“In lieu thereof and for the profits that we could have made from the aggregate of these charges, we said to them: ‘If you will pay us a fixed profit upon each one of these barrels of oil arriving here, you may take the yards and run them subject to certain limitations as to what you shall do for other people who continue to ship oil to the same yards.’ They were only able to make this arrangement with us because of their controlling such a large percentage of shipment, and because of permanent facilities in Brooklyn; if the larger percentage of shipments had belonged to outside parties, and they had had no yards of their own, we would probably have retained the yards ourselves.” A contract was signed on April 17, 1874. By it the Standard agreed to ship fifty per cent. of the products of its refineries by the Erie at rates “no higher than is paid by the competitors of the Standard Oil Company from competing Western refineries to New York by all rail lines,” and to give all oil patrons of the Erie system a uniform price and fair and equal facilities at the Weehawken yards.[39] It was a very wise business deal for both parties. It made Mr. Rockefeller the favoured shipper of a second trunk line (the Central system was already his) and it gave him the control of that road’s oil terminal so that he could know exactly what other oil patrons of the road were doing—one of the advantages the South Improvement contract looked out for, it will be remembered. As for the Erie, it tied up to them an important trade and again put them into a position to have something to say about the division of the oil traffic, the bulk of which outside of the Standard Oil Company the Pennsylvania was handling. In connection with the Central the Erie now said to the Pennsylvania that henceforth they proposed to maintain their position as oil shippers. The natural result of the determination of the Central and Erie to get from the Pennsylvania a percentage of its freight was, of course, increased cutting, and it looked as if a rate war was inevitable. At this juncture Colonel Potts of the Empire Transportation Company, handling all of the Pennsylvania freight, suggested to his rivals that it would be a favourable time for the three trunk lines to pool their seaboard oil freight. In the discussions of this proposition, which, of course, involved a new schedule of rates, there being now practically none, it was suggested that henceforth freights be so adjusted that they would be equal to all refiners, on crude and refined from all points. Such an equalisation seems at first glance an unsolvable puzzle. The agents found it intricate enough. Throughout the summer of 1874 they worked on it, holding meetings at Long Branch and Saratoga and calling into their counsels a few of the leading refiners, pipe-line men and producers whom they could trust to keep quiet about the project.