It was in the spring of 1876 that the Empire began to interest itself in refineries. No sooner did Mr. Rockefeller discover this than he sought Mr. Scott and Mr. Cassatt, then the third vice-president of the Pennsylvania, in charge of transportation. It was not _fair_! Mr. Rockefeller urged. The Empire was a transportation company. If it went into the refining business it was not to be expected that it would deal as generously with rivals as with its own factories; besides, it would disturb the one shipper who, they all had agreed, was such a benefit to the railroads. Mr. Scott and Mr. Cassatt might have reminded Mr. Rockefeller that he was as truly a transporter as the Empire, but if they did they were met with a prompt denial of this now well-known fact. He was an oil refiner—only that and nothing more. “They tell us that they do not control the United Pipe Lines,” Mr. Cassatt said in his testimony in 1879. Besides, urged Mr. Rockefeller, if they have refineries of course they will give them better terms than they do us. Mr. Flagler told the Congressional Committee of 1888 that the Standard was unable to obtain rates through the Empire Transportation Company over the Pennsylvania Railroad for the Pittsburg or Philadelphia refineries as low as were given by competing roads, and, added he, “from the fact that the business during those years _was so very close as to leave scarcely any margin of profit_ under the most advantageous circumstances. And we, finding ourselves undersold in the markets by competitors whom we knew had not the same facilities in the way of mechanical appliances for doing the business, knew that there was but one conclusion to be reached, and that was that the Empire Transportation Company favoured certain other shippers, I would say favoured its own refineries to our injury.” As the Standard Oil Company paid a dividend of about fourteen per cent. in both 1875 and 1876, besides spending large sums in increasing its plants and facilities, the margin of profit cannot have been so low as it seemed to Mr. Flagler in 1888 to have been; naturally enough, for he saw dividends of from fifty to nearly 100 per cent. later. [Illustration: A. J. CASSATT IN 1877 Third vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad in charge of transportation when first contract was made by that road with the Standard Oil Company. ] [Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN President of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad at the time of the South Improvement Company. General McClellan did not sign the contract. ] [Illustration: GENERAL JAMES H. DEVEREUX Who in 1868 as vice-president of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad first granted rebates to Mr. Rockefeller’s firm. ] [Illustration: JOSEPH D. POTTS President of the Empire Transportation Company. Leader in the struggle between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Standard Oil Company in 1877. ]