The plea needs no answer, but if it did, the language of the railroad men themselves supplies one that cannot be bettered. To the representatives of the people, who had telegraphed them for information "at once, as the excitement is intense, and we fear violence and destruction of property," General McClellan, of the Atlantic and Great Western, replied that the contract was "cancelled;" President Clark, of the Lake Shore, that it was "formally abrogated and cancelled;" Chairman Homer Ramsdell, of the Erie, that it was "abrogated;" Vice-president Thomas Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, that it was "terminated officially;"[68] Vice-president Vanderbilt, of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, that it was "cancelled with all the railroads." Contracts that were not complete and in force would not need to be "cancelled" and "abrogated" and "terminated." These announcements were backed up by a telegram from the future head of the oil trust then incubating, in which he said of his company: "This company holds no contracts with the railroad companies."[69] But in 1879 its secretary, called upon by the Ohio Legislature to produce the contracts the company had with the railroads, showed, among others, one covering the very date of this denial in 1872.[70] Before Congress the South Improvement Company sought to shelter themselves behind the plea that "their calculation was to get all the refineries in the country into the company. There was no difference made, as far as we were concerned, in favor of or against any refinery; they were all to come in alike." How they "were all to be taken in" the contract itself showed. It bound the South Improvement Company "to expend large sums of money in the purchase of works for refining," and one of the reasons given by the railroads for making the contract was "to encourage the outlay." Upon what footing buyer and seller would meet in these purchases when the buyer had a secret arrangement like this with the owners of the sole way to and from wells, refineries, and markets, one does not need to be "a business man" to see. The would-be owners had a power to pry the property of the real owners out of their hands. One of the Cleveland manufacturers who had sold was asked why he did so by the New York Legislature. They had been very prosperous, he said; their profits had been $30,000 to $45,000 a year; but their prosperity had come to a sudden stop.[71] "From the time that it was well understood in the trade that the South Improvement Company had ... grappled the entire transportation of oil from the West to the seaboard ... we were all kind of paralyzed, perfectly paralyzed; we could not operate.... The South Improvement Company, or some one representing them, had a drawback of a dollar, sometimes seventy cents, sometimes more, sometimes less, and we were working against that difference."[72] It was a difference, he said, which destroyed their business.