"The president of the company, also the treasurer, had been to New York two or three times; after the second or third visit he came back seemingly disgusted with the business; afraid of losing his money if he continued any longer, and quit." "Was there a mortgage upon your property?" "Yes, sir." It had been foreclosed, he said, in conclusion, by one of the leading members of the oil combination.[355] The only thing Van Syckel can do to carry out his part of the contract he does. He develops his invention. He is successful in his application to the United States patent-office. He made his contract with the combination in 1876, and got four patents thereafter in 1877, 1878, and 1879. "Well," it was said in court, "they are a large concern; they would make money out of this; I should think they would want it if it is such a good thing." "Why, my dear man, they have got a monopoly of the business, anyway," Van Syckel replied. "They don't care what kind of oil they sell; but they have got a plant that has cost them millions of dollars that they have got to change, and all that sort of thing, if they take my patent. That is the situation." He lived on the $125 a month while he was testing and proving the invention. In July, 1880, when four years of his life had been thus wasted, the allowance was changed, without notice or his consent, to $75 a month. The next month he was refused even that sum "unless I signed a receipt in full of all demands, and I walked out without it." His pipe line has become a part of the net-work of pipe lines of which the oil combination boasts. His refinery of 1869, one of the largest built in western Pennsylvania up to that time, passed into its hands. Three times in succession, after it refuses to build for him as it agreed, he arranges to put his idea of continuous distillation into use, and in each case the refinery in which he sets up his pipes and stills is bought up by it and destroyed. He is kept dangling for years by its policy of delay. Then his independent efforts are broken up; capitalists are made afraid of him. He can get no means for building new works. "Ever since I went into their hands," he said in court, "I have been just as I am now. I could not make oil; could not build a refinery; could not get anybody help me to do it; and here I have stood these last twelve years, and I want to be out. That is just where they want to keep me, so I cannot make any oil. It is the whole profit of the whole of it. They hold me to my contract, and they break theirs."