These negotiations with the Standard continued for a month, and then, early in February, Mr. Campbell, the president of the Union, called a meeting of the Grand Council for February 19, 1880, in Titusville, Pennsylvania. For several weeks the Oil Regions had known that President Campbell and Roger Sherman, the leading lawyer of the Union, were in conference with the Standard officials. It was rumoured that they were arranging a compromise, and it was suspected that the meeting now called was to consider the terms. Naturally the proposition to be made was looked for with suspicion and curiosity. The meeting was the largest the Grand Council had held for many months. It was supposed to be secret, like all gatherings of the Union, but before the first session was over, the word spread over the Oil Regions that Mr. Campbell had brought to the meeting contracts with both Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Scott, and that they were receiving harsh criticism from the Grand Council. The very meagre accounts which exist of this gathering, historic in oil annals, show that it was one of the most exciting which was ever held in the country, and one can well believe this when one considers the bitter pill the council was asked to swallow that day. Mr. Campbell began the session by reporting that all the suits at which they had been labouring for nearly two years had been withdrawn, and that in return for their withdrawal the Standard and the Pennsylvania Railroad officials had signed contracts to cease certain of the practices of which the producers complained. The Standard contract, which Mr. Campbell then presented, pledged Mr. Rockefeller, and some sixteen associates, whose names were attached to the document, to the following policy: 1. They would hereafter make no opposition to an entire abrogation of the system of rebates, drawbacks and secret rates of freight in the transportation of petroleum on the railroads. 2. They withdrew their opposition to secrecy in rate making—that is, they promised that they would not hereafter receive any rebate or drawback that the railroad company was not at liberty to make known and to give to other shippers of petroleum. 3. They abandoned entirely the policy which they had been pursuing in the management of the United Pipe Lines—that is, they promised that there should be no discrimination whatever hereafter between their patrons; that the rates should be reasonable and not advanced except on thirty days’ notice; that they would make no difference between the price of crude in different districts excepting such as might be properly based upon the difference in the quality of the oil; that they would receive, transport, store and deliver all oil tendered to them, up to a production of 65,000 barrels a day. And if the production should exceed that amount they agreed that they would not purchase any so-called “immediate shipment” oil at a discount on the price of certificate oil.