"No, sir. Before that I went up there and sold to every man in the place nearly. They were glad to see me in opposition.... I lost them, except one man who was so prejudiced that he would not buy from them." "Your business had been on the increase up to that time?" "Increasing rapidly.... I haul it in wagons now forty miles south of Manito." "The rates against you on that railroad are so high that you can for a distance of forty miles transport your oil by wagon and meet the competition better than you can by using their own road?" "Infinitely better."[384] CHAPTER XVI "TURN ANOTHER SCREW" A spy at one end of an institution proves that there is a tyrant at the other. Modern liberty has put an end to the use of spies in its government only to see it reappear in its business. Rice throughout the South was put under a surveillance which could hardly have been done better by Vidocq. One of the employés of the oil clique, having disclosed before the Interstate Commerce Commission that he knew to a barrel just how much Rice had shipped down the river to Memphis, was asked where he got the information. He got it from the agents who "attend to our business." "What have they to do with looking after Mr. Rice's business?... How do your agents tell the number of barrels he shipped in April, May, and June?" "See it arrive at the depot." "How often do your agents go to the depot to make the examination?" "They visit the depot once a day, not only for that purpose, but to look after the shipment of our own oil." "Do they keep a record of Mr. Rice's shipments?" "They send us word whenever they find that Mr. Rice has shipped a car-load of oil." "What do their statements show with respect to Mr. Rice's shipments besides that?" "They show the number of barrels received at any point shipped by Mr. Rice, or by anybody else." "How often are these statements sent to the company?" "Sent in monthly, I think." "It is from a similar monthly report that you get the statement that in July, August, and September, Mr. Rice shipped 602 barrels of oil to Nashville, is it?" "Yes, sir." "Have you similar agents at all points of destination?" "Yes, sir."[385] This has a familiar look. It is the espionage of the South Improvement Company contract, in operation sixteen years after it was "buried." When the representative of the oil combination appears in public with tabulated statements exhibiting to a barrel the business done by its competitors for any month of any year, at any place, he tells us too plainly to be mistaken that the "partly-born," completely "buried" iniquity, sired by the "sympathetical co-operation" of the trustees and their railroad associates of easy virtue, is alive and kicking--kicking a breach in the very foundations of the republic.