While the railroads were waging this costly war the Standard was carrying the fight into the refined market. The Empire had gone systematically to work to develop markets for the output of its own and of the independent refineries. Mr. Rockefeller’s business was to prevent any such development. He was well equipped for the task by his system of “predatory competition,” for in spite of the fact that Mr. Rockefeller claimed that underselling to drive a rival from a market was one of the evils he was called to cure, he did not hesitate to employ it himself. Indeed, he had long used his freedom to sell at any price he wished for the sake of driving a competitor out of the market with calculation and infinite patience. Other refiners burst into the market and undersold for a day; but when Mr. Rockefeller began to undersell, he kept it up day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, until there was literally nothing left of his competitor. A former official of the Empire Transportation Company, who in 1877 took an active part in the war his company was waging against the Standard, once told the writer that in every town, North or South, East or West, in which they already had a market for their refined oil, or attempted to make one, they found a Standard agent on hand ready to undersell. The Empire was not slow in underselling. It is very probable that in many cases it began it, for, as Mr. Cassatt says, “They endeavoured to injure us and our shippers all they could in that fight, and we did the same thing.”