"To threaten the people elsewhere with Columbus," the agent at Columbus was told, "will make them scat, as it were, and take our oil at any price." But the people of Columbus did not "scat." The new store had a complete stock of groceries. Prices on everything, including oil, were put "down to the bone." But one essential feature of the enterprise all the ingenuity and power of the invader could not furnish--customers. Goods were advertised at cost; alluring signs were hung out with daily variations; but the people would not buy. A few citizens who bought at the beginning, without understanding the plan of campaign, came out in the newspapers with cards of apology, and pledges that they would not repeat the mistake. Local bankers refused to honor the drafts of the enemy, threw out its accounts, and gave notice that they would advance no money to persons who bought at its store. The public opinion of Columbus so bitterly resented the attack upon the livelihood of its merchants, because they had dared to buy where they thought best, and so clearly saw that the subjugation of the merchants would be but the preliminary of a conquest of themselves, that any one seen within the doors of the odious store fell into instant and deep disgrace. "Their store is regarded as a pest-house," wrote one of the leading business men, "and few respectable people ever darken their doors, their trade being confined mostly to negroes. Their oil trade has dwindled down to almost nothing, and we are selling now to merchants in other towns who heretofore bought exclusively from them." At the first sign of aggression the merchants had given up competition, which they saw meant only mutual ruin, and had tied themselves together in an association. Now as the struggle widened the people did the same, and found a greater benefit and pleasure in co-operation than in keeping up the delusion of the "higgling of the market" where there was no market. The _Index_, of Columbus, printed an agreement signed by hundreds "of those who will sustain our home merchants in the struggle they are making.... It will receive many more signatures among our citizens.... The people have only to understand to properly decide in this matter between right and wrong." "You ask if the feeling is bitter against them in our 'community,'" one of the merchants wrote. "I can only liken it to the spirit which prevailed when the people of Boston emptied King George's taxed tea into Boston Harbor."