the Grand Council of the Union in November, 1878, there were nearly 200 delegates present—at the last one in February, 1880, scarcely forty. Many of the local lodges were entirely dead. Not even the revival in the summer of 1879 of the hated immediate shipment order, which had caused so much excitement the year before, but which had not been enforced long because of the uprising, brought them back to the Union. In July the order had been put in operation again in a fashion most offensive to the oil men, it being announced by the United Pipe Lines that thereafter oil would be bought by a system of sealed bids. Blanks were to be furnished the producers, the formula of which ran: BRADFORD, PENNSYLVANIA,........ 187.. I hereby offer to sell J. A. Bostwick .... barrels crude oil, of forty-two gallons per barrel, at .... cents, at the wells, for shipment from the United Pipe Lines, within the next five (5) days, provided that any portion of the oil not delivered to you within the specified time shall be considered cancelled. There was a frightful uproar in consequence. The morning after this announcement several hundred men gathered in front of the United Pipe Line’s office in Bradford, and held an open-air meeting. They had a band on the ground which played “Hold the Fort”; and the following resolutions were adopted: “Resolved, That the oil producers of the Northern District in meeting assembled do maintain and declare that the present shipment order is infamous in principle and disreputable in practice, and we hereby declare that we will not sell one barrel of oil in conformity with the requirements of the said order. And we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour to resort to every legal means, to use every influence in our power to prevent any sales under the said order. And we also declare that the United Pipe Lines shall hereafter perform their duty as common carriers under the law.” That night a battalion of some 300 masked men in robes of white marched through the streets of Bradford, groaning those that they suspected of being in sympathy with the Standard methods, and cheering their friends. Again there appeared there, that night, all over the upper oil country, cabalistic signs, which had been seen there often the year before. The feeling was so intense, and the danger of riot so great, that twenty-four hours after the order for sealed bids was given, it was withdrawn. The outbreak aroused Mr. Campbell’s hope that it might be possible at this moment to arouse the lodges, and he wrote a prominent oil man of Bradford asking his opinion. In reply he received the following letter. It shows very well what the leaders had to contend against. It shows, too, the point of view of a very frank and intelligent oil producer: “BRADFORD, PENNSYLVANIA, July 30, 1879. “B. B. CAMPBELL, Parnassus, Pennsylvania.