The word "serious" was a slip. He withdrew it. "We have never had any" was his revision. Three years later the same official, in a speech to persuade the Pennsylvania Legislature that the pipe-line interests of the oil country did not need the regulation by the State then under debate, but were abundantly safeguarded by him and his associates, said: "It may not be amiss for me to say that we have had, at different times during the last several years, most flattering propositions from people who are identified with the Russian petroleum industry, to come there and join them in the development and introduction of that industry. We have declined these offers, gentlemen, always and to this day, and have held loyal to our relations to the American petroleum."[642] There had been negotiations, after all! The reports of the United States consul-general at Berlin, in 1891, transmitted many interesting articles from the German papers concerning the alliance which it was believed had been made between the Rothschilds and the American oil combination. A company managed by the great bankers has obtained a commanding position in the Russian oil business, and the American and the Russian were even then said to have divided the world between them. The Berlin _Vossische Zeitung_ said: "Heretofore the two petroleum speculators have marched apart, in order to get into their hands the two largest petroleum districts in the world. After this has been accomplished they unite to fight in unison, and to fix as they please the selling price for the whole world, which they divide between themselves. So an international speculating ring stands before the door, such as in like might and capital power has never before existed, and everywhere the intelligible fear prevails that within a short time the price of an article of use indispensable to all classes of people will rise with a bound, without its being possible for national legislation or control to raise any obstacles."[643]