Then, with no visible cause, the capacity of the pipe fell below the demands upon it. This insufficient capacity was pleaded in court as one of the reasons why the pipe should be taken out of the hands of its owners. One day the cause was discovered--a plug of wood. Some mysterious hand had been set to drive a square block of wood into the pipe so as to cut down its capacity to one-third. The representative of the Tidewater declared in court his belief that this plug had been placed by "people on the other side who have made affidavits in this case." A similar deed, but much worse, as it might have cost many lives, was done during the contest with Toledo, nine years later.[195] The Tidewater was successful, but not successful enough. It owned 400 miles of pipe, including the 105 miles of the trunk-line, and had control of nearly 3,000,000 barrels of tankage. It did a great work for the people. "It was," the Philadelphia _Press_ said, in 1883, "the child of war. It has been a barrier between the producers and the monopoly which would crush them if it dared." While these words of exultation were being penned, a surrender was under negotiation. The Tidewater's managers were nearly worn out. These tactics of corrupting their officers, slandering their credit, buying up their customers, stealing their elections, garroting them with lawsuits founded on falsehoods, shutting them off the railroads, and plugging up their pipe in the dark, were too much. They entered into a pool. The two companies in the summer of 1883 "recognized" each other, as the trunk lines do, and agreed to divide the business in proportions, which would net the Tidewater $500,000 a year. The announcement that this pool had been forced on the Tidewater fell like a death-blow on the people of the oil regions. "The Tidewater," the Philadelphia _Press_ said, editorially, "will probably retain a nominal identity as a corporation, but its usefulness to the public and its claim to popular confidence and encouragement were extinguished the instant it consented to enter into alliance with the unscrupulous monopoly which resorts to that means of conciliating and bribing what it had failed to destroy." As was anticipated by the _Press_, the Tidewater retained its nominal identity, but that was all. Its surrender was admitted by its principal organizer, Mr. Franklin B. Gowen. The officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad have testified to it. "They made an arrangement of some kind, the conditions of which I never knew; one swallowed the other or both swallowed the other, or something, and settled up their difficulties,"[196] said the general freight agent. The president said: "The competition between these pipe lines ceased."[197] The attorney of the Tidewater was asked if there were any negotiations which resulted in a compromise of the differences with the oil combination.