The independents press on. Occasionally one of them, says a local journal, unhinged by the loss of property, commits suicide or is taken to an insane asylum, and another goes down out of sight in bankruptcy, but the others close the ranks and go on, and now about 4000 men, in a strongly organized association, are marching side by side towards the sea--the blue and free.[310] CHAPTER XIII PURCHASE OF PEACE Hunting about for tax-dodgers, it was discovered by the authorities of Pennsylvania some years ago that many foreign corporations were doing business within the limits of the Commonwealth and enjoying the protection of her laws, and at the same time not paying for it. Foremost among these delinquents stood the principal company in the oil combination with its mammoth capital, practically buying, refining and controlling nearly the entire oil production of the State, "and yet failing to pay one cent into the public treasury." So wrote the Auditor-General to his successor in 1882. The combination, beginning, like creation, with nothing, had grown, until in 1883 it was so rich that, according to the testimony of one of its members, it owned "between $40,000,000 and $50,000,000" in Pennsylvania alone.[311] But though doing business in Pennsylvania, and legally within the grasp of the taxing power, as decided by the courts, this company paid no taxes, and would not give the State the information called for by law as to its taxable property. It practised "voluntary taxation." "For eight years," Auditor-General Schell says, "it had been doing business in this Commonwealth, and had failed in all that time to file a single report." "It was not necessary for the department to call upon it to make reports." The law required these reports specifically and in details that could not be misunderstood, and that was notification enough. But year after year the Auditor-Generals, whose duty it was to collect due contribution from each taxpayer, made special demands upon this one for reports in compliance with the law, but with no effect.