189o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
RURAL SPECIAL CROP REPORTS. 
Indiana. 
Rockville, Parke County, June 2.— 
Wheat in our county is poor; it will not 
yield more than four bushels to the acre, 
and much of it has been plowed up. Corn 
is very promising; it stands well and is 
growing finely. Oats are very good. 
Timothy and Blue Grass meadows are ex¬ 
tremely fine. Orchard fruits are moderate 
crops. Berries of all kinds are very 
abundant and fine. Garden crops are not 
forward but they are very good. The 
“ Farmers’ Alliance ” is extending rapidly 
among us and may do much to ameliorate 
the condition of the farming community. 
A. C. B. 
.Tennessee. 
WAVERLT, Humphreys County.—Last 
year with the aid of two men I raised over 
140 barrels of corn on about 20 acres of land 
and 650 bushels of peanuts on 11 acres. The 
corn is fed to our work-horses and to cows 
kept for family use, and to hogs for mak¬ 
ing our own pork. The peanuts were sold 
to a local buyer for $1 per bushel as soon as 
they were all picked off. 1 had some clover 
for pasture, but no wheat or oats last year. 
I gave an account of my horse and mule 
stock in a recent paper. j. w. s. 
Michigan. 
Pakma, Jackson County, May 30.—On 
granite soil my Rural New-Yorker Peas 
mildewed; but on strong limestone soil they 
scarcely ever do so. I have been testing the 
following varieties: Cochran’s Mammoth 
Dwarf; the pods are all in a clump at the 
top of a large stalk 18inches high; the next 
stalk is a little higher, and the last 20 inches, 
and the peas on it are fit for the table green, 
when those on the first stalk are ripe. 
Cochran’s Early White Kidney Tree Bean 
is a cross between the Yellow Six Weeks as 
staminate and the Late White Kidney as a 
pistillate. In growth it is like the Yellow 
Six Weeks and in size one-third larger than 
the old White KidDey. The seeds of all 
should be planted a good distance apart in 
the drill. E. B. c. 
SOMETHING ABOUT THE GENESIS 
OF TRUSTS. 
What other subject has occupied public 
attention of recent years more than trusts? 
They have been investigated over and over 
again by committees of the National and 
State legislatures; their evil tendencies 
have been expatiated on alike in Demo¬ 
cratic and Republican Presidential mes¬ 
sages ; they have been persistently repro¬ 
bated by the press; they have been vehe¬ 
mently condemned in multitudinous con¬ 
ventions of all sorts; special State laws 
have been enacted against them, and a 
national law of the same tenor is now be¬ 
fore Congress; they have been hauled be¬ 
fore the courts under the old as well as the 
new laws, and have there been condemned 
and excoriated from the bench ; they have 
been bitterly denounced by all classes, 
except the few who immediately thrive by 
them, as odious monopolies, hostile to fair 
competition and legitimate trade, oppres¬ 
sive to the people and inimical to our 
National institutions; but neither State 
nor National legislation, the decisions and 
denunciations of the courts, nor the re¬ 
proaches of the press and the people have 
availed to check the operations of the old 
or stay .the formation of new trusts, or to 
prevent their rapid spread over ali the 
fields of industry and trade. Their number, 
magnitude and apparently mushroom 
growth have not more impressed the public 
than the fact that there is almost always 
an element of mystery about their birth 
and business. Indeed, in spite of all that 
has been spoken and printed about them, 
there is still a marvelous amount of ignor¬ 
ance with regard to them. This is,'in 
great part, due to the systematic conceal¬ 
ment they have practiced with regard to 
the nature, extent and management of 
their operations. The example was set 
them by the largest, wealthiest, most ag¬ 
gressive and powerful of the whole crew— 
the Standard Oil Trust. This is the orig¬ 
inal exemplar on which all the others 
have been fundamentally patterned. Its 
success has been the incentive to the 
formation of all other trusts and cognate 
combinations. It is, to-day, more aggres¬ 
sive and unscrupulous than ever, and a 
brief sketch of its genesis and early career, 
condensed chiefly from the reports of 
the various legislative committees, will 
give a fair idea of the genesis and opera¬ 
tions of trusts in general. 
For some years prior to 1870, there flour¬ 
ished in Cleveland, Ohio, a firm of oil re¬ 
finers doing a fair business under the 
partnership name of Rockefeller, Andrews 
& Flagler. They were not oil producers, 
but received their crude oil from the Penn¬ 
sylvania fields, and the capacity of their 
refinery was 600 barrels per day. In 1870 
they became incorporated, under the laws 
of Ohio, as “The Standard Oil Company,” 
with a capital of $1,000,000 and a refining 
capa<£ty of over 1,000 barrels per day ; that 
is, they were able to do about one-tenth of 
all the oil refining of the country at that 
time. Several ether refining companies, 
however, were equal to the new concern in 
plant, equipment and capacity. Some of 
them had also an advantage in location, 
for being nearer to the oil fields and the 
seaboard they had cheaper transportation 
facilities. Conscious of their advantages 
of position, the Eastern refineries paid little 
heed at first to the Ohio company, which, 
however, seems to have at an early day 
conceived the ambition of controlling the 
refining business of the country, and doubt¬ 
less its means of conquest were suggested 
by its very inferiority in location—out of 
its difficulties grew its greatness. Its first 
movement was to acquire the other refin¬ 
eries in its own city, and before 1873 it had 
consolidated with itself all the oil refineries 
in Cleveland, and issued an additional 
$1,500,000 of stock. 
For many years before the Standard was 
thought of, a favorite device by which rail¬ 
road managers enriched themselves at the 
expense of the stockholders, was the sub¬ 
sidiary corporation, more properly called 
the “ parasite corporation.” In the days 
of railroad building the subsidiary corpora¬ 
tion obtained the contracts for construct¬ 
ing, equipping and otherwise supplying 
the roads. It was composed of railroad 
managers and enough of their associates 
to act as officers. It was a dishonest 
scheme for diverting the company’s assets 
into the pockets of the company’s officials, 
and making managers millionaires, while 
stockholders and bondholders waited in 
vain for dividends or interest, and it per¬ 
vaded the whole system of supplies, con¬ 
tracts and rolling stock companies. Prob¬ 
ably the most notorious example of the 
iniquity was the infamous Credit Mobilier 
which built and plundered the Union 
Pacific Railroad. 
To gain a ruinous advantage over its 
competitors, the Standard Oil Company 
made extensive but secret use of this de¬ 
vice. First, it bought the charter of the 
“ Southern Improvement Company,” which 
had been, years before, secured, not for use 
but for sale. Under the name of this con¬ 
cern it consummated a secret contract with 
the Pennsylvania, Erie and New York Cen¬ 
tral Railroads, by which it was to have oil 
shipped at rates ranging from 40 cents to 
$1.32 per barrel cheaper than any other 
shipper. This scheme, however, was dis¬ 
covered by the competing concerns early in 
1872, and the charter of the parasite corpor¬ 
ation was repealed by the Pennsylvania leg¬ 
islature. Moreover, the Standard solemnly 
agreed, in writing, with its competitors as¬ 
sembled in convention in March 1872 r 
that all arrangements thereafter for 
shipping oil should be on a basis of 
perfect equality, and that no discrimination 
whatever should be allowed. The Stand¬ 
ard at once, however, began to violate this 
covenant. It acquired control of the 
“American Transfer Company,” a small 
subsidiary corporation, with a capital of 
$100,000, and through this it secretly secured 
from the Pennsylvania, Erie and New 
York Central Railroads a rebate of 22j* 
cents per barrel on all oil carried over tne 
roads, no matter by whom shipped. Thus 
it made profits not only on lower rates for 
its own oil, but on rebates on that shipped 
by its competitors. The secret gains from 
this source alone averaged over $3,000,000 a 
year. Moreover, it secured contracts with 
the above roads by which it obtained, over 
and above the drawbacks for large ship¬ 
ments allowed to other shippers of oil, re¬ 
bates which amounted to 49 cents per bar¬ 
rel on crude oil from the Bradford field, 
513* cents per barrrel on crude oil from the 
lower fields to tidewater, and 64 % cents per 
barrel on refined oil trom Cleveland to the 
seaboard. The income from these extra 
rebates is estimated to have averaged $5,- 
000,000 a year, and the whole arrangement 
remained a secret until divulged, under 
oath, before a Congressional committee, in 
1879. 
With such tremendous secret advantages 
over all its competitors, the Standard 
waged a pitiless war upon them. It forced 
the railroad companies to raise the freight 
rates on shipments of its strongest rivals, 
and in some cases absolutely to refuse carri¬ 
age; it intimidated the construction com¬ 
panies from building tank cars for them on 
their usual terms ; it threatened their cus¬ 
tomers with ruinous competition, not only 
in oil but in other products, unless they 
ceased to deal with them, and frequently 
sold goods below the cost of production in 
any village or town to which they sent 
their products. To avoid ruin, many re¬ 
fineries voluntarily sought safety by sur¬ 
rendering to or amalgamating with the 
tyrant. When the Standard wished 
to acquire an obstinate competitor’s 
property, it frequently made him a 
fair offer for it; if this was accepted, the 
business was usually run under the old 
management, the former owner being re¬ 
tained as salaried manager, and in all such 
cases a successful trade received at once a 
marvelous impetus, or brisk prosperity 
succeeded languor and decline. If the offer 
was refused, the most summary and 
unscrupulous means were straightway 
adopted to crush, without mercy, the recal¬ 
citrant rival. By such tactics a multitude, 
not only of refiners, but also of wholesalers 
and even retailers were ruined or embar¬ 
rassed in different parts of the country, 
but in half a dozen years the Standard 
had obtained control of the oil-refining 
business of the country both for home con¬ 
sumption and exportation. By 1882 it refined 
and sold in the home and foreign markets 
four-fifths of the petroleum products of our 
oil fields, the remaining fifth being handled 
by refiners who existed almost by suffer¬ 
ance. It had Immense refineries at the sea¬ 
board as well as at Cleveland, Pittsburgh, 
and other interior points. It had its own 
great terminal facilities, its own tank 
cars, its jobbing houses, its local 
pipage for conveying oil in the oil 
fields, and its through pipage lines 
from those fields to New York harbor. Its 
immense business was conducted by a large 
number of corporations holding charters 
from various States. The Standard man¬ 
agers owned all the stock in many of them, 
in others a majority of the shares, and in 
some only a small per cent., either as a be¬ 
ginning of acquisition or as enough for 
their purposes. Some of the last named 
stock was held by certain members as 
trustees for the others, and it is not improb¬ 
able that this simple business arrangement 
suggested the stupendous combination con¬ 
summated on July 2, 1882, which trans¬ 
formed the Standard Oil Company into the 
“Standard Oil Trust.” 
(To be Continued.) 
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THE HOUSEWIFE 
FOR JUNE CONTAINS: 
. FICTION. “Hester’s Love Story,” by Harriet Prescott 
) Spofford; ”Katherine’s Victory,” by Elizabeth Brown; 
and ” Dorothy,” a story of life at a summer hotel, by L. E 
Chittenden. 
FASHION.—Jenny June talks about “The Business Wo¬ 
man's Summer Dress,” ” Capotes and Flower Toques,” “Sum 
mer Models.” and “Little Grandmothers.” 
FLO WEBS.—George R. Knapp writes about “Some 
Hardy Perennials," ”Roses," and "Ornamental Planting,” 
besides giving much valuable advice to correspondents. 
HOME DECOR ATION.—Emma Moffett Tyng furnishes an illustrated paper on’’Things for 
Use and Beauty.” very interesting as well as instructive. 
THE ART OF BEATTY' —by Mrs. >1. P. HANDY’, Is replete with hints and directions for 
making the most of one’s peYsonal attractions. 
MOTHERS.—Dr. Frank talks to mothers about the care of babies in warm weather; and Mary 
F. Robinson shows women “How to Make Money at Home.” 
THE Kl f CHEN.—Eunice Carew furnishes the first of a series of articles on ‘ Dinners for Five 
^for Fifty Cents ”; Eliza R. Parker gives directions for making “Fruit Jellies,” to be followed in 
succeeding numbers by articles on Canning and Pickling. Maria Parloa teaebes *’ The Best Way to 
Clean Kid Gloves.” 
THE NEEDLEYVORKER ami CHAT-BOX departments are as complete and attractive asever. 
POEMS by Helen YViuslow, Ralph Shaw, Emily Selinger, and others, complete the June 
number. 
\ Every article contributed expressly for The Housew ife by the best talent obtainable. 
.30 CENTS A YKAHi 5 CENTS A COPY. 
Special Offer: To introduce It into thousands of new homes we offer it 4 mouths for only 
10 rents, if you mention Thk Rural New-Yorker. 
THE HOUSEWIFE on all news-stands, 5 cents a copy. 
THE HOUSEWIFE PUBLISHING CO., 
1 1 1 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 
