The only morning paper--an able advocate of the city pipe line--suddenly changed owners and opinions. Among its new directors were two of the lawyers of the trust opposing the city, a director in one of its companies, and, besides them, the manager, a contract editor from Pennsylvania. His sole conspicuity there had been won in turning against the people of the oil regions a paper which had been their stanchest defender. This Toledo daily, in its espousal of the cause of the city, had been firing hot shot like this against the oil combination: "It wants a monopoly of the natural-gas business. This is what it is driving at." Under its new management it roared like a sucking dove, thus: "It is fashionable with demagogues and men who are not capable of appreciating the worth of brains in business to howl against it"--the oil combination--"as a grasping, grinding monopoly." Just after the people had decided in favor of the pipe line, and only a few days before it changed owners, it had said: "All manner of influences were brought to bear to defeat this proposition.... All the plausible falsehoods that could be invented, and all the money that could be used, were industriously employed, but the people saw the situation in its true light, and the majority voted right." It now made the defeat of the city's pipe line the chief aim of its endeavors. In this work "no rule or principle recognized in decent journalism was respected." In all the history of Toledo no interest on its bonds had ever been defaulted or delayed; no principal ever unpaid at maturity. The city was prosperous, its growth steady; its debt growing less year by year in proportion to its population and wealth. Its bonds ranked among the choicest investments, and commanded a premium in the money-market.[521] But the credit and fair fame of the city were now over-whelmed with wholesale vituperation by this paper, and others elsewhere under similar control. Articles were carefully prepared for this purpose by skilled writers. These were then copied from one newspaper to another. By some arrangement insertion was obtained for them in financial journals in New York and in London, and in other foreign capitals. The Toledo organ declared that Toledo was an unsafe place for the investment of capital in any form. Its public affairs were said to be run by a set of "demagogues and speculators," whose administration was "piratical mob rule." The city pipe line was a "monstrous job," and the men who favored it were "a gang of throttlers and ravenous wolves." They were "blatant demagogues, who made great pretence of advancing the city's interest, but whose real aim is to enrich themselves at public expense." The bonds, which had been issued in due form by special authority of the Legislature, ratified by a vote of more than three-fifths of the citizens, and declared to be valid by the United States Court, were described as "chromos," "worthless rags," "bad