Such was the story told to the Interstate Commerce Commission, in many hundred pages of testimony, by the refiners of Oil City and Titusville, who appealed to it for the justice "without expense, without delay, and without litigation" promised the people when the Interstate Commerce Commission was created.[274] The game, of which you have perhaps been able to get a dim idea from the printed page, the Commissioners saw played before them like chess with living figures. For years the principal subject of their official investigations had been the manoeuvres of the oil ring. They had been compelled by the law and the facts to condemn its relation with the railroads in language of stinging severity, as every court has done before which it has been brought. Better than any other men in the country, except the men in the ring, the Commissioners knew what was being done. They comprehended perfectly who the "seaboard refiners" were whose demand that their competitors should be shut out of Europe and New England was better law with the Pennsylvania Railroad than the decisions of the Commission. They needed no enlightenment as to the purpose of the secret contract between the members of the oil trust and the Pennsylvania, nor any instruction that the "pool" between the pipe line and the railroad was as hostile to the public interest as any pool between common carriers. The chairman of the Commission had openly hinted that the relations of the oil trust and the railroads were collusive, and that the spring from which they flowed was a secret contract.[275] It was shown to the Commission that at the same time the railroads advanced their rates the oil combination bid up the price of the raw material of the Titusville and Oil City refineries. This is called "advancing the premium."[276] The raise of the freight rate added 14 cents a barrel to the cost of production, and the increased price of oil put on 12 cents more, either item large enough to embarrass competition. The Interstate Commerce Commission in its decision recognized the practical simultaneity of the three movements to the disadvantage of the independent refiners: (1) the bidding up of the price of crude oil against them; (2) the new rule of charging for the weight of the barrel; and (3) the abrogation of the through rates to New England. These three things occurred in a period of about two months. This, the Commission says, lends color to the charge that there was concert of action between the combination and the railroad.