It is known that a practice has grown up among the oil inspectors of the States of allowing certain refiners to brand their own oil as they please, or letting it go to market unbranded. This permits the sale of unbranded and therefore illicit and presumably dangerous oil. Charges that inspectors in Iowa loaned their stencils to the oil combination to do its own branding were made formally in writing, in 1890, by one of the deputy inspectors, in the form required by law, to the governor of the State. The law provides that charges so made shall be investigated by the governor. No investigation was made, but the inspector was removed just as he was about to lay before a grand-jury documentary evidence of this and other violations of the law. This inspector declared publicly that inspectors were in the habit of leaving their official stencils with companies in the oil combination, and allowing them to put any brand they chose on any oil. He refused to continue this practice, nor would he brand barrels until they were filled. The representative of the combination in that State used every device except force, the inspector says, to induce him to conform to the practice. "Don't you know," this representative said, "that if you leave us your brand and get into trouble you will have the oil combination back of you? You will be taken care of." In his formal complaint to the governor, this inspector declared that this representative said in substance to him: "You are the only fool among the inspectors. We have the stencils of the inspectors at every other point where we want them."