By the first of September they had an agreement worked out by which each of the three roads was to have a fixed percentage of Eastern shipments. The rates to the seaboard were to amount to the same for all refiners wherever located. That is, to use one of the illustrations employed by Mr. Blanchard in explaining the scheme to the Hepburn Commission: “Suppose 100 barrels of refined oil to have been sent from Cleveland to New York by rail; the consignee was required to first pay freight therefor at New York upon delivery $1.90; to make this quantity of refined oil at that time, he had already paid freight on say 133½ barrels of crude oil from the pipes to Cleveland at thirty-five cents per barrel or say $46.67; he had therefore paid out from the pipes to the refinery and thence to New York by transportation only, on 100 barrels refined and the quantity of crude oil required to make it, $236.67 or $2.37 per barrel; therefore, at the end of the month we refunded the $46.67 already paid on the crude oil. So that the rate paid net was $1.90 to him and all other refiners.” [Illustration: FLEET OF OIL BOATS AT OIL CITY IN 1864 ] In case of the refineries situated at the seaboard the cost of carrying from the Oil Regions the 133½ barrels of crude oil required to make 100 barrels of refined was made exactly the same as carrying the 100 barrels of refined made in the West and transported East. This really amounted to charging nothing for getting the crude oil to a refinery wherever it was situated, as the following clause in the agreement shows: “The roads transporting the refined oil shall refund to the refiners as a drawback the charges paid by them upon the crude oil reaching their refineries by rail.” This paragraph provided for this crude rebate contained a second clause, which read: “And the roads transporting through crude oil to the Eastern seaboard shall refund to the shippers twenty-two cents per barrel; both of said drawbacks to be paid only on oil reaching the initial points of rail shipment, through pipes, the owners of which maintain agreed rates of pipage.” The paragraph announced two new and startling intentions on the part of the oil-carrying roads: first, that they intended to strip the Oil Regions of the advantage of geographical position at the wells by sending oil free to Cleveland and Pittsburg, New York and Philadelphia, at the same time leaving these cities the advantages accruing from their position as manufacturing centres and close to domestic markets; second, that they had entered into a combination with certain pipe-lines to drive certain others out of existence.