“‘What do you advise should be done? John Scott.’ I answered: ‘Will meet you to-morrow morning,’ which would be Saturday. “On Saturday morning I came in on an early train and met at the depot Mr. Shinn, then, I believe, vice-president of the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company, David A. Stewart, one of the directors of the road, and Thomas M. King, assistant superintendent. I spoke very plainly to Mr. Shinn, telling him that the idea of a scarcity of cars on daily shipments of less than 30,000 barrels a day was such an absurd, barefaced pretence that he could not expect men of ordinary intelligence to accept it, as the preceding fall, when business required, the railroads could carry day after day from 50,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil. Mr. Shinn stated clearly that I knew that the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company did not control the oil business over its line, but was governed entirely and exclusively by orders received from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. I then requested him to be the vehicle of communicating to the Pennsylvania Railroad officials my views on the subject, telling him that I was convinced that unless immediate relief was furnished and cars afforded there would be an outbreak in the Oil Regions. After further conversation we parted. My interview with them was not as officials of the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company, but as representatives of the oil traffic carried and controlled by the Pennsylvania road. On the next Monday I returned to Parker. After passing Redbank, where the low-grade road, the connecting link between the Valley Road and the Philadelphia and Erie Road, meets the Valley Road—between that point and Parker—the express train was delayed for over half an hour in passing through _hundreds of empty oil cars_.”[70]