Monopoly anywhere must be monopoly everywhere. At the beginning it was enough to control the railways; by these the pipe lines, refineries, and markets were got. These were secured, only to find that it was vital to control the source of supply. The producers once gave an illustration of what it would be for the sole buyer to come to the market and find that the oil he must have was not on sale at his price.[632] "We have during the past year," one of the combination said, in 1891, before a committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature, "invested a very large amount of money, and have induced our friends to come forward with new capital to engage in the business of producing oil."[633] By the policy of becoming producers the combination has changed its position from that of mere intermediary--though one as irresistible as a toll-gate keeper--to that of absolute owner. The spectre it has seen rise before it, of the producers organized as one seller to meet it as the only buyer, has been laid to rest. "We are pushing into every part of the world, and have been doing so," the president told the New York Legislature in 1888.[634] Their tank-steamers go to all the ports of Europe and Asia, and their tank-wagons are as familiarly seen in the cities of Great Britain and the Continent as of America. An agitation of extensive proportions was begun in 1893 in the press of Canada and in the Dominion Parliament to admit American oil at a lower duty. There was no popular demand for such a step. No general reduction of the tariff was proposed. The movement was simultaneous in the press of different parts of Canada, and it was promoted by papers as important as the Toronto _Globe_ and Montreal _Star_. It was resisted with desperation by the 20,000 persons who are employed in the Canadian oil industries, the growth of thirty-two years--"not a rich, gay, bloated population, rioting with the plunderings of the farmers, revelling in all kinds of luxuries, making merry with their friends," says a newspaper correspondent, who visited them in December, 1892, "but a hard-working community, in which all live comfortably; few are rich." This opposition was successful with the Dominion Parliament in that year, and it refused to admit American oil at a lower tax. But the finance minister then, by executive action, did in part what the Legislature had refused to do. By lowering the inspection duty and changing custom-house conditions he made a considerable reduction in the tax. The agitation to reduce the tariff was not relaxed, and was finally successful in 1894, when Parliament lowered the duties on oil, and to that extent surrendered the Canada producers and refiners to their American competitors.