The New York Central and the Erie sold their terminal facilities for handling oil to the Standard Oil Co., thereby making it practically impossible for the roads to transport oil for the competitors of the Trust. The Pennsylvania Railroad also, under compulsion of a rate war, made a deal with the Standard by which the latter acquired the oil cars, pipe lines, and refineries of the Empire Company, a creature of the Pennsylvania Railroad.[23] Vanderbilt told the Hepburn Committee, August 27, 1879, that “if the thing kept on the oil people would own the roads.” After the Pennsylvania fought the Standard in 1877 and lost, the Combine paid 11 cents net freight (after deducting rebate) on each barrel of oil to New York, while its competitors paid $1.90 per barrel,[24]—a discrimination of 1600 percent by means of exclusive tank cars and rate arrangements. The trunk lines would not furnish competitors of the Standard with tank cars nor give them rates and conditions that would allow them to use their own tank cars. The independents had to sell their tank cars or side-track them, because the Oil Combine prevented the railroads from giving them practical terms. At times when oil could have been shipped by the independents they could not get cars, though hundreds were standing idle on the switches. So the independents had to ship their oil in barrels, paying a higher rate than on tank oil, and paying not only on the oil, but on eighty lbs. of wood in the barrel, making four hundred lbs. per barrel instead of three hundred twenty lbs. per barrel by tank. Josiah Lombard of New York, the largest independent refiner of oil at the seaboard, testified as follows before the Hepburn Committee June 23, 1879: “Tom Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co., was questioned whether we could have, if there was any means by which we could have, the same rate of freight as other shippers got, and he said flatly, ‘No.’ “And we asked him then, if we shipped the same amount of oil as the Standard, and he said, ‘No.’ “We said that ‘if they had not sufficient cars to do the business with we would put on the cars.’ “Mr. Scott said that they would not allow that, and said that ‘the Standard Oil Co. were the only parties that could keep peace among the roads.’” Cassatt, Vice-President, confirms the above and adds: “The discrimination would be larger on a high rate of freight than a low rate of freight;” also admits that the “Standard Oil Co. had some 500 cars full here and at Philadelphia and Baltimore; that he had not discovered it until recently.” Mr. Lombard further testified: “Refineries were thus shut down for want of cars. “Cassatt threatened, if the independents built the Equitable Pipe Line or any other lines of pipe [as follows]: “‘Well, you may lay all the pipe lines you like, and we will buy them up for old iron.’