"Yes, sir; almost entirely.... I was selling in Chicago, and it cut trade entirely off."[370] "Before the rates were changed did you run to your full capacity?" "Yes, sir; about that."[371] At one stroke the independents lost the business which it had cost them years of work to get. As the testimony of witness after witness showed, the merchants who had been their customers in Chicago, Columbus, and other places, now had to send their orders to those for whose benefit the railroad men had raised the rates. This sweeping change was not due to any change in their desire to sell, or of their old customers to buy. They could still make oil which was still wanted. But they were the victims of a competitor who had learned the secret of a more royal road to business supremacy than making a better thing, or selling it at a better price. Their better way was not to excel but to exclude. When their "secretary" was called before the Ohio Legislature, after this freight ambuscade had transferred the bulk of the business of the independent refineries at Marietta to him and his associates, he declared that the sole cause of their success was the "large mechanical contrivances" of the combination, its "economy," and its production of the "very best oil." "With an aggregation of capital, and a business experience, and a hold upon the channels of trade such as we have, it is idle to say that the small manufacturer can compete with us; and although that is an offensive term, 'squeezing out,' yet it has never been done by the conjunction of any railroads with us."[372] The small manufacturer did compete and flourish until these railroad men literally switched him out of the market. He competed and got his share of the business, until the men who wanted monopoly, finding that they had no monopoly of quality or price or business ability, resorted to the "large mechanical contrivance" of inducing the managers of the railroads to derail the independent, throwing him off the track by piling impassable freight tariffs in his way. The successful men secured their supremacy by preventing their competitors from entering the market at all. Instead of winning by "better" and "cheaper," they won by preventing any competitor from coming forward to test the questions of "better" and "cheaper." Their method of demonstrating superiority has been to prevent comparisons.