"That is the law in Pennsylvania to-day. But in spite of this decision, and in spite of the law, we well know that almost every railroad in this State has been in the habit, and is to-day in the habit, of granting special privileges to individuals, to companies in which the directors of such railroads are interested, to particular business, and to particular localities. We well know that it is their habit to break down certain localities, and build up others, to break down certain men in business and to build up others, to monopolize certain business themselves by means of the numerous corporations which they own and control, and all this in spite of the law, in defiance of the law. "The South Improvement Company's scheme would give that corporation the monopoly of the entire oil business of this State, amounting to $20,000,000 a year. That corporation was created by the Pennsylvania Legislature along with at least twenty others, under the name of improvement companies, within a few years past, all of which corporations contain the names as original corporators of men who may be found in and about the office of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in Philadelphia, when not lobbying at Harrisburg. The railroads took but one of those charters which they got from the Legislature, and by means of that struck a deadly blow at one of the greatest interests of the State. Their scheme was contrary to law, but before the legal remedy could have been applied, the oil business would have lain prostrate at their feet, had it not been prevented by an uprising of the people, by the threatenings of a mob, if you please, by threatening to destroy property, and by actually commencing to destroy the property of the railroad company, and had the companies not cancelled the contract which Scott and Vanderbilt and others had entered into, I venture to say there would not have been one mile of railroad track left in the County of Venango--the people had come to that pitch of desperation.... Unless we can give the people a remedy for this evil of discriminations in freight, they will sooner or later take the remedy into their own hands."[77] Soon after this attorney for the people was promoted from the poor pay of patriotism to a salary equal to that of the President of the United States, and to the place of counsel for the principal members of the combination, whose inwardness he had descried with such hawk-eye powers of vision. Later, as their counsel, he drafted the famous trust agreement of 1882.