Some of the worst discriminations of the early years were those connected with the oil business.[22] In 1872 the Oil Combine (then called the South Improvement Co.) secured a secret agreement from all the railroads running into the oil regions, first, to double freight rates on oil; second, not to charge the S. I. C. the increase; third, to pay the S. I. C. the increase collected from all other shippers. The rate to Cleveland was to be raised to 80 cents, except for the S. I. C., which continued to pay 40, and would receive 40 of the 80 paid by any one else. The rate to Boston was raised to $3, and the S. I. C. would receive $1.32 of it. The Combine was to have 40 cents to $1.32 a barrel rebate not only on their own oil which constituted only one-tenth of the business, but on all the oil their competitors shipped, so they would get $9 in rebates for every dollar they paid in freight. The S. I. C. were to receive an average of $1 a barrel on the 18,000 barrels produced daily in the oil regions. The rates were raised as agreed, but the excitement in the oil regions was so intense that mobs would have torn up the tracks of the railways if Scott and Vanderbilt and the rest had not telegraphed that the contracts were cancelled, and put the rates back. But some of the contracts afterwards came into court, and had not been cancelled at all. In 1874 the roads began gradually to carry out the plan that had been stopped by popular excitement in 1872. In 1874 the Oil Combine had on some lines 10 different transportation advantages over its competitors, _i. e._, 49 cents direct rebate per barrel of refined oil, 22 cents rebate on crude-oil pipeage, 8½ percent of refined oil carried free (due to the method of calculating crude and refined equivalents), 13 cents a barrel advantage through possession of the railroad oil terminal facilities, 15 percent of by-products carried free, a rate to New York 10 cents a barrel less than the published rate on refined oil, and 15 cents on crude oil, exclusive use of tank cars, underbilling of carload weights, twenty thousand lbs. often for cars containing forty thousand or even sixty thousand lbs. of oil, or a lump sum per car regardless of excess weight, and a mileage payment from the railroads on the tank cars amounting in itself to a large rebate. Nearly all the refineries of the oil region and of Pittsburg passed by sale or lease into the hands of the Combine in 1874–5. W. H. Vanderbilt, and other prominent railroad men were stockholders in the Standard. Frank Rockefeller, brother of John D., testified before a congressional committee July 7, 1876, that he believed Tom Scott, W. H. Vanderbilt, and other big railroad men shared in the oil rebates.