 
 be directed against him, and from the autumn of 1904 
 until May or June, 1905, the influence of the Standard 
 Oil company in the affairs of the Waters Pierce was 
 dominant. 
 
 Mr. Pierce thus testified concerning the “pernicious 
 activity” of Vice President R. P. Tinsley: 
 
 “He took away from General Manager Ackert the 
 management of the Mexican division and assumed entire 
 charge of it himself. He sent to Mexico as manager, un- 
 der the local general manager of Mexico, a Standard Oil 
 company employe from Cleveland, Ohio, who was entire- 
 ly unfamiliar with Mexico, its customs, people, language, 
 or the business of the company in Mexico. The effect of 
 that was to cause the very effective manager of the com- 
 pany in Mexico to resign his position. Mr. Tinsley pro- 
 ceeded at different dates to remove the old and impor- 
 tant employes of the company, heads of departments, and 
 to substitute in their places inefficient, incompetent and 
 inexperienced men. The number of changes in the man- 
 agement of the company equaled 200 or 300 in the ag- 
 gregate, and in many cases those substituted were Stan- 
 dard Oil company employes. 
 
 “When this information came to my knowledge suf- 
 ficiently to enable me to take action, I protested to the of- 
 ficials of the Standard Oil company in New York against 
 the unwarranted action of Mr. Tinsley in violating the 
 agreement entered into between the Standard Oil com- 
 pany and myself at the time of the organization of the 
 first Waters Pierce Oil company, in 1878, and the implied 
 continuation of that agreem'ent at the time the present 
 Waters Pierce Oil company was organized.” 
 
 The result finally of these vigorous protests was 
 that Mr. Tinsley was compelled to resign, which he did 
 on June 22, 1905, though he saw the coming end of his 
 usurpation a month or so sooner, and abandoned St. 
 Louis and returned to New York, late in April, 1905, 
 where he again entered the employ of the Standard Oil 
 company. 
 
 There is no question but that during the Tinsley in- 
 terregnum the Waters Pierce Oil company was con- 
 trolled by Standard Oil interests, and there was nothing 
 theoretical about such control. There is also no doubt 
 that this was a conspiracy which had a temporary suc- 
 cess because of the serious illness of Mr. Pierce, and the 
 lesser force and aggressiveness of President A. M. Fin- 
 ley. The plot melted into thin air with Mr. Pierce’s re- 
 covery. He created for himself the supreme position of 
 chairman of the board of directors, and elected his son, 
 Clay Arthur Pierce, to the presidency, offices which both 
 have held since June 22, 1905. 
 
 EFFECT OF GARBLED PRESS REPORTS. 
 
 The newspaper reports sent broadcast relative to the 
 testimony given by Mr. Pierce did him a grave injustice, 
 but one probably not intentional on the part of the writ- 
 ers. Garbled extracts were given and characterized as 
 a “confession.” No fair-minded man can read the com- 
 plete official transcript of Mr. Pierce’s testimony without 
 coming to the conclusion that he believed there was legal 
 and moral justification for every step taken, and that he 
 contended with all his power to hold his company strict- 
 ly to the letter and spirit of the law, as it was explained 
 to him by capable counsel. 
 
 It was an easy matter, however, for the politicians 
 to distort and misrepresent the frank statements made 
 
by Mr. Pierce in his examination. For motives purely 
 political, there then began a campaign of vilification and 
 downright falsehood which was disgraceful. It was not 
 aimed at Mr. Pierce or the Waters Pierce Oil company, 
 but over their shoulders at Senator Bailey. I doubt if 
 there is a prominent politician or a public character in 
 Texas, active in calling down the wrath of the people on 
 Henry Clay Pierce or his company, who sincerely believes 
 that the general welfare will be conserved by the penaliz- 
 
 ing of Mr. Pierce or by the confiscation or annihilation 
 of the property of the corporation with which he has 
 been identified for a lifetime. There is not an intelligent 
 man in Texas who does not now understand that a clique 
 of politicians has bayed at the Waters Pierce and smirched 
 Senator Bailey, not because of their transgressions, but 
 because of the desire of these politicians to ride into of- 
 fice and perquisites on a wave of public passion and preju- 
 dice. 
 
 Chapter XVIII. 
 
 STR.\XCxE IMMUNITY OF A “LAWLESS TRUST ’ 
 
 Let me again repeat that from 1878 until 1906, a pe- 
 riod of twenty-eight long years, only one suit was suc- 
 cessfully prosecuted by Texas officials against the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company, and that was decided against the 
 company on account of slight and technical violations 
 which did not implicate it as a trust. That is the record 
 of a great concern operating for a generation in the enor- 
 mous territory of Texas. 
 
 That is the undisputable record of a vast trading com- 
 panjq operating through hundreds of agents, employing 
 thousands of men, distributing products worth hundreds 
 upon hundreds of millions of dollars- — a single conviction 
 of wrong-doing because an inexperienced agent disre- 
 garded his written instructions — and yet the people of 
 Texas have been asked to believe that the Waters Pierce 
 has been “lawless," that it has “defied the law” and that it 
 “has scoffed at all legal restraint.” 
 
 The present Waters Pierce Oil company has been in 
 the limelight every day since it was admitted to do busi- 
 ness in Texas on May 31, 1900. There was every incen- 
 tive to attack it. The anti-trust law of 1899 prescribed 
 penalties of $5000 a day, each day to constitute a sepa- 
 rate violation, and allowed county attorneys commis- 
 sion of 25 per cent, or a reward of $1250 a day. There 
 are 243 counties in Texas, and a general and successful 
 legal crusade against the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 would have subjected it to daily fines of $1,215,000, an- 
 nual fines of $448,475,000, which result would have netted 
 each of the 243 county attorneys the tidy fee of $456,- 
 250. 
 
 Surely there was no reason why the law officers 
 should have hesitated to bring suits against the Waters 
 Pierce, assuming that they could produce evidence against 
 it. 
 
 WHY WERE IfO SUITS BROUGHT? 
 
 Political reasons also tended to incite prosecution 
 and persecution of the Waters Pierce. Hatred and jeal- 
 ousy of Senator Bailey urged certain politicians to seek 
 any pretext to attack this corporation. There was also 
 anger, or pretended anger, over its admission into Texas, 
 but despite these factors and many others, no suit was 
 filed in any county in Texas from the day of the grant- 
 ing of a permit to the present Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany on May 31, 1900, during the remaining period of 
 two years and ten months in which the sweeping anti- 
 trust law of 1899 was on the statute books. 
 
 My explanation of that fact is that the company 
 strictly obeyed the law, and that the prosecuting officials 
 knew that no suit would hold against it. 
 
 If my critics have any other explanation to account 
 for the immunity of the Waters Pierce while operating 
 under this most drastic of all anti-trust laws, now is their 
 time to state it to the people of Texas. One petty vio- 
 lation in any county by any agent of the company would 
 have been sufficient. Why were suits not brought? 
 
 The Supreme Court of the United States rendered 
 a decision in 1902 which declared the Illinois anti-trust 
 law unconstitutional because of a clause exempting labor 
 organizations from its exactions. The Texas law of 1899 
 contained almost identically the same clause, and its va- 
 lidity was doomed. The legislature enacted a new and 
 milder law on March 31, 1903. This law provided maxi- 
 mum penalties of $50 a day instead of $5000, a reduction 
 which leads me to the conclusion that at least one of 
 these laws was unjust — but it is conceded that I know 
 nothing about law. In this defect I am no less unfortu- 
 nate than are four of the nine members of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, who have been radically 
 wrong on every recent occasion. 
 
 For three and a half years the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company continued to operate under this new law, and in 
 all that time no suit was brought against it in any of 
 the 243 counties of Texas. Surely the officials were lax, 
 or else the company conformed to the law. 
 
 WHY SUIT WAS FINALLY BROUGHT. 
 
 Henry Clay Pierce told the story of the relations ex- 
 isting between his company and the Standard on Septenv 
 ber 10, 1906, and twelve days later Attorney General Da- 
 vidson filed a suit for penalties and ouster against the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company. Another suit was brought 
 charging Mr. Pierce with false swearing — not with per- 
 jury, as is frequently stated and printed. Perjury and 
 false swearing are entirely different crimes, and those 
 best competent to judge inform me that Mr. Pierce will 
 be acquitted by the evidence which I have cited when 
 the case comes to trial. 
 
 I shall discuss neither of these cases in detail, since 
 both are now before the courts and in process of adju- 
 dication, but it will not be amiss to touch on certain 
 points which are not in legal controversy, and on which 
 the public has deliberately been misled. 
 
 — 49 — 
 
J 
 
 Both of these suits were based almost entirely on 
 the testimony given voluntarily by Mr. Pierce in his ex- 
 amination before Commissioner Anthony of St. Louis. 
 In neither of these cases has Mr. Pierce taken the stand 
 in his own defense, and the reason for this is found in 
 the fact that his presence in Texas would have menaced 
 his liberty through the operation of an unjust law passed 
 by a former legislature, and only recently repealed. 
 
 This absurd law provided that persons charged and 
 indicted for a number of crimes and offenses — including 
 false swearing— should be denied bail while they were 
 prosecuting appeals to a higher court. In that respect 
 it classed false swearing with murder, rape and other 
 high crimes, and presumed a citizen guilty until proved 
 innocent. It was so manifestly unjust that the last leg- 
 islature repealed it. 
 
 Though absolutely convinced of his innocence, both 
 legally and morally, Mr. Pierce was willing and eager to 
 risk even imprisonment for a period as the price for the 
 chance to clear his name of the disgrace attached to this 
 indictment. His lawyers convinced him that no assur- 
 ance could be given of a fair and speedy trial, and proved 
 to him that he might be locked up in Austin for an indefi- 
 nite period pending an appeal. 
 
 MALIGNANT POLITICAL PLOTTINGS. 
 
 Had Mr. Pierce surrendered himself to the Texas au- 
 thorities at that time he would have risked unmerited im- 
 prisonment, great financial loss, impairment of health, 
 and would have been menaced with “legal lynch law.” 
 He was then engaged in vast financial operations, includ- 
 ing the reorganization and merger of the Mexican Cen- 
 tral railway in conjunction with the Mexican govern- 
 ment, and he was also vitally concerned in other great 
 iridustrial enterprises. Powerful financial interests m 
 New York were operating against him, millions of money 
 and his commercial prestige were at stake, and yet he 
 has been denounced unsparingly by cunning demagogues 
 because he availed himself of the law and resisted ex- 
 tradition rather than take the chance of having to remain 
 indefinitely in an Austin cell, on an unfounded charge, 
 and on account of a harsh and admittedly unjust act of 
 legislation. 
 
 In all earnestness I desire to record my deliberate 
 opinion that this is the most contemptible criticism which 
 has been leveled against Henry Clay Pierce. Lawyer 
 politicians who were fully aware of his legal rights, and 
 would have advised him to do just as he did do, have 
 hypocritically incited the people of Texas against Mr. 
 Pierce because he used the provisions of a just Federal law to 
 protect himself against the tyranny of a despotic State law 
 which was a blot on the statute books of Texas, and which 
 was repealed when its rank injustice was comprehended. 
 
 Things will come to a fine pass in the United States 
 if every man placed under the ban of indictment by a 
 State grand jury is to be excoriated and vilified because 
 he does not at once leave his home State and hasten to 
 the State where the indictment is preferred pending a 
 final judgment in his case. 
 
 APPEALS TO PASSION. 
 
 Suppose that Mr. Pierce had consented to waive his 
 legal rights and submit to such martyrdom? He would 
 have had a fine chance for a fair trial in that hysterical 
 period, would he not? No attempt would have been 
 spared to crucify him for the purpose of smirching Sen- 
 ator Bailey. The political malcontents who then ap- 
 pealed to the passions and prejudices of the masses cared 
 
 nothing about the guilt or innocence of Henry Clay 
 Pierce. They did not then and do not now care a con- 
 tinental whether or not the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 is a trust, and they are not concerned whether oil costs 
 10 cents or 20 cents a gallon. 
 
 They have but one end in view — political offices — 
 with salaries, perquisites, commissions, fees, graft — and 
 their means to that end are to load on the shoulders of 
 the Standard Oil company, and then to charge Senator 
 Bailey for the responsibility of the corporate existence 
 in Texas of the Waters Pierce Oil company. They want- 
 ed a victim, they wished to make an “example of a mil- 
 lionaire,” and they selected Henry Clay Pierce, the man 
 who as a boy risked his life and health in founding a 
 great industry in Texas when it was a wilderness, who won 
 his way to success because of executive genius and in- 
 domitable energy, whose alleged crime is that he has so 
 perfected a vast trading organization that he can and 
 does sell oil cheaper than any of his competitors and 
 still make a profit on it — this was the man they se- 
 lected for sacrifice on the altar of partisan chicane — and 
 they still fill the air with their deceitful protests because 
 Mr. Pierce does not deliver himself into their hands. 
 
 THE RECENT TRIAL. 
 
 I have talked with hundreds of business men, law- 
 yers, manufacturers, merchants and farmers in every sec- 
 tion of Texas, and I state it as an absolute fact that I 
 have never heard a bitter expression against the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company or against Mr. Pierce. I have sound- 
 ed strangers who did not know that I had the slightest 
 interest in the case, and their most common remark has 
 been, “It’s just politics,” and thus dismiss the subject 
 with a weary smile. 
 
 I do not say that this popular estimate is true, but 
 there is no manner of doubt that the intelligent people 
 of Texas have little faith that the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany will permanently be ousted from the State, that it 
 will be disrupted and its property confiscated by huge 
 fines, and I fail to find any desire that any such penal- 
 ties are desired by the fair-minded people of Texas. 
 
 Certain of my critics express great fear lest I shall 
 show disrespect for the courts, while others charge me 
 with an attempt to overrule the decisions which have 
 been rendered against the Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 Unless bewilderment is disrespect I shall be able to es- 
 cape punishment on the first count, and I accept the 
 second warning as a complimentary pleasantry. 
 
 The future Balzac will have a lot of fun when he se- 
 lects this famous case for the purpose of ridiculing the 
 systems of laws and complications of courts under which 
 we now exist. Just how many decisions nave been ren- 
 dered, and how the score stands between the Waters 
 Pierce and the State of Texas is a matter so obscured 
 in judicial statistics and hair-splitting terminology that it 
 would be rash for a mere layman to hazard an estimate. 
 
 Of one thing I am sure: It all costs a lot of money, 
 
 and when it is ended the people of Texas will find that 
 they have paid the bill, or will pay the bill, no matter 
 which side wins. A State can fine a corporation, tax a 
 corporation any amount the law will allow; it may adopt 
 all possible expedients to put money into its treasury, 
 but in the long run every penny of it will come out ot 
 the pockets of its own people, and the more the lawyers 
 get the less there will remain for public improvements 
 and education. Please don’t forget that; it is a homely 
 truth. 
 
 — 50 — 
 
^VHICH JUDGE BKOOKS WAS RIGHT? 
 
 The first Waters Pierce Oil company was ousted 
 from Texas in consequence of a jury verdict in a trial at 
 Austin in 1897 before Judge R. E. Brooks. The present 
 Waters Pierce Oil companj" was ousted from Texas in 
 consequence of a jury trial in a trial . at Austin in 1907 
 before Judge V. L. Brooks. 
 
 I desire to call attention to a detail which I have 
 not seen mentioned, and which is most mystifying to the 
 non-judicial mind, and that detail is this: 
 
 In both trials the prosecution laid special stress on 
 the alleged fact that the Waters Pierce Oil companj 
 was in a trust alliance with the Standard Oil company. 
 The evidence adduced at both trials was practically iden- 
 tical so far as showing the relationship between the two 
 corporations. On both occasions it was claimed and 
 tacitly admitted that the Standard had the right to de- 
 mand legal control, and in both trials the defense urged 
 that actual control was vested in Mr. Pierce and exercised 
 by him. 
 
 In both trials testimony was offered to show that the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company had raised and lowered 
 prices for the purpose of meeting or defeating competi- 
 tion; that it had granted rebates; that it had purchased 
 the plants of rival concerns, and that it had used other 
 expedients to hold and extend its trade. Practically all 
 of the adverse testimony used in the first trial was ad- 
 mitted at the second, despite the fact that the defend- 
 ant company was not organized until nearly three years 
 after the jury verdict was rendered against the old com- 
 pany, and despite the fact that the judge in the second 
 trial excluded most of it in his charges to the jury, not, 
 however until the minds of the jurymen had been preju- 
 diced by confusing the offense of the old and dead com- 
 pany with one then on trial. 
 
 Bear in mind that the relations existing in 1897 be- 
 tween the old Waters Pierce and the Standard were the 
 same as those which prevailed when the present Waters 
 Pierce Oil company was prosecuted by Attorney Gen- 
 eral Davidson in 1907, and then account for this: 
 
 In the trial of 1897 Judge R. E. Brooks instructed the 
 jury to the effect that the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 could not be incriminated on account of its relations to 
 the Standard Oil company, and that its guilt or innocence 
 depended almost entirely on its alleged granting of re- 
 bates and its alleged making of exclusive contracts. His 
 ruling was to the effect that the ownership by the Stan- 
 dard of a portion of the stock of the Waters Pierce did 
 not implicate the latter as a trust. 
 
 That is the plan purport of the ruling made in 1907 
 by Judge R. E. Brooks — if I understand the English lan- 
 guage, and I hope I do. 
 
 He excluded the Standard Oil agreement and all 
 other evidence concerning the great oil trust, and the 
 jury brought in a verdict based entirely on the evidence 
 which showed that the Brownsville agent had granted 
 rebates and had made exclusive contracts, and the higher 
 courts finally ousted the Waters Pierce from Texas on 
 that account. 
 
 A REMARKABLE CONTRADICTION. 
 
 In the recent trial Judge V. L. Brooks admitted evi- 
 dence of wide range. I now quote extracts from his 
 charges to the jury, eliminating superfluous phrases, but 
 preserving his exact meaning. In charge III Judge 
 Brooks said, in effect, to the jury: 
 
 “Oil and other products of petroleum, which the Wa- 
 ters Piere'e Oil company may have purchased or acquired 
 in any manner outside the State of Texas, and which it 
 has caused to be shipped into Texas, are subjects of in- 
 terstate commerce, and so remain until they are removed 
 from their original packages, tanks, vessels, etc. The 
 anti-trust laws of Texas have no reference to agreements 
 or pools or arrangements of any kind concerning sub- 
 jects of interstate commerce, and no agreement, pool or 
 other arrangement which the Waters Pierce may have 
 entered into with reference to an interstate product can 
 be considered by you as violating any anti-trust law of 
 Texas.” 
 
 Read that over again carefully. I take it that it meant 
 that it was no concern of the jury what manner of alli- 
 ance existed between the Waters Pierce and the Stan- 
 dard, so long as the latter’s products were purchased or 
 acquired in any manner from some point outside of 
 Texas. Of course, if the Waters Pierce later violated 
 the anti-trust laws in its retailing of the oil obtained 
 from the Standard, it could be prosecuted and punished, 
 but — and bear this in mind— Judge V. L. Brooks, in the 
 last trial of the Waters Pierce, distinctly told the jury 
 that no evidence of importance to that purport had been 
 produced, and he excluded its consideration from the 
 twelve jurymen. 
 
 Now note the conclusion of charge III, in effect as 
 delivered by Judge Brooks: 
 
 “But oil purchased by the Waters Pierce from the 
 Corsicana refinery or any other refinery in Texas, and 
 oil purchased outside the State and removed from its 
 original packages is not the subject of interstate com- 
 merce, and any agreement, pool or other arrangement en- 
 tered into by the Waters Pierce with reference to such 
 products is in violation of the anti-trust laws of the 
 State.” 
 
 I have no' contempt for such a ruling, but I have 
 unmeasured contempt for such a law, and I imagine that 
 the people of Texas will agree with me when they come 
 to understand what it means. It means that it is not 
 unlawful to purchase in bulk oil refined by the Standard 
 Oil company in Whiting, Ind., or Bayonne, N. J., or any 
 other outside plant owned by the trust, but that it is a 
 crime to buy oil from an oil refinery owned by the Stan- 
 dard in Texas — one which gives employment to Texans, 
 and which adds to the prosperity and upbuilding of the 
 Lone Star State. 
 
 If it be the proper thing for Texans to encourage 
 the refining of oil in Whiting and Bayonne, and to make 
 it a crime to patronize a home enterprise why on earth 
 does not Texas justice close down the Corsicana and all 
 other refineries and treat them as if they were manufact- 
 urers of dynamite bomljs? 
 
 LIMIT OF JUDGE BROOKS’ CHARGE. 
 
 Charges VII to XI, inclusive, pertained to the ques- 
 tion of whether or not there was any arrangements ex- 
 isting between the Waters Pierce Oil company and the 
 Standard, and the nature and scope of such arrangements, 
 if any. 
 
 , This was the very issue excluded by Judge R. E. 
 Brooks in the trial of the old company in 1897, but ten years 
 later a Travis county jury and a Travis county judge re- 
 versed that issue, acquitted the company on charges which 
 previously ousted it from Texas and convicted it on counts 
 which an able judge ruled should not be considered. 
 
 Surely the ways of the law of the courts are beyond 
 the comprehension of the finite mind. 
 
 I have repeatedly declared that the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company has conformed strictly to the letter and 
 spirit of the anti-trust laws of Texas since it was admit- 
 
 — 51 — 
 
ted to do business on May 31, 1900. Mr. Pierce gave his 
 pledge that it would do so. I have stated tha^ the ques- 
 tion whether or not the ownership of Waters Pierce stock 
 by Standard Oil interests was illegal, was an issue which 
 must be passed on by the higher courts, and that it is a 
 matter of much moment that its final adjudication may 
 revolutionize our industrial system. 
 
 Yet such was the great economic question which was 
 submitted to the decision of twelve jurymen, presumably 
 of average intelligence, and they undoubtedly decided 
 honestly and to the best of their ability, but it is absurd 
 to assume that their verdict will settle this most vital 
 question. The point I am making is this: The jury 
 
 in the last trial of the Waters Pierce Oil company con- 
 victed it because of the admission of the evidence given 
 by Henry Clay Pierce on the witness stand in St. Louis, 
 some months previously, which evidence was to the 
 effect that a majority of the stock of the Waters Pierce 
 had passed to the ownership of Standard Oil interests. 
 
 PRACTICAL ACQUITTAL OF THE WATERS PIERCE. 
 
 The jury in 1907 acquitted the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company of all specific violations of the Texas anti-trust 
 laws. I doubt if many readers are aware of that fact. 
 They have heard much about the “lawlessness” of this 
 corporation since its admission to Texas in 1900, and 
 have assumed that the jury punished it because of these 
 crimes against competition. 
 
 The prosecuting officials raked Texas for evidence 
 against the company. Dealers and customers were inter- 
 viewed, and on all sorts of pretexts placed on the stand 
 with a view of implicating the company in some specific 
 violation of the law. Read their testimony. It is an 
 amusing attempt to charge criminality on a company 
 which has made the most zealous endeavor to conform to 
 the law. 
 
 You need not take my word for it. Read the follow- 
 ing charge to the jury by Judge Brooks, and you will 
 obtain a clear idea of how much truth there is in the 
 charges of lawlessness against the present Waters Pierce 
 Oil company. In charge XII Judge Brooks thus instruct- 
 ed the jury, and gave the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 a clean bill of health on all counts save its alleged alli- 
 ance with the Standard. 
 
 “Evidence has been introduced before you tending 
 to show that the Waters Pierce Oil company has given 
 rebates and discounts in the course of its dealings; evi- 
 dence has also been introduced before you tending to 
 show that the Waters Pierce Oil company has made con- 
 tracts other than those pertaining to its alleged relations 
 with the Standard Oil company. Evidence has also been 
 introduced before you tending to show the general 
 course of the dealings of the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 in Texas and elsewhere, including some of its business 
 methods in meeting competition.” 
 
 Please pay particular attention to how Judge Brooks 
 dismissed these alleged crimes charged against this “law- 
 less” company: 
 
 “You are instructed that none of this evidence shows, 
 or tends to show, any violation of the anti-trust laws 
 of Texas, unless it tends in some degree to establish 
 some one or more of the issues submitted for your con- 
 sideration in the last mentioned paragraphs of this 
 charge (those alleging an alliance between the Waters 
 Pierce and the Standard) ; and you are therefore instructed 
 to acquit the Waters Pierce Oil company and return a gen- 
 eral verdict for it — notwithstanding any and all of said evi- 
 dence, unless you find for the State on the issues submitted 
 for your consideration in some one or more paragraphs of 
 the charge..” 
 
 XOT OXE SHRED OF EVIDEXCE. 
 
 In plain English this meant that since May 31, 1900, 
 not one shred of evidence was produced in Texas even 
 indicating that the company had violated the law, and 
 that the whole case of the State rested on the relations 
 which had been forced on Mr. Pierce by the Standard 
 Oil company, as frankly told by him in his testimony. 
 
 I challenge my critics to prove that I have misrep- 
 resented or distorted the facts in this case. In previous 
 articles I have stated that the case against Mr. Pierce 
 and his company rested on conditions and circumstances 
 over which he had no control, and that the issue re- 
 solved itself into the legal point of whether or not it 
 was unlawful for the Standard to own stock in the Wa- 
 ters Pierce. In reply to this statement, my critics have 
 retorted that the Waters Pierce had been since its ad- 
 mission into Texas, on May 31, 1900, and that it is now 
 “a persistent violator of the laws,” that it is a “commer- 
 cial pirate,” that it has “throttled competition,” and that 
 it has been “reckless in its criminal conspiracies in re- 
 straint of trade.” 
 
 Editorial writers have mockingly advised me to look 
 up the record of the testimony and rulings in the last 
 Travis county trial. I already knew the facts and was 
 sure of my ground, and I now ask certain of these gen- 
 tlemen, who are so solicitious about “keeping the record 
 straight, if they will print a few of the preceding para- 
 graphs concerning the charge made by Judge Brooks. 
 Will they please tell their readers what crime the Waters 
 Pierce has committed since 1900.? Will they please 
 point out some specific cases of “lawlessness” submit- 
 ted to the Travis county jury? 
 
 The terse truth of the matter is that no corpora- 
 tion in Texas has yielded more rigid adherence to the 
 laws of the State than the present Waters Pierce Oil 
 company. All of the potential evidence brought out 
 against it in the recent trial pertaining to alleged of- 
 fenses committed in other States and was based on 
 testimony taken in St. Louis and not in Austin. 
 
 In presenting these articles to the people of Texas 
 and of the Southwest I have attempted to place in print 
 the concrete facts and official records, in the belief that 
 a fair presentation of the truth will check a campaign of 
 misrepresentation and abuse which has had its motive 
 and inspiration in selfish and sordid politics, and which 
 has harmed Texas far more than it has Mr. Pierce or his 
 company. 
 
 Before closing this series I wish to touch briefly on 
 one or two matters in which the public has a direct 
 personal interest and concerning which it has been mis- 
 led. 
 
 SETEK HUNDRED PER CENT. PROFIT. 
 
 When asked as a witness by Attorney General Had- 
 ley if it were not true that the profits of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company had not averaged 400 per cent profit 
 annually, Henry Clay Pierce replied that the profits had 
 ranged from 600 to 700 per cent profit on its capital stock 
 in recent years. 
 
 Standing by itself this was a startling declaration, 
 and the sensational papers made much of it. The head- 
 lines flamed with such captions as, “Astounding Profits of 
 the Oil Trust!” “Seven Hundred Per Cent Profit for 
 Monopoly!” and similar appeals to the wonder and im- 
 agination of those who read but rarely think. 
 
 Mr. Pierce was given no chance to make the plain 
 and truthful explanation I now present to those who 
 wish to be fair in their consideration of this question. 
 
 — 52 — 
 
There is absolutely no connection between the capi- 
 tal stock of a company or corporation and the profits 
 it can legitimately earn. This blunt aphorism will suf- 
 fice for the economic student, but I will attempt to make 
 it clear to those who pay little attention to such ques- 
 tions. 
 
 One of the corporate abuses from which the United 
 States is peculiarly the sufferer is that of overcapitaliza- 
 tion — commonl}' known as “watered” stock. The con- 
 ventional method of the scheming and inherently dishon- 
 est financier is to gain possession or control of a prosper- 
 ous industrial enterprise, load it down with bonds and 
 stocks — the proceeds of which go into his pocket — with 
 the additional purpose of disguising the actual profits 
 derived from operation. The amount of such fictitious 
 stock issued against railroads, manufacturing estab- 
 lishments, steel plants, mines and enterprises of all kinds 
 mounts into billions of dollars in paper values. 
 
 There are other concerns which pay no attention 
 to the amount of their capital stock. I have in mind 
 a great newspaper which was incorporated more than 
 half a century ago with a capital stock of $10,000, the 
 amount of which has not been increased since then. Its 
 actual property and good will could not be purchased 
 for $8,000,000, and it makes a clear annual profit of not 
 less than $800,000. This is 8000 per cent profit, but no 
 one cares, the law does not intervene, and has no right 
 to intervene. 
 
 The original stock of the Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 ,pany was $100,000. In 1882 this was increased to $400,- 
 000, and the present Waters Pierce Oil company was or- 
 ganized with a capital in that nominal amount. The 
 assets and good will of the company were then many 
 times that amount, but there was and should be no law 
 against undercapitalization. 
 
 At the time that Mr. Pierce testified that the annual 
 profits of the Waters Pierce Oil company were from 600 
 to 700 per cent on its capitalization of $400,000 it was 
 the absolute owner of actual property worth not less 
 than $12,000,000, and its prestige and good will gave it 
 a market value of not less than $45,000,000. The highest 
 profits ever realized by the company were $2,790,000, and 
 these were derived in the year preceding the one in 
 which Mr. Pierce gave his testimony. This was 672 per 
 cent on the nominal capitalization of the company — which 
 means absolutely nothing — but only 23 per cent on the 
 property actually employed in the distribution and sale 
 of the products of petroleum, and only about 6 per cent 
 on the fairly appraised value of the assets and legiti- 
 mate good will of the business reared by Mr. Pierce. 
 WHAT MB. PIERCE MIGHT HAVE DONE. 
 
 Mr. Pierce could easily have avoided the criticism 
 levelled against him because of the fact that the stock 
 of his company paid dividends of several hundred per 
 cent. He could have watered the stock from $400,000 
 to $75,000,000, and have hired a Lawson to induce the 
 people of Texas and elsewhere to buy $35,000,000 of it in 
 small lots. He and his associate could then have placed 
 this money in their pockets, still retaining control. 
 
 They could then indulge in all the familiar expedients 
 of “high finance.” They could and doubtless would list 
 this watered stock on Wall Street, raise and lower its 
 selling price at will, and fleece the dear public out of 
 millions annually on its manipulated fluctuations. On 
 the plea that the stock could not earn enough on a 
 margin of a profit of a cent a gallon, they could increase 
 the price of oil sufficiently to double and treble this profit. 
 
 Suppose that Texas or any other State protested 
 against this increased price of oil; suppose that suits were 
 brought seeking to lower the price of oil and the cur- 
 tailment of the profits of this $75,000,000 corporation— 
 what then would happen? The Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany has been making $2,500,000 on its capitalization of 
 $400,000; it makes $5,000,000 on its capitalization of $75,- 
 000,000, or about 6 per cent. What would happen, I ask, 
 if the State of Texas attempted to reduce its earnings? 
 You know what would happen. 
 
 The cry would be raised that the State was attempt- 
 ing to reduce dividends below a reasonable figure. The 
 plea would be voiced that “innocent investors and wid- 
 ows and orphans” were confronted with loss of a fair 
 income; there would be a general howl about “confisca- 
 tion,” and beyond any reasonable doubt some court would 
 grant an injunction restraining the State from persecut- 
 ing the $75,000,000 Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 
 Mr. Pierce should have adopted this course. He 
 then could have posed as a martyr, and could have called 
 down on the prosecuting officials the wrath of tile thou- 
 sands of men and women who had purchased his stock. 
 Instead of adopting this modern policy of spoliation he 
 has been content to fix prices at a figure yielding less 
 than the average profit on money invested in the aver- 
 age manufacturing or trading enterprise, and has made 
 the mistake of assuming that the public does not wish 
 to be humbugged and plundered. 
 
 ACTUAL PROFITS IN RETAILING OIL. 
 
 There is no secret about the profits made on the 
 various grades of oil handled by the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company and the other concerns which now are com- 
 peting with it for the trade of Texas and the Southwest. 
 I recently addressed a letter to Mr. Clay A. Pierce, pres- 
 ident of the Waters Pierce Oil company, requesting an 
 official statement of the percentage average of dividends 
 to the total value of sales. 
 
 In reply Mr. Pierce stated that the dividend earnings 
 in 1904 were 11.47 per cent of the total value of the 
 sales. In 1905 the percentage was 13.46 and in 1906 it 
 dropped to 10.53 per cent. 
 
 No well-informed oil man will question the accuracy 
 of these figures. What do they mean? They mean that 
 for years the Waters Pierce Oil company has distributed 
 and sold kerosene at a profit to itself of less than one 
 cent a gallon, and it can be proved by unmistakable evi- 
 dence that at most times its actual net profits on kerosene, 
 the commodity most commonly used by the people of Texas, 
 has been nearer a half a cent a gallon. 
 
 WHAT TEXAS PATS FOR OTHER THINGS. 
 
 I have spent a year in Texas, have visited many sec- 
 tions of it, have resided in the large cities, and have 
 investigated to the best of my ability the cost of living 
 in each place visited. The fact that I am not a native of 
 Texas does not lessen my powers of observation, and 
 does not impair my capacity to arrive at a fair conclu- 
 sion, and I am going to give it just as I believe it. 
 
 My profession has called me for the last twenty 
 years into every State and Territory in the Union, and 
 I have tried to keep in touch with matters of public in- 
 terest. I wish now to record my deliberate opinion that 
 there are few States in this nation of ours in which the 
 prices of all the ordinary commodities used by the peo- 
 ple is held at figures so unfairly high as in Texas, and 
 I know of no State in which the people get so little mer- 
 cantile products for their money. 
 
 — 53 — 
 
I also wish to record my sincere belief that these 
 high figures are maintained by all sorts of combinations 
 and conspiracies in restraint of trade. The farmer gets 
 a low price for his eggs, his vegetables and all the things 
 he 'produces by manual labor, but before they reach the 
 tables of the consumers in Texas cities the prices have 
 mounted to figures higher than those charged in New 
 York City, Chicago or any other of the great centers 
 of population. 
 
 Practically the same is true of everything demanded 
 by those who live in Texas cities. I could go into 
 particulars, but every intelligent citizen knows the facts, 
 and has protested unavailingly against them. 
 
 THE ONE CHEAP COMMODITY. 
 
 There are local pools, country organizations. State 
 associations, each and all striving to mount the price 
 of every commodity they control, or aim to control, 
 higher and higher. You can buy Texas beef cheaper 
 in St. Paul than you can in Houston, you can purchase 
 Texas strawberries cheaper on Broadway than you can 
 in Corpus Christi — all because of the unrestrained greed 
 of lawless pools and associations which defy the anti- 
 trust laws of Texas, and work without fear of punishment 
 from the State prosecuting officials. 
 
 T have found only one commodity in Texas which is 
 sold at a fair price — oil. It is sold at a fraction of 
 
 the price demanded and obtained for bottled waters that 
 flow freely from the soil of Texas. I can buy all the 
 
 oil I call for from any one of the hundreds of agents 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company in Texas at 12 or 13 
 cents a gallon; I can not buy a gallon of mineral water 
 at any place I know of in Texas for less than $5 for a 
 dozen gallons, which is more than 40 cents a gallon. 
 Waters from points out of the State are much higher than 
 this. 
 
 It has been adjudged a crime to make a profit of a 
 cent on oil for each gallon refined and transported long 
 distances, but the attorney general of Texas is too busy 
 fighting the Waters Pierce and running for a third term 
 to pay the slightest attention to those conspirators who 
 have robbed the producer and the consumer alike, and 
 many of whom are shrilly shouting “Stop thief!” in the 
 hope of continuing their operations. It is the irony of 
 fate that the anti-trust laws of Texas have found only 
 one victim of consequence, and that the most damning 
 crime charged against this corporation is that it sells 
 its wares so low that competition can not exist against 
 it. 
 
 If some of the statesmen and patriots who have been 
 active in a certain phase of this matter succeeds in de- 
 stroying the Waters Pierce Oil company and of “rein- 
 stating competition,” there will speedily come a day 
 when kerosene will rise to the price of water, and when 
 there will be as much incentive to go into the oil busi- 
 ness as there is now to get into office — but what will you 
 gain by it, my friend, you who have patiently heard me 
 to a finish? 
 
 ADDENDA 
 
 The following letter from Henry Clay Pierce to 
 former Governor Joseph D. Sayers, of Texas, is an 
 interesting contribution to the history of this famous 
 •case. It was written by Mr. Pierce on the day when 
 the present Waters Pierce Oil company was granted a 
 permit to do business in Texas. The suggestion that 
 ■such a letter be written came from Governor Sayers, who 
 .also requested that it be given wide circulation. 
 
 With the sole exception of a few political conspir- 
 ators, there was no faction or class which was not 
 pleased that an arrangement had been made by which 
 this great enterprise was privileged to continue business 
 in Texas. The press throughout the State published con- 
 gratulatory editorials and there was general satisfaction 
 that a great property had not been ruined by legal 
 complications. It was only asked that the new Waters 
 Pierce Oil company should obey the law. I have con- 
 clusively proved that its record since that time has been 
 •so clean that Judge Brooks, in the Travis county trial 
 of 1907, instructed the jury to acquit it of all specific 
 ■charges of infractions of the anti-trust laws, and hinged 
 its guilt or innocence on the question of whether the 
 ownership by the Standard Oil company of a portion 
 ■of its stock was in violation of the law. 
 
 The attitude of Mr. Pierce at the time when the 
 •present company entered Texas is clearly shown in the 
 following letter: 
 
 Austin, Texas, May 31, 1900. 
 
 To His Excellency, Joseph D. Sayers, Governor of the 
 State of Texas. 
 
 Dear Sir — So much of a false and m^leading charac- 
 ter has been published concerning the legal controversy 
 which, during the past five years, has existed between 
 the State of Texas and the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 that it seems proper that I should acquaint the people 
 of Texas with the facts. < 
 
 In this connection a brief history of the petroleum 
 business in Texas may prove interesting. 
 
 About thirty years ago, when the writer first visited 
 the State, the very limited quantity of petroleum oils 
 therein was imported in tin cans from New York via 
 water to Galveston and thence shipped to interior points. 
 The usual loss from leakage resulting from this method 
 of obtaining supplies averaged 20 per cent, all of which 
 was ultimately borne by the consumer. 
 
 When the railroads first reached the State from the 
 north, H. C. Pierce & Co. commenced shipping petro- 
 leum oils in railroad lots to all points in Texas then 
 reached by railways, and to insure economy in handl- 
 ing and avoid loss from leakage, established depots and 
 agencies in the principal cities and towns from which 
 sales and shipments were made to supply the entire 
 State. As the railroads were extended, carloads were for- 
 warded upon construction trains to the ends of the roads 
 and sales made from the car, so that in many cases oils 
 were the first article of merchandise transported by the 
 new mileage of the railroads and an oil depot was the 
 first storage building erected in the newly established 
 towns. 
 
 — 54 — 
 
A uniform schedule of prices was established, vary- 
 ing only according to differences in costs of freights 
 and the salesmen representing jobbing houses through- 
 out the State could sell petroleum oils at schedule 
 prices and make deliveries of full quantities from any of 
 the oil depots of H. C. Pierce & Co., thereby placing all 
 merchants, buyers and towns in Texas upon an equal 
 footing as to petroleum oils and avoiding the great loss 
 from leakage when petroleum, shipments were made in 
 any quantity by water or in less than carloads by 
 rail. 
 
 The firm. Waters, Pierce & Co., succeeded H. C. 
 Pierce & Co., March, 1877, and commenced shipping 
 oils in tank cars to its Texas depots, where it was placed 
 in wooden barrels or tin cans for distribution. 
 
 This method of transportation avoided all loss from 
 leakage between the Northern well producing points and 
 the packing stations in Texas, and necessitated the con- 
 struction of iron tanks and other plants. 
 
 May 7, 1878, the Waters Pierce Oil company succeed- 
 ed Waters, Pierce & Co., and during this same year 
 introduced in the Cit>" of St. Louis the first tank 
 wagons ever used by anyone for delivering petroleum 
 oils direct from storage tanks to retailers. 
 
 During many years the system consisted of tank cars 
 for transporting large quantities of petroleum in bulk to 
 storage depots; tank wagons for delivery in the cities 
 and towns, and wood barrels and tin cans for distributing 
 oils to points between storage stations — such were the 
 methods employed by the Waters Pierce Oil company to 
 supply its trade in Texas. 
 
 Finding that great loss resulted to purchasers of 
 petroleum oils in wood barrels and that the use of tin 
 cans was excessively expensive, the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company — who were the first handlers of petroleum oils 
 to introduce iron barrels — supplied them to all its stor- 
 age stations in Texas and inaugurated a system of loan- 
 ing them to its country customers. 
 
 This brief statem.ent shows that the entire history 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company and its predeces- 
 sors has been one of constant progress in the best and 
 cheapest methods of supplying petroleum oils to the peo- 
 ple of Texas. 
 
 Today Te.xas is furnished by the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company with petroleum oils of the best quality and by 
 the most convenient and economical methods known 
 throughout the world. 
 
 Formerly oils supplied by the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company in Texas were transported in tank cars from 
 Pennsylvania via all rail, and selling prices in Texas were 
 of necessity low enough to meet the cost of competing 
 oils arriving via the cheaper water route from New 
 York. 
 
 Since the interstate commerce law was passed the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company has not paid to any rail- 
 road within the State of Texas or elsewhere in the United 
 States less than its full published tariff rates of freight 
 and has not received any rebates or other advantage from 
 transportation lines. 
 
 The application of the most approved modern meth- 
 ods in developing the petroleum business in Texas has 
 resulted in the investment in Texas by the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company of over $2,000,000 in money distributed in 
 over 300 cities and towns and the employment of over 
 1200 residents of Texas as its managers, agents and rep- 
 resentatives. 
 
 In addition to this the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 annually buys of the people of Texas crude cottonseed 
 oil and other products of its soil equal in value to nearly 
 $3,000,000. 
 
 General competition with the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company cannot be maintained until the competitors 
 equip themselves with plants, including tank cars, pipe 
 lines, storage tanks, tank wagons, iron barrels and other 
 facilities equal to those now possessed by the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company, but. nothwithstanding this fact, the 
 people of Texas have paid for their petroleum oils prices 
 affording the Waters Pierce Oil company less per cent 
 of profit than has been received by other sellers of com- 
 modities in common use. 
 
 At all times, in every way, and under all circum- 
 stances, the Waters Pierce Oil company has been, both 
 
 as suppliers of petroleum oils and purchasers of Texas 
 products, of the greatest benefit to the people of Texas. 
 
 Competitors have misrepresented the facts because 
 they could not secure or profitably hold trade without 
 first providing themselves with facilities equal to those 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company. 
 
 Recently an unsuccesful applicant for the agency 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company at Brownsville, Texas, 
 telegraphed your Excellency that the company had re- 
 duced its selling prices there for the sole purpose pf 
 preventing competition. 
 
 Investigation proved that this party, in trying ta 
 dispose of some oil he had received in tin cans from 
 New York, cuts the Waters Pierce Oil company’s prices 
 at Brownsville three-fourths of one cent per gallon, and 
 failing to make sales because the merchants gave prefer- 
 ence to our superior packages and facilities, he assumed 
 that a reduction in selling price of one-half cent per 
 gallon, which the Waters Pierce Oil company made May 
 17 applicable everywhere, was only applicable to Browns- 
 ville, and pursued the usual course of such persons. 
 
 Thinking people will understand that the law of sup- 
 ply and demand must always control: also that sensible 
 individuals or corporations intending to continue a suc- 
 cessful business do not improperly advance or depress, 
 prices of the commodities they handle or otherwise abuse- 
 their customers. 
 
 The prosecution of the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 which was commenced in Waco in 1895 was based upon, 
 the claim that the Waters Pierce Oil company was a. 
 member of a trust or combination. This claim was made- 
 and disproved in the suit at Austin in 1897, instituted for 
 the forfeiture of the company’s license to transact busi- 
 ness in Texas. In the latter case the evidence showed,, 
 and the judge charged the jury that the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company was not a member of the Standard Oil 
 Trust. 
 
 Naturally under the circumstances, the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company defended itself through the courts, but 
 when the United States Supreme Court failed to pass- 
 upon the constitutionality of the Texas anti-trust laws, 
 and practically said that even if the law was unconstitu- 
 tional, the State of Texas had the right — as a reasonable 
 regulation imposed upon it as a foreign corporation — to 
 forfeit the license of the Waters Pierce Oil company to- 
 transact business in Texas, I immediately surrendered 
 myself at Waco to the McLennan county authorities un- 
 der the indictments found there in 1895 charging me 
 with violation of the anti-trust taws of Texas. These 
 gentlemen assured me of ineir desire and intention to- 
 uphold the laws of Texas without unnecessarily op- 
 pressing individuals, corporations or capital. 
 
 Although the company’s attorneys contended that 
 the decision of the United States Supreme Court applied, 
 only to the license in existence when the suit was filed! 
 against the company by the State of Texas, which license- 
 expired by limitation July 6, 1899, and before the de- 
 cision was rendered, that the company was justly en- 
 titled to a new license. Attorney General Smith held that 
 under the decision the Waters Pierce OH company was 
 forever disbarred from transacting any other than inter- 
 state business in Texas and refused to consent to a license- 
 being issued. 
 
 These differences of opinion have not been allowed 
 to mar our conferences held for the purpose of decid- 
 ing upon the best means of enabling the State officials 
 to vindicate the law as interpreted by Attorney General- 
 Smith. Accepting Attorney General Smith’s interpreta- 
 tion of the law, the Waters Pierce Oil company, which 
 was incorporated in Missouri May 7, 1878, was dissolved 
 on the 28th day of May, 1900, and the new Waters Pierce- 
 Oil company was incorporated under the laws of Mis- 
 souri May 29, 1900. A certificate of the charter of the 
 new company issued by the Secretary of State of Mis- 
 souri has this day been filed with Secretary of State 
 Hardy, consequently the State of Texas has issued a 
 license to the Waters Pierce Oil company to transact 
 business within its borders. 
 
 The old Waters Pierce Oil company has sold and' 
 transferred its entire property and business wherever 
 situated to the new Waters Pierce Oil company, who will’ 
 continue the employes and business of the old company. 
 
 In conclusion, I desire to assure your excellency thaO 
 
 — 55 — 
 
it will be the aim of myself and associates to conduct 
 the business of the new Waters Pierce Oil company in 
 strict conformity with the laws of Texas. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 (Signed.) HENRY CLAY PIERCE. 
 
 HENRY CL.YY PIERCE TO GOV. T. M. CAMPBELL. 
 
 During all the years from the admission of the pres- 
 ent Waters Pierce Oil company into Texas, on May 31, 
 1900, until late in the autumn of 1907, Mr. Pierce remained 
 silent under attacks of a most vindictive and unfair 
 character. There is no doubt that this campaign of abuse 
 and misrepresentation manufactured a public sentiment 
 which has been reflected in jury verdicts, and no one 
 will dispute that politicians' have taken unscrupulous ad- 
 vantage of these complications. 
 
 In the following open letter to Governor Campbell 
 and the people of Texas, Mr. Pierce opened a campaign 
 intended to set the facts plainly before the public, and it 
 checked for a time the repetition of some of the more 
 vicious falsehoods against Mr. Pierce and his company; 
 OPEN letter to gov. CAMPBELL. 
 
 Office Waters Pierce Oil Company. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., October 15, 1907. 
 
 To His Excellency, Thomas M. Campbell, Governor, and 
 the Public of Texas: 
 
 Dear Sir — Recently I have observed in the news- 
 papers statements purporting to have been made by you 
 in public speeches, concerning the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company and myself. The effect of these statements 
 is certainly injurious to both, and as I think, unjustly 
 so. I am confident, however, that the views which you 
 appear to entertain are founded on erroneous knowledge 
 of the facts, and I therefore desire to correct the wrong 
 impressions which you entertain, and thus enable you 
 to form a more just opinion. Heretofore, although for 
 several years, and especially during the past year, many 
 violent and unjust things have been said and written 
 about the Waters Pierce Oil company, I belieyed that 
 they emanated from malicious, irresponsible or ignorant 
 persons, and that the most dignified course for me to pur- 
 sue was to ignore them. Regarding your statements, 
 however, coming as they do from such an exalted source, 
 they are destined to do irreparable damage to the com- 
 pany and its vast interests. 
 
 As a consequence of legislation enacted by Texas, 
 together with an aggressive prosecution initiated and 
 still in progress, the license of the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company to transact business in Texas has been can- 
 celled, its solvent business forced into a receivership, 
 its officers menaced with imprisonment, while the ban 
 -of political excommunication is laid on those who dare 
 make a plea for calm judgment and an impartial con- 
 sideration of the company’s side of the controversy. An 
 •enormous business enterprise, which had a troublous 
 start with the very inception of the oil industry in the 
 United States, which progressed slowly in a new and 
 sparsely settled territory, and which, after passing many 
 severe crises and withstanding powerful competition, 
 has been able to perfect a system for the economic han- 
 dling of petroleum and its products — this great business 
 enterprise, the work of a lifetime of earnest and unre- 
 mitting effort, one v/hich gives steady employment to 
 thousands of men, and which has been a prime factor 
 in the upbuilding of the Southwest, is now threatened 
 with complete extinction, and its property with confisca- 
 tion. 
 
 The company with which my name is identified, and 
 whose business has practically been under rny control 
 for more than a third of a century, has been singled out 
 for the most bitter and persistent warfare ever waged 
 against a corporation. The animus of tne attack which 
 has been made against the Waters Pierce Oil company 
 is found in the generally credited charge that _ it is a 
 trust, a combination in restraint of trade; in brief, that 
 it is an integral part of the Standard Oil company. This 
 I repeatedly have denied and again deny. 
 
 A studied attempt has been made to distort and mis- 
 represent the relations which have existed between the 
 Waters Pierce and the Standard Oil companies. The 
 whole case of the prosecuting officials of Texas rests 
 on the allegation that the Waters Pierce is not an in- 
 dependent company, and that it has been in a conspiracy 
 with the Standard Oil company for the control of terri- 
 tory and prices. The legal officials of Texas and its 
 lower courts have ruled against our plea of independence. 
 While confident that the higher courts will affirm the 
 honesty of our intent and the validity of our successive 
 steps, I yet feel that it is just and proper that I should 
 give publicity to certain facts which have been obscured 
 in the struggle of our company to continue its corporate 
 existence. It is pertinent to call attention to the man- 
 ner in which the Waters Pierce Oil company rose to a 
 commanding position in the Southwest. 
 
 The business which the Wafers Pierce Oil company 
 now carries on was started and well developed prior 
 to the formation of the Standard Oil company or any 
 of its interests. It was originated by John Robert Fin- 
 lay, who had been a manufacturer of shale or so-called 
 “coal oil” in Glasgow, Scotland, and during the early 
 fifties came to this country and located in St. Louis, 
 where for years he manufactured oil under a Scottish 
 process from a certain kind of coal then found in Ken- 
 tucky. Originally the firm was J. R. Finlay & Com- 
 pany, later it was changed to the St. Louis Coal Oil com- 
 pany. ^ 
 
 When petroleum was first discovered in this coun- 
 try Mr. Finlay became a producer of it in what is now 
 the State of West Virginia. He transported his own 
 production, and also oil purchased from others, in wood- 
 en barges down the Little Kanawha River to Parkers- 
 burg, thence down the Ohio to Cairo, and up the IMis- 
 sissippi to St. Louis, where the oil was drawn by hand 
 pumps from the barges into wooden barrels, which were 
 then hauled in wagons to his refinery located west of 
 the city limits on the ground now occupied by the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company. 
 
 YTars before any company had obtained a predomi- 
 nating influence in the petroleum trade I became asso- 
 ciated with Mr. Finlay in business in St. Louis, and I 
 recite these facts to correct a popular impression that 
 I was initiated into the oil business by the Standard Oil 
 company and have since been its representative in the 
 Southwest. 
 
 Competition was keen in those days, but I set ener- 
 getically to work building up a trade in the territory trib- 
 utary to St. Louis. I was first in the field and had an 
 advantage over later competitors, and I have held that 
 advantage despite the attempts of the most powerful in- 
 terests to supplant me. It was not then considered crim- 
 inal to push out into new fields for trade, neither w^ere 
 there any laws inhibiting a merchant from making ad- 
 vantageous arrangements with individuals or companies. 
 The Southwest was not then the prosperous and w'ell- 
 settled section that it now is; the methods of transpor- 
 tation were limited; I was constantly menaced by com- 
 petitors better fortified with capital, but I worked on all 
 unconscious of the fact that my efforts were rearing 
 what designing politicians and graft seekers are now en- 
 deavoring to class as a criminal trust. 
 
 In 1869 I took over Mr. Finlay’s interest and operat- 
 ed the business under the firm name of H. C. Pierce & 
 Company. Our trade increased so rapidly that I found 
 it impossible to handle it with the capital in hand, and 
 I therefore took Mr. William H. Waters into partner- 
 ship and changed the firm name to Waters, Pierce & 
 Company. Mr. Waters did not take an active interest 
 in the management of its affairs, the burden of which 
 I assumed, and in the long years which followed I gave 
 it my entire time. I traveled and extended the busi- 
 ness; designed new systems of transportation and handl- 
 ing; was the first to introduce tank wagons and iron bar- 
 rels, and invented many of the devices now in general 
 use. I employed the methods then deemed fair to hold 
 and extend our trade and strived my best to build up a 
 permanent enterprise which I could hand down to my 
 children. 
 
 By the year 1878 I had built up an extensive trade 
 in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Indian Territory, Okla- 
 homa, Louisiana, Texas and the Republic of Mexico, and 
 
 — 56 — 
 
had won a prestige which made it an easy matter to 
 enlist the required additional capital to care for the 
 business. I therefore organized a new company with a 
 capital stock of $100,000, of which Mr. Waters and I 
 took forty per cent, H. A. Hutchins and W. P. Thomp- 
 son, of Cleveland, forty per cent, and Chess, Carley & 
 Company, of Louisville, twenty per cent. It was under- 
 stood by all parties that I should retain absolute man- 
 agement and that my rights to direct the company’s 
 affairs should not be questioned. Some years after the 
 organization of the company Hutchins, Thompson, and 
 Chess, Carley & Company without my knowledge, trans- 
 ferred their interests to the Standard Oil company. I pur- 
 chased Mr. Waters' stock, and although strongly urged 
 to place my interests in the original Standard Oil Trust, 
 I refused to do so, and in all the years which have ‘fol- 
 lowed I have controlled the affairs of the Waters Pierce 
 Oil company, except for a brief interval when illness 
 forced my retirement from active charge of its affairs. 
 
 There was then no law and no public sentiment 
 against having business relations with the Standard Oil 
 company, but I preferred to perpetuate the name and 
 the business independence of the concern I had aided to 
 grow from humble beginnings, and I have never taken 
 a step aside from that policy. I am not now and never 
 have been a stockholder in the Standard Oil company 
 or had any oil interest other than the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company. 
 
 The interests of the Standard Oil company were 
 represented on our Board of Directors by members who 
 rarely attended its meetings, and who took no active 
 part in the affairs of the company. The prosecuting 
 officials and the politicians have made much out of the 
 admitted fact that Standard Oil company representa- 
 tives audited the accounts of the first W’aters Pierce Oil 
 company, and that regular reports of its business were 
 sent to the Standard Oil Company’s New York office. 
 It would have been a remarkable state of affairs if such 
 a well-managed corporation as the Standard Oil com- 
 pany, owning a majority of the stock, but waiving*con- 
 trol, should have failed to apply these reasonable busi- 
 ness precautions. I dictated the affairs of the company 
 and conducted it strictly as an independent concern. The 
 company is not a producer or refiner of oil in the United 
 States, and as the Standard Oil company increased its 
 control over the oil trade we were compelled to buy more 
 and more oil from it. Even had the Standard not owned 
 one share of our stock, our inability to obtain sufficient 
 supplies elsewhere would have compelled us to purchase 
 the bulk of our oils from it. 
 
 I wish to consider more in detail two charges which 
 have had much to do with prejudicing the people of 
 Texas against the Waters Pierce Oil company. The 
 first is that fraud was used in 1900 in securing the per- 
 mit for the new Waters Pierce Oil company to transact 
 business in Texas; and the second is that I committed 
 false swearing in signing the affidavit stipulated in the 
 Texas anti-trust law, and that by reason of such false 
 swearing the new company was granted a license. 
 
 In 1900 one of our Texas agents disregarded his 
 plain instructions and made an exclusive contract which 
 was prohibited by the laws of Texas. This transaction 
 served as the basis of a prosecution which deprived our 
 company of its permit to do business in that State. There 
 was political animus back of this radical action, but I 
 shall not discuss that feature. 
 
 The Hon. David R. Francis gave me a letter to Sen- 
 ator Bailey, to whom I explained our troubles in his 
 State. He said that Texas would not tolerate Standard 
 Oil company methods, and I replied by assuring him that 
 the Waters Pierce Oil company was an independent com- 
 pany and would so continue, whereupon he agreed to take 
 the matter up with the State officials, observing that a 
 legitimate enterprise should not be deprived of its right 
 to do business in Texas. He made an honest presenta- 
 tion of the facts to Secretary of State Hardy and Attor- 
 ney General Smith, and in doing so was actuated by a 
 desire to grant a favor asked of him by Mr. Francis, and 
 to see that injustice was not done to a company which 
 had grown up with Texas. He flatly refused to accept a 
 retainer or any pay for his services, and has never re- 
 ceived a dollar from me or from the Waters Pierce Oil 
 company for any legal or other services rendered to the 
 
 company in connection with its Te.xas litigation or 
 otherwise. He has since been my attorney in other im- 
 portant matters, and for his high legal ability I have paid 
 him just compensation. 
 
 That I was in abolute control of the old Waters 
 Pierce Oil company is evidenced by fne recorded fact 
 that I voted every share of stock on its dissolution, ap- 
 praised its assets, bought them in and distributed the 
 proceeds to the actual owners of its stock, including, of 
 course, payment to the Standard Oil company for the 
 proportion held by it. I subscribed for all of the stock 
 of the new company, paid for it with my personal check 
 for $400,000, which was honored at the bank and placed 
 to the credit of the new company. I transferred one 
 share of stock to each of the four gentlemen I elected 
 as directors of the new company. At the time Texas 
 licensed the new company, and when I signed the affida- 
 vit, and for months afterward, I was the actual owner 
 of the 4,000 shares of the new Waters Pierce Oil com- 
 pany. 
 
 These were the conditions on May 29, 1900, on the 
 morning of which day the Missouri certificate of incorpo- 
 ration for the new company came into my possession. 
 
 I had received word that the Texas authorities were 
 moving for the appointment of a receiver. I hastened 
 to Austin on a special train, arrived there May 31st, 
 with Mr. J. D. Johnson, my attorney, and went to the 
 State House. 
 
 When the Attorney General, Hon. Thomas S. Smith, 
 found that I had incorporated the new company under 
 the same name in Missouri, he bluntly declared that 
 if there was any law under which he could prevent the 
 admission of the company into Texas, he would avail 
 himself of it. I urged him to examine the law, and for 
 hours he and his assistants did so. After a thorougn 
 examination. Attorney General Smith reluctantly in- 
 formed Secretary of State Hardy that there was no al- 
 ternative save to grant the permit, and that official did 
 so. 
 
 This strict adherence to the forms prescribed by 
 the law has been characterized by those who have at- 
 tempted to take political advantage of the prosecution 
 of the Waters Pierce Oil company as a “cunningly con- 
 ceived fraud,” “atrocious deception and criminal sharp 
 practice,” and other epithets in direct variance with the 
 plain facts. 
 
 It should be kept in mind that Texas licensed the 
 new Waters Pierce Oil company on May 31, 1900, two 
 days after it had been chartered in Missouri, and that 
 during those two days it had not transacted any busi- 
 ness in Texas, neither had it purchased any supplies nor 
 entered into any arrangement of any kind. 
 
 The. anti-trust law in Texas in operation at that time 
 required that an officer of a company should make, at 
 stated intervals, an affidavit certifying that it was “not 
 a member of or a party to any pool, trust, agreement, 
 combination, confederation or understanding with any 
 other corporation, partnership, individual, or any other 
 person or association of persons, to regulate or fix the 
 price of any article or manufacture, mechanism, com- 
 modity, convenience, repair, any product of mining, or of 
 any article or thing whatsoever.” 
 
 Governor Sayers of Texas, and other State officials 
 who were present, congratulated me on the granting of 
 a permit to the new company, and as I turned to leave 
 the office, one of Secretary Hardy’s assistants spoke 
 about the affidavit, and suggested that I sign it. A 
 printed blank form, such as was in general use, was 
 produced. I submitted this regular printed form to my 
 attorneys, Hon. George Clark, of Waco, Texas, and 
 J. D. Johnson, Esq., of St. Louis, Mo., who informed 
 me that I could truthfully sign it, and, following their 
 advice, I did so. The people of Texas have maliciously 
 been led to believe that this affidavit was specially pre- 
 pared for the occasion. 
 
 Now, more than six years afterwards, I have been 
 indicted for false swearing in making this affidavit, and 
 much of the adverse sentiment in Texas against myself 
 and the Waters Pierce Oil company has arisen from 
 the fact that I resisted extradition and imprisonment on 
 this utterly false and senseless charge. It has been 
 stated over and over again on the stump and in the press 
 that the company was reinstated only because I swore 
 
that it was not a part of the Standard Oil company, 
 and a large number of the people of Texas have been 
 deluded into an acceptance of this falsehood. Signing 
 this affidavit was not an imposed condition for the grant- 
 ing of a permit for the new company. The officially 
 recorded fact is that the company was admitted to do 
 business in Texas before I made the affidavit, which, 
 although required by law, need not have been signed 
 prior to the first of July following, and was not in any 
 wise a condition or requisite to obtaining the permit 
 to do business. 
 
 I do not quibble over the fact that the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company mentioned in the affidavit was an 
 infant two days old — I waive that, and declare that I 
 could truthfully have signed it at any time thereafter, 
 and if it were now required by law, would unhesitatingly 
 sign it today. 
 
 At the present time the affairs of the company in 
 Texas are in a most hazardous position. A very heavy 
 fine has been imposed upon it, its right to continue its 
 business is challenged, and the State authorities are en- 
 deavoring through receivership to take possession of all 
 of the property and business in the State. These mat- 
 ters are now pending before the State courts. In the 
 meantime a law has gone into effect in Texas which, un- 
 der the circumstances above mentioned, would have ren- 
 dered it dangerous not only for the company, but for 
 any of its employes, to carry on the business in Texas. 
 It was necessary for the protection, not only of the 
 business and property, but also of the many hundred em- 
 ployes, all residents and citizens of the State of Texas, 
 who are surely guiltless of any wrongful conduct, to in- 
 voke the aid of the Federal court. Accordingly that court 
 has appointed a receiver and is preserving the rights and 
 interests of all concerned, however they may eventually 
 be decided. For fny part I am very deeply chagrined 
 that such calamities, which I regard as wholly unde- 
 served, should have fallen upon the company and busi- 
 ness which I have given so many' years and so much hard 
 labor to develop, and that the people of Texas should 
 appear to be so prejudiced against me. 
 
 My long experience in the State, however, convinces 
 me beyond any doubt whatever that the people of Texas 
 are just and fair, and I therefore look forward with con- 
 fidence to the time when I shall be able to resume the 
 peaceful control of my business in Texas in a fair and 
 open manner. I am guilty of no wrong thinking or doing 
 against the people of Texas. On the contrary, they are 
 my friends, and I have faithfully served their interests 
 for a great number of years'. The operations and or- 
 ganizations of my company are so large that they ex- 
 tend throughout the State, and supply the daily needs 
 of a very large proportion of your people. 'We have 
 never had any differences with our customers, nor they 
 with us, and all we now desire is to be allowed to con- 
 tinue to supply them as heretofore with one of the ne- 
 cessities of life. I wish neither favor nor advantage, 
 neither do I desire to do other than respect your laws. 
 
 I have faith that a day is at hand when the calm 
 judgment of Texas will assert itself, and when the facts 
 in this case will have their proper weight against an or- 
 ganized effort to destroy a great enterprise which has 
 developed with the splendid upbuilding of the territory 
 in which it was a pioneer, and in which it asks only the 
 right to pursue its busines under strict compliance with 
 the law. 
 
 As these matters are of great interest to the public 
 of Texas and as I am interested in having them under- 
 stand my position and views I have addressed this letter 
 to the public as well as to yourself, and have sent 
 copies to the press. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 HENRY CEAY PIERCE. 
 
 THE MISTAKES OF MISS IDA M. TARBELL. 
 
 No better illustration can be given of the wide- 
 spread effect of the crusade of misrepresentation against 
 Henry Clay Pierce and his company, than that con- 
 tained in a magazine article written by Miss Ida M. 
 Tarbell, and published in February, 1907. 
 
 This noted and gifted writer was led to make a num- 
 ber of unjust and absolutely unfounded charges against 
 Mr. Pierce, the 'Waters Pierce Oil company and also 
 against Senator Joseph W. Bailey. Her fame as a 
 writer, joined with the merited repute of the American 
 Magazine, gave these charges a wide circulation and pre- 
 sumably general acceptance. Beyond doubt Miss Tar- 
 bell had no motive other than to present the truth as 
 she understood it, and she is to blame only because of 
 carelessness in accepting the accuracy of statements in- 
 vented and circulated by unscrupulous political con- 
 spirators and trade rivals of Mr. Pierce. Her unfounded 
 attack strikingly illustrates the success which has been 
 attained by those who have sought to malign the men 
 and interests mentioned in her article. These political 
 plotters managed to deceive Miss Tarbell; no wonder 
 that many of the people of Texas have been led to have 
 faith in their cunningly linked falsehoods. 
 
 The series of articles, from which the preceding 
 chapters were compiled, was then running through the 
 leading papers of Texas. In justice to Mr. Pierce and 
 Senator Bailey, and in justice to those who had begun 
 to resent the vilification to which these gentlemen had 
 been subjected, I wrote the following reply to the state- 
 ments made by Miss Tarbell, and the press of Texas gave 
 it wide circulation. Miss Tarbell has not and cannot re- 
 fute my deductions, nor can she or any other person 
 challenge the facts as herein set forth: 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER FROM MR. ADAMS TO THE PRESS 
 IN ANSWER TO STATEMENTS MADE IN A MAOA- 
 ZINE ARTICLE BY MISS IDA M. TARBELL. 
 
 To the Editor: Miss Ida M. Tarbell, in the Febru- , 
 
 ary number of the American Magazine, makes a most 
 remarkable and lamentable contribution to the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company controversy, and makes an equally * 
 strange attack on Senator Joseph W. Bailey. I yield re- ' 
 spect to the conventional rule which decrees that the 
 veracity of a lady should not be questioned, but Miss 
 Tarbell has assumed the task and responsibilities of a 
 man, and I happen to know that she does not ask or 
 desire immunity from criticism on account of her sex. 
 
 I preface by paying anew my tribute to Miss Tarbell C 
 for her splendid career as a historian. No woman in our 
 times has rivaled her fame in her chosen field of reform, 
 Her “History of the Standard Oil Company” was epoch- '< 
 making in its results. It was a stupendous task ably ..j 
 and conscientiously performed, and the record of the 
 great oil trust, as she gives it, is singularly free from er- ., 
 rors, considering the conflicting evidence and the difficulty S 
 of arriving at the precise truth. 
 
 When, therefore, I read her direct statements con- 
 cerning the Waters Pierce Oil company and Senator 
 Bailey, as they appear in the February issue of the Ameri- ' 
 can Magazine, my wonder at their absolute falsity is min- ' 
 gled with surprise and sorrow that this brilliant wo-.: 
 man should have lent her name to the circulation of ‘ 
 charges invented by unscrupulous politicians and emis- . 
 saries of the Standard Oil company. The intelligent peo- ^ 
 pie of Texas are inured to these stale untruths and thor- 
 oughly understood the motives of these local partisans 
 and plotters who utter them, but it comes as a shock 
 when an author of Miss Tarbell’s fame and standing prints 
 such matter as I am now compelled absolutely to refute 
 by unimpeachable proof. 
 
 Space does not permit a consideration of Miss Tar- 
 bell’s lesser mistakes, and I shall confine myself to the 
 
more glaring and inexcusable ones. The Waters Pierce 
 case covers so many years and is so complicated with 
 lawsuits and events that slight errors are almost inevit- 
 able. In the history of it, which I am now writing, I 
 plead guilty to an error which slightly reflected on the 
 company, but it was not vital, and it pertained to an in- 
 cident much obscured in legal technicalities. 
 
 >0 EXCUSE FOR MISTAKES. 
 
 Xot so with Miss Tarbell’s article. The facts were 
 staring her in the face; they appeared in numerous court 
 records easily obtained; there was and is no honest con- 
 troversy concerning the basic truths; but instead of 
 searching for these facts Miss Tarbell permitted herself 
 to be deluded by the vicious lies uttered by unprincipled 
 demagogues and printed in the daily papers. The press 
 is an excellent institution, but Miss Tarbell should 
 know better than to impeach a man or even a corpora- 
 tion on the testimony of its news columns. I am sure 
 that she did not prepare her wonderful history of the 
 Standard Oil company from newspaper files exclusively. 
 
 I shall now treat certain of her statements just pub- 
 lished with all the mercy they deserve. I can not under- 
 stand why the Waters Pierce Oil company is singled 
 out for the most malicious and persistent campaign of 
 misrepresentation ever directed against an institution in 
 the United States. I blame Miss Tarbell only for per- 
 mitting herself to be deceived, but I give notice to all 
 male liars in Texas that their work will be mighty difficult 
 after this datd. I am telling Texas the truth, and Tex- 
 ans will believe it. 
 
 Writing of the earlj-- legal troubles of the Waters 
 Pierce Oil company. Miss Tarbell says: 
 
 “Everybody declared the offending concern to be 
 guilty of all these points, but nobody could prove satis- 
 factorily its guilt on any one of them until finally an 
 agent was caught flagrante delicto making an exclusive 
 contract with a dealer. He was clapped into prison, the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company was arraigned and a long, 
 bitter and sensational suit followed.” 
 
 Xothing of the kind ever happened. The “exclusive 
 contract” was made by the Galveston agent of the com- 
 pany with certain dealers in Brownsville. He was not 
 imprisoned. The only man ever “clapped into prison” 
 was E. T. Hathaway, who operated 500 miles from 
 Brownsville, and who .was tried two years prior to this 
 on an entirely different case, was convicted for an entirely 
 different offense, who went to jail of his own free will 
 to test a technicality, and who was later acquitted and re- 
 leased. 
 
 A CRIMINAL CHARGE. 
 
 Miss Tarbell continues: 
 
 “The case was carried from court to court, the State 
 always winning, until finally the United States Supreme 
 Court in March, 1900, sustained the decision, and the 
 Waters Pierce company was ordered to close up its bus- 
 iness and get out of Texas. At this point it found a 
 friend in Senator (then congressman) Bailey, who for 
 the sum of $3300 (charged on the company’s books 
 to profit and loss) besought the attorney general not to 
 turn his client out of the State, but to permit it to 
 continue business on promise of good behavior.” 
 
 It would be difficult to condense more of untruth 
 into one short sentence. Mr. Bailey did see Attorney 
 General Smith and Secretary of State Hardy in the in- 
 terest of Mr. H. C. Pierce and his company. He was told 
 by these gentlemen that under the ruling of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States it was absolutely impossible 
 to reinstate the ousted company. Possibly Mr. Bailey 
 
 committed a “crime” by suggesting that the company dis- 
 solve, reorganize and then apply for a permit, but this 
 obvious expedient was already under consideration by 
 Mr. Pierce and his lawyers. After this fruitless con- 
 ference Mr. Bailey left for Washington. He had noth- 
 ing to do with the dissolution of the old Waters Pierce 
 Oil company, was not consulted, was not in Austin when 
 the new company was granted a permit, and knew noth- 
 ing about it until some time after the whole matter was 
 settled. 
 
 The direct charge that Mr. Bailey, “who for the sum 
 of $3300 (charged on the company’s books to profit and 
 loss) besought the attorney general not to turn his client 
 out of the State, etc.,” is one which is rather dangerous 
 to make unless it can be proved by Miss Tarbell. The 
 most reckless and vindictive ^3f Senator Bailey’s ene- 
 mies in Texas do not dare whisper such a charge. The 
 feeling against Senator Bailey is based on the fact that 
 he borrowed $3300 from Mr. Pierce at the time of their 
 first interview. The proof that this was a loan, and not a 
 fee or a bribe, is absolute. It does not rest on the word 
 of Mr. Bailey or that of Mr. Pierce, but on the fact that 
 Mr. Bailey gave Mr. Pierce his demand note for the 
 amount. A lawyer does not give a demand promissory 
 note for a legal fee, and a scoundrel does not transfer 
 such sort of paper in return for a bribe. There is the ad- 
 ditional fact that Senator Bailey paid this money back to 
 Mr. Pierce, along with other sums borrowed at different 
 times. It is deplorable that Miss Tarbell should make 
 such a serious charge in the face of verified facts to the 
 contrary. 
 
 AX AMUSING BLUNDER. 
 
 The next sentence in this paragraph by Miss Tarbell 
 is almost amusing in its inaccuracy, when she declares 
 that “the best that Mr. Bailey could do for his client 
 was to secure it two months’ time, until June, in which 
 to wind up its affairs.” If all history is based on a 
 similar degree of truth, it is likely that Benedict Arnold 
 and not George Washington was our greatest National 
 character. 
 
 Mr. Bailey met Mr. Pierce for the first time in his 
 life on April 25, 1900. His conference with the State 
 officials of Texas was on April 30. The permit of the 
 Waters Pierce Oil company to do business in Texas 
 expired on June 6, 1899, and Attorney General Smith, of 
 his own volition, and in response to the general senti- 
 ment then existing in Texas, consented to allow the com- 
 pany to continue in business until the Supreme Court of 
 the United States handed down its decision. This decision 
 was made public on March 19, and immediately afterward, 
 and weeks before Mr. Pierce ever met Mr. Bailey, the at- 
 torney general gave the company until May 15 in which 
 to adjust its affairs. Later, in response to official corres- 
 pondence with Mr. J. D. Johnson, the leading counsel 
 of the company, the attorney general extended the time 
 for sixteen days, or until May 31. 
 
 That’s the truth, and it is all spread on public docu- 
 ments. Mr. Bailey had no more to do with these details 
 than had Miss Tarbell. It passes my comprehension 
 why such things are written. 
 
 Perhaps the most astounding of Miss Tarbell’s histor- 
 ical contributions to this case is contained in this para- 
 graph: 
 
 “On May 31 an injunction was issued in Austin, Tex- 
 as, against Mr. Pierce, forbidding him from ever doing 
 business in Texas. An hour after this injunction was is- 
 
 — 59 — 
 
sued Mr. Pierce filed an application for a charter for a 
 Jiew company of the same name as the old, the Waters 
 Pierce company. In making his application Mr. Pierce 
 made affidavit that the concern was in no way connected 
 •with the Standard Oil company. He stated that he 
 owned 3996 shares of the new company (the total issue 
 was 4000). The charter was granted, thanks largely to 
 Senator Bailey’s efforts, and the next morning the new 
 Waters Pierce Oil company was delivering oil. 
 
 The last twelve words contain all of the truth in that 
 astounding paragraph. Perhaps some Austin judge is- 
 sued an injunction on May 31 forbidding Mr. Pierce 
 from ever doing business in Texas, but there is no 
 record of it. We have so many and so wonderful in- 
 junctions these days that I am. prepared to hear of any 
 form of judicial mandate, but this one has escaped en- 
 tirely my notice. What had Mr. Pierce done to call 
 •down on himself the wrath of a court? He was not 
 a corporation. He was not a trust. He was not a con- 
 spiracy in restraint of trade. The laws of Texas are 
 strict enough for all practical purposes, but they do state 
 that it takes two or more persons or companies to con- 
 stitute a trust or a conspiracy or any other dreadful 
 thing. But perhaps some judge levelled this blow at 
 Mr. Pierce. Certainly that gentleman never found it out, 
 and I have searched in vain for any record of that 
 unprecedented injunction. 
 
 A CARELESS HISTORIAN. 
 
 Mr. Pierce did not file an “application for a char- 
 ter” for the new company. He filed an application for 
 a permit to do business in Texas. The charter had al- 
 ready been granted in Missouri. The name of the old 
 as well as the new concern was not the “Waters-Pierce 
 company,” but it was “The Waters Pierce Oil company,” 
 and it is not well for a historian to be that careless. That 
 error, however, is of slight importance compared with 
 the flaring and inexcusable one which follows it. Read 
 again the assertion to which Miss Tarbell gives the 
 weight of her name and fame: 
 
 “In making his application Mr. Pierce made affidavit 
 that the concern was in no way connected with the 
 Standard Oil company.” 
 
 He never did anything of the kind. This falsehood 
 has been repeated a thousand times with an infinite num- 
 ber of variations, and in absolute disregard of the offic- 
 ially recorded fact that Mr. Pierce signed only the blank 
 form of affidavit provided for in the Texas anti-trust law 
 then in force. There was not the slightest mention of 
 the Standard Oil trust, or of any other trust. Instead 
 of searching for the fact — which is recorded in Austin and 
 printed again and again in the legal records of the vari- 
 
 ous cases against the corporation — Miss Tarbell accepted 
 the veracity of some blatant demagogue, and gave it the 
 sanction of her name and the authority and circulation of 
 the American Magazine. She then continues: 
 
 “He (Mr. Pierce) then stated that he owned 3996 
 shares of the new company (the total issue was 4000.)” 
 Mr. Pierce stated nothing of the kind. The affidavit 
 did not call for any statement of the amount of his hold- 
 ings. He could not have stated them had he desired to 
 do so. In the second place, he then owned 4000 shares, 
 according to his later testimony, and according to the 
 plain evidence of the stock books of the new Waters 
 Pierce Oil company. We will proceed to Miss Tarbell’s 
 next sentence: 
 
 “The charter was granted, thanks largely to Senator 
 Bailey’s efforts.” 
 
 THE OFFICIAL RECORD. 
 
 The permit was granted to the new company by rea- 
 son of the fact that the officials of Texas, under the law, 
 were compelled to recognize the validity of the dissolu- 
 tion of the old company in Missouri, also the validity and | 
 regularity of the incorporation of the new Waters Pierce | 
 Oil company. I shall not enter into any discussion of j 
 this matter for the reason that it is not a debatable mat- 
 ter. Miss Tarbell is absolutely in error. The official 
 records of both Missouri and Texas flatly contradict her. 
 Senator Bailey took no part in the negotidtions, was not j 
 consulted in the drawing up of the papers, was in ignor- : 
 ance of the specific law which made the dissolution and , 
 the new incorporation possible, was in Washington when | 
 all these things happened and knew nothing about them > 
 until the session of congress was ended. 
 
 I have huge scrap books filled with similar misstate- ' ij 
 ments, but I am not penning a history of the Waters ‘jb 
 Pierce Oil company from the political speeches of the 5 
 men who are trying to climb into office through the villi- I 
 fication of that corporation. Miss Tarbell is safe from 
 the suspicion that she penned these lines in the interest 
 of the recently formed allies of the Standard Oil com- :[ 
 pany, but she has unwittingly lent her name and influ- 
 ence to the harming of the one large oil company in V' 
 the United States which has preserved its identity against 
 the great Rockefeller combine, and she has maligned the 
 one man who for a generation has stood like a rock()lJ 
 and refused to bend the knee to the magnates who have,’'.'Jj 
 conspired, and still are conspiring, in the secret confer-fjH 
 ence rooms at 26 Broadway. jj 
 
 FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS. ;t||l 
 Houston, Jan. 29, 1908. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Affidavit— 
 
 As Signed by H. C. Pierce 
 
 Falsehoods Concerning it 
 
 Andrews, Samuel- 
 
 Started Rockfeller in Business 
 
 Anthony, Robert A. — 
 
 Examination of H. C. Pierce 
 
 Archbold, John D. — 
 
 Signed Standard Oil Agreement 
 
 Indicted in Texas 
 
 Father-in-law of M. M. Van Buren.. 
 
 Austin, F. A — 
 
 Indictment Against 
 
 Bailey, Senator Joseph W.— 
 
 Campaign of Falsehood Against 
 
 Alleged Influence for Waters Pierce. 
 
 Refuses Fee from Mr. Pierce 
 
 Not in Austin with Mr. Pierce 
 
 Candidate for U. S. Senatorship 
 
 First Investigation of 
 
 His Vindication by Legislature 
 
 His Introduction to Mr. Pierce 
 
 Mistaken Criticism by Miss Tarbell. 
 
 Bellamy, Edward — 
 
 Brooks, Judge R. E. — 
 
 Tries Ouster Case of 1897 
 
 His Charge to the Jury 
 
 Ruling on Brownsville Rebates. 
 HisJInstruction to Jury in 1897. 
 
 Brooks, Judge Y. L. — 
 
 His Charge to Jury in 1907 
 
 Bryan, AVilliam J. — 
 
 Campbell, Governor T. M. — 
 
 Open Letter to from H. C. Pierce. 
 
 Carley, Francis I). — 
 
 Director in Waters Pierce 
 
 Cassatt, A. J. — 
 
 Humbled by Rockefeller 
 
 Chess, Carley k Company— 
 
 A Masquerading Independent 
 
 Defeated by H. C. Pierce 
 
 Page 
 
 ...39 
 
 .38-39 
 
 ...10 
 
 ...46 
 
 ...16 
 
 ...22 
 
 ...48 
 
 ...24 
 
 ... 4 
 ... 6 
 ...31 
 ...37 
 
 ...40 
 
 ...41 
 
 ...57 
 
 ...59 
 
 ... 3 
 
 ...24 
 
 25-26 
 
 ...27 
 
 ...51 
 
 ...51 
 
 ... 4 
 
 .39-56 
 
 16 
 
 Clark, George — 
 
 In Austin with H. C. Pierce 
 
 Pierce Affidavit Submitted to him 
 
 Crane, M. M. — 
 
 Attorney General of Texas 
 
 Davidson, Attorney General R. 31 .— 
 
 His Classification of J. P. Gruet ... 
 
 Brings Suit Against Waters Pierce 
 
 Drake, E. L. — 
 
 Discovers First Oil Well 
 
 Eagle Refining Company — 
 
 Bought by Waters Pierce 
 
 Its Sale Declared Legal 
 
 Elgin Watch Company — 
 
 Field, Marshall — 
 
 Compared to Waters Pierce 
 
 Enormous Business and Profits 
 
 Finlay, A. M. — 
 
 His Instructions to Agents 
 
 Becomes President of Waters Pierce. 
 Lacked Required Aggression 
 
 Finlay, John Robert — 
 
 Oil Pioneer 
 
 When Rockefeller was a Boy 
 
 Sketch of Career 
 
 Fish, Stuyvesant — 
 
 His Fight with Harriman.. 
 
 Flagler, H. M.- 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement 
 
 Indicted in Texas 
 
 Francis, Gov. David R. — 
 
 Gives Letter to Bailey 
 
 Fries, Lewis — 
 
 Indictment Against 
 
 13 George, Henry — 
 
 14 Grice, 3 Villiam — 
 
 14 Indictment Against. 
 
 -61- 
 
 Page 
 
 ..37 
 
 ..57 
 
 .24 
 
 .42 
 
 .49 
 
 .10 
 
 .24 
 
 .25 
 
 .19 
 
 .18 
 
 .19 
 
 .26 
 
 .43 
 
 .48 
 
 5 
 
 .10 
 
 .56 
 
 .16 
 
 .16 
 
 .22 
 
 .57 
 
 .24 
 
 3 
 
 .24 
 
IN DEX — Continued 
 
 Gniet, John P.— 
 
 Signs Affidavit 38 
 
 With Standard Oil in 1886 42 
 
 Employed by Waters Pierce in 1890 42 
 
 Refuses to Testify Against Standard Oil 42 
 
 Receives Special Salary from Mr. Pierce 43 
 
 His Unfortunate Habits 43 
 
 Discharged by Tinsley 43 
 
 Demands Money from Mr. Pierce 43 
 
 He Sells Documents to Prosecution 44 ■ 
 
 Makes Contract with Lightfoot ^ 44 
 
 Evasive Answer to Interrogatory 45 
 
 Gruet, J. P. Jr. — 
 
 Tenders Resignation to Mr. Pierce 43 
 
 Hadley, Herbert S. — 
 
 Failed to Use Gruet as Witness 45 
 
 Brings Suit Against Waters Pierce 46, 
 
 Hardy, 1). H.— 
 
 Asks Attorney General Smith for Opinion 32 
 
 Grants Permit to new Waters Pierce 39 
 
 Harrimaii, E. J. — 
 
 His Fight with Stuyvesant Fish 16 
 
 Hathaway, E. T.— 
 
 Indicted in McLennan County 22 
 
 Imprisoned and Later Acquitted 22 
 
 Miss Tarbell’s Error Concerning him 59 
 
 Henry k Strihliug^ — 
 
 In Waco Suit of 1895 23 
 
 Commissions at Stake ^ 24 
 
 Hutchins, H. A. — 
 
 Sells Stock to Standard Oil Trust 14 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement 16 
 
 Director in Waters Pierce 16 
 
 Johnson, J. D. — 
 
 His Correspondence with Tom Smith .30 
 
 Goes to Austin with H. C. Pierce 37 
 
 Mr. Pierce Refers Question to him 47 
 
 'His Conference with Standard Oil Attorney 47 
 
 Pierce Affidavit Referred to him 57 
 
 Keenan, J. W. — 
 
 Indictment Against 24 
 
 Kier, Samuel M. — 
 
 “Kier’s Rock Oil” 10 
 
 Lewis, J. L. — 
 
 -__.25 
 
 Lesueur, A. A.— 
 
 Secretary of State of Missouri 30 
 
 His Letter to Tom Smith 32 
 
 Lightfoot, Jewel P, — 
 
 His False Statement to Texas Legislature 44 
 
 His Contract with J. P. Gruet 45 
 
 Lloyd, Henry D. — 
 
 3 
 
 Lockhart, Charles — 
 
 McFall, D. A.— p, 
 
 Introduces Bailey Investigating Resolution 
 
 Payne, 0. H.— 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement 
 
 Pickle, D. J.— 
 
 Pierce, Clay Arthur — 
 
 Becomes President of Waters Pierce 43- 
 
 Pierce, Henry Clay — 
 
 Insures Supremacy of Waters Pierce 
 
 Boyhood of 
 
 Moves to St. Louis 
 
 Invades Southwest 
 
 Introduces Oil in Texas 
 
 His Marriage 
 
 Conquest of Mexico 
 
 Becomes an Inventor , 
 
 Did Not Sign Standard Oil Agreement 
 
 Indicted in McLennan County 
 
 Attempt to Settle Penalty Suit 
 
 False Charges Against 
 
 Obtains Full Control of Waters Pierce , 
 
 Votes all Stock for Dissolution 
 
 Protests Against Transfer to Standard 
 
 Refuses to Sell Stock to Standard . 
 
 Conference with Standard Oil Company : 
 
 In -Absolute Control of new Waters Pierce i 
 
 Signing of the Famous Affidavit i 
 
 He Employs J. P. Gruet ■ 
 
 He Pays Gruet Special Salary < 
 
 His Large Interests and Investments i 
 
 Refuses to be Blackmailed by Gruet i 
 
 Testifies Before Commissioner Anthony < 
 
 Suffers from Ill-health ‘ 
 
 Describes Acts of Tinsley 
 
 Willing to Risk Imprisonment f 
 
 Letter to Governor Sayers I 
 
 Letter to Governor Campbell ' 
 
 Unfairly Attacked by Miss Tarbell ^ 
 
 Pratt, Charles M. — \ 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement, J 
 
 Robinson, C. W. — j 
 
 2 
 
 Rockefeller, John I). — 
 
 When a School Boy 
 
 Born in 1839 1 
 
 Organized Standard Oil Company 1 
 
 Triumphs in 1870 — 1882 1 
 
 Indicted in Texas 2 
 
 Rockefeller, William — 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement 1 
 
 Indicted in Texas ’ 2 
 
 Rockefeller, William A.— 
 
 Father of J. D. Rockefeller , . 1 
 
 Sayers, Gov. Joseph P. — 
 
 His Attitude in 1900 4> 
 
 Mr. Pierce’s Letter to him j 5 
 
 Scott, Jnd^e Samuel R. — 
 
 Trial Judge in Penalty Suit 2- 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement . 16 
 
 McKenna, U. S. Justice — 
 
 His Ruling in^Ouster Case 27 
 
 —62— 
 
INDEX — Continued 
 
 Smith, Tom S.— 
 
 Attorney General of Texas in 1900 
 
 His Attitude Toward the Waters Pierce 
 
 Letter to J. D. Johnson 
 
 Letter to Sec. of State Lesueur 
 
 Letter to Sec. of State Hardy 
 
 .Angry at Mr. Pierce 
 
 Partisan .Attacks .Against him 
 
 His Letter Demanding Investigation 
 
 His Vindication by Legislature 
 
 Standard Oil Agreement of 188*2— 
 
 Waters Pierce Not a Party to It 
 
 Before Congress 
 
 Excluded by Judge R. E- Brooks 
 
 Standard Oil Company — 
 
 Did Not Create Waters Pierce 
 
 Organized in 1870 
 
 Rapid Grow th of 
 
 Acquires Stock in Waters Pierce 
 
 Its Enormous Holdings 
 
 Did not Absorb the Waters Pierce 
 
 Its Magnates Indicted 
 
 Yields Control of Waters Pierce 
 
 Surprised at Expulsion of Waters Pierce 
 
 Power of Standard Oil Company 
 
 Its Many Products 
 
 The Conference w'ith H. C. Pierce 
 
 Ready to Quit 
 
 Surrenders Interest in Waters Pierce 
 
 Its Command of the Situation 
 
 Described by Miss Ida M. Tarbell 
 
 Relations with Waters Pierce 
 
 Violates its Agreement with H. C. Pierce 
 
 Relations with Waters Pierce Misrepresented 
 
 How it Acquired Waters Pierce Stock 
 
 Supreme Court of the United States — 
 
 Decides Against Waters Pierce 
 
 Did Not Decree Waters Pierce a Trust 
 
 Did Not Pass on Constitutionality of Texas Law. 
 
 Refuses to Modify Order 
 
 Declares Illinois Law Unconstitutional 
 
 Tarbell, Miss Ida M. — 
 
 Her Description of the Standard 
 
 Her Mistakes as Historian 
 
 rkington. Booth — 
 
 Describes the “Dangerous Inadequacy of Words’ 
 
 Taylor, J. W.— 
 
 County Attorney of McLepnan 
 
 ’Texas — , 
 
 Sweeping^ature of Anti-Trust Laws 
 
 Passes Ffrst Anti-Trust Law' 
 
 Anti-T.>-{ist Law of 1895 
 
 Grantapermit to Waters Pierce 
 
 Scandal of Fees and Commissions 
 
 Loss Of Money in Litigation 
 
 Power of Texas Legislature.., 
 
 Indiffe-ent Over Admission of new Waters Pierce . 
 
 Stands by Bailey and Tom Smith 
 
 Excit^ by Charges against Bailey 
 
 No Bittijuess against Mr. Pierce 
 
 How th< State is Robbed by Trusts 
 
 Investn(ents in by Waters Pierce 
 
 Its Attitude Toward Waters Pierce 
 
 Page 
 
 ...29 
 
 . 29-30 
 
 ...30 
 
 ...32 
 
 ...32 
 
 ...38 
 
 ...40 
 
 ...40 
 
 ...41 
 
 ... 5 
 ...15 
 ...25 
 
 ... 5 
 ...II 
 ...13 
 ...14 
 ...16 
 ...16 
 ...22 
 ...30 
 ...34 
 ...35 
 ...35 
 ...36 
 ...36 
 ...37 
 ...40 
 ...42 
 ...47 
 ...48 
 — 56 
 ...57 
 
 16-25 
 
 ...16 
 
 ...27 
 
 ...30 
 
 ...49 
 
 ...42 
 
 ...58 
 
 ...21 
 
 ...23 
 
 ... 6 
 ...20 
 ...21 
 ...22 
 ...23 
 ...24 
 ...35 
 ...39 
 ...40 
 ...44 
 ...50 
 ...53 
 ...55 
 ...58 
 
 Thomas, Cullen F.— 
 
 County Attorney of McLennan 
 
 Thompson, \V. P. — 
 
 Sells Waters Pierce Stock to Standard. 
 
 Party to Standard Oil Agreement 
 
 Director in Waters Pierce 
 
 Tilford, W. H.— 
 
 Tinsley, R. P. — 
 
 Takes Place of J. P. Gruet ’. 
 
 Usurps Control of Waters Pifrce 
 
 Forced Out by H. C. Pierce 
 
 Tan Buren, M. M. 
 
 Waters Pierce Stock Transferred to Him 
 
 Son-in-law of J. P. Archbold 
 
 Vanderbilt, William H. — 
 
 Surrenders to Rockefeller 
 
 Waters Pierce Oil Company— 
 
 What Will be Proved Concerning it 
 
 The Two Distinct Companies 
 
 Not Convicted as a Trust 
 
 No Connected History Previously Written 
 
 Not a Party to Standard Oil Agreement 
 
 Territory Covered by it 
 
 Compared with Marshall Field & Co 
 
 Early Record in Texas 
 
 Original Texas Permit 
 
 First Suit Against Old Company 
 
 Charges in Suit of 1897 
 
 Not Ousted Because of Standard 
 
 Had Right to Purchase Rival Plants 
 
 Mistaken Attitude of the Public 
 
 All Offenses Committed Prior to 1898 
 
 No Popular Demand for Expulsion 
 
 The Old Company Died in 1900 
 
 Present Company Born on May 29, 1900 
 
 Charges Against Present Company 
 
 Last Meeting of Directors of Old Company 
 
 Unanimous Vote for Dissolution 
 
 Dissolution Strictly Legal 
 
 Independent of Standard Oil Company 
 
 Expulsion Surprises Standard 
 
 Its Position in 1900 
 
 Permit to New Company Could Not be Refused. 
 
 Campaign of Abuse Inaugurated 
 
 No Popular Demand for its Destruction 
 
 Forced into Politics 
 
 Record of a “Lawless Trust” 
 
 How Much it Could Have been Fined 
 
 Standard Assumes Temporary Control 
 
 Acquitted of all Specific Violations 
 
 Analysis of its Profits 
 
 Cheapness of Oil 
 
 Its History in Pierce-Sayers Letter.. 
 
 Defended in Pierce-Campbell Letter 
 
 Baseless Attack by Miss Tarbell 
 
 Waters, William H. — 
 
 Becomes Interested with Mr. Pierce... 
 
 Director in Waters Pierce 
 
 — 63 - 
 
 Page 
 
 ... 24 .i 
 
 14 
 
 16 
 
 16 
 
 .48 
 
 .43 
 
 48 
 
 .48 
 
 .47 
 
 .48 
 
 ...13 
 
 ... 5 
 
 5 
 
 ... 5 
 ... 8 
 
 ...16 
 ...17 
 ...18 
 ...21 
 ...22 
 ...22 
 ...24 
 ...25 
 ...25 
 ...26 
 ...27 
 ...27 
 .'..28 
 ...28 
 ...29 
 ...30 
 ...30 
 ...31 
 ^.-33 
 ...34 
 ...35 
 ...38 
 ...39 
 ...40 
 ...40 
 ...41 
 . 41-49 
 ...48 
 ...52 
 ...53 
 ...54 
 ...54 
 ...56 
 . . . 58 
 
 12 
 
 16 
 
THE WATERS PIERCE CASE IN TEXAS 
 
 By FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS