The Toledo companies got from the city as a free gift a franchise worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, on condition that they would supply Toledo before a certain date. But in the midst of the work of laying pipes they suspended operations, and declared that they would do nothing more unless the City Council fixed, at rates dictated by them, the prices the people were to pay. These rates were enough to pay not only a fair dividend, but to return in a few years every dollar of capital invested in lands, pipes, etc. Later they demanded another increase which, according to the sworn statement by their superintendent of the amount of gas supplied daily, would have amounted to $351,362.50 a year. They made the charges regardless of the ordinance, and used delay in furnishing gas as a means to make people willing to pay these illegal rates. Consumers seeking to renew their contracts were informed that the price would be doubled. The companies had assured the people that they should get their heat at half the price of coal; but when the bills were footed up, the gas in many cases cost more than coal. The companies refused to supply fuel to an oil refinery which had been built in Toledo in opposition to the trust refineries. The companies discriminated against some customers, and in favor of others. The power to say which manufacturer should have cheaper fuel than his competitor was a power to enact prosperity or ruin.[513] It was a power to force themselves into control of any business they desired to enter. Those who controlled these gas companies appeared in the Circuit Court of the city in a proceeding which alone contained warning enough to put any self-governing community on guard. The Court was asked to deny the right of farmers in Wood County to give a way over their lands to the Toledo, Findlay, and Springfield Railway, being built to give the independent oil-refiners and producers of the Ohio oil-field a route to market. The farmers in question had made leases to an oil corporation of the trust, giving only the specific right to bore for and pipe and store oil and gas. The farmers supposed that they had parted only with what they had signed away in the leases. They supposed they still owned their farms. When the new railroad sought the privilege of a right of way the farmers granted it. Suit was at once brought for an injunction to prevent this use of the land. According to the logic of the claim in these cases a farmer who has made such a lease could not build a road across his own farm without permission. "Most certainly not," was the reply made by one of the lawyers to the judge who asked if the farmer could do so.