The sections of the contract of the 25th of March referred to agreed that no rebates or contracts or other arrangements should be made which would give any party the slightest difference in rates, and that the rates should not be changed either for increase or decrease without first giving Mr. Hasson, the president of the Producers’ Union, at least ninety days’ notice in writing. As we now know, Mr. Rockefeller himself was receiving rebates when he signed this agreement. And now, at last, after five months of incessant work, the agency was ready to begin disposing of oil. They set to work diligently at once to apportion the 200,000 barrels the refiners had bought among the different districts. It was a slow and irritating task, for a method of apportionment and of gathering had to be devised, and, as was to be expected, it aroused more or less dissatisfaction and many charges of favouritism. The agency had the work well under way, however, and had shipped about 50,000 barrels when, on January 14, it was suddenly announced that the refiners had _refused to take any more of the contract oil_! There was a hurried call of the Producers’ Council and a demand for an explanation. A plausible one was ready from Mr. Rockefeller. “You have not kept your part of the contract—you have not limited the supply of oil[32]—there is more being pumped to-day than ever before in the history of the region. We can buy all we want at $2.50, and oil has sold within the week at two dollars. If you will not, or cannot, stop over-production, can you expect us to pay your price? We keep down the output of refined, and so keep up the price. If you will not do the same, you must not expect high prices.” What could the producers reply? In spite of their heroic measures, they had not been able to curtail their output. It seemed as if Nature, outraged that her generosity should be so manipulated as to benefit only the few, had opened her veins to flood the earth with oil, so that all men might know that here was a light cheap enough for the poorest of them. Her lavish outpouring now swept away all of the artificial restraints the producers and refiners had been trying to build. The Producers’ Association seemed suddenly to comprehend their folly in supposing that when 5,000 barrels more of oil was produced each day than the market demanded any combination could long keep the contract the refiners had made with them; and their unhappy session, made more unhappy by the reading of bitter and accusing letters from all over the discontented region, ended in a complete stampede from the refiners, the vote for dissolving the alliance having but one dissenting voice.