Although it was upon the Standard Oil Company that people turned when they denounced the trusts and feared or condemned their practices, the principles to which the Standard adhered when under the strain of competition were the practices which were followed by their contemporaries, both big and little. When the Diamond Match Company, for example, was before the Courts of Michigan in 1889, it appeared that the organization was built up for the purpose of controlling the manufacture and trade in matches in the United States and Canada. Its policy was to buy up and "remove" competition, so that it might monopolize the manufacture and sale of matches. It could then fix the price of its commodity at such a point that it could recoup itself for the expense of eliminating competitors and also make larger profits than were possible when its rivals were active. Still more dangerous was the combination of the hard coal operators. By 1873, six corporations owned both the hard coal deposits of Pennsylvania and the railroads which made it possible to haul the coal out to the markets. In the same year and later these companies made agreements which determined the amounts of coal that they would mine, the price which they would charge, and the proportion of the whole output that each company would be allowed to handle. Independent operators--that is, operators not in the combination--found their existence precarious in the extreme, for their means of transportation was in the hands of the six coal-carrying railroads, who could raise rates almost at will and find reasons even for refusing service. The states were powerless to remedy the situation because their authority did not extend to interstate commerce, yet it was intolerable for a small group of interested parties to have power to fix the output of so necessary a commodity as coal, on no other basis than that provided by their own desires. Other abuses appeared which showed that industrial combinations were open to many of the complaints which, in connection with the railroads, had led to the Interstate Commerce Act. Industrial pools resembled railroad pools and were objected to for similar reasons. Bankers and others who organized combinations were given returns that seemed as extravagant as the prices paid to railroad construction companies; the issues of the stock of corporations were bought and sold by their own officers for speculative purposes; and stock-watering was as common as in railroading. The industrial combinations also had somewhat the same effect on politics that the railroads had. Lloyd declared that the Standard Oil Company had done everything with the Pennsylvania legislature except refine it.