The price of light advanced. When the negotiations were in progress the producers were told that if the flow of oil glutting the market could be stopped the price of refined could be advanced, and that for every eighth of a cent a gallon advance in it the producers could expect an advance of 4 cents a barrel on their crude oil. Refined advanced during the shut-down to a price to correspond to which the crude should have risen to 96 cents a barrel. Instead, its price fell to 78 cents. The committee went to New York "to protest." Their New York ally said there was no change in the markets of the world. That they could get the price for the refined, but they did not propose to hold up the price of the crude. "If we could not do that, they could not help it." "He had refined to sell, and crude to buy?" "Yes, sir."[294] This shut-down, the New York _Tribune_ said, was "one of the most interesting economical experiments made in recent years." It was, as the New York _World_ said, "one of the largest restrictive movements ever attempted in commerce." The president of the trust, when examined on February 27, 1888, by the New York Legislature, as to the agreement for the shut-down, declared positively that nothing of the kind had been done. "There has been no such agreement?" he was asked. "Oh no, sir!... Oil has run freely all the time." "And no attempt to do that?" "No, sir."[295] He afterwards recalled these denials, and excused himself on the ground that as he had been in Europe when the arrangement was made he had known of it only "incidentally."[296] A "shut-down" on facts is as necessary to the success of the schemes for scarcity as a shut-down in oil. There are too many facts, as well as too much oil. "By advancing the price of the crude material you necessarily advance the price of the refined?" another of the combination was asked. "Yes, sir."[297] The average price of refined at New York for export was 6.75 cents a gallon in 1887. This rose to 7.50 in 1888, the highest average price for any year between 1885 and 1893.[298] The effect of the restriction--"one of the most extensive ever attempted in commerce"--was thus to make oil and light and all its other products scarcer and dearer. The producers really got no good. After the shut-down had been in progress five months, their committee issued an address congratulating them on the "glorious results" achieved in the fidelity with which the pledge of restriction had been kept, but continued, "But prices are not yet remunerative."[299] "We do not seem to have gotten it," one of the producers said to Congress, referring to the assistance they expected in an advance of the price to profitable figures.[300] No lasting gain came to any one unless to the monopoly, and it is possibly too soon to tell whether its gain will be "lasting."