The railroad had persuaded the independent refiners to settle along its line by solemnly promising them fair and living rates, and yet now put its corporate seal to an agreement to make those rates whatever their enemy wanted them to be. Such was its honor. As for its shrewdness, that had at last brought it to this humiliation in a business where it had once been chief, of confining itself to this insignificant quarter of a restricted traffic instead of a competitive share of a traffic enlarged by freedom to the widest correspondence to the wants of the people. The mastery of the railroad men by the oil people was thorough. The latter did not agree to give the railroad one-quarter of their business. Not at all. All the traffic that came of itself to the railroad, or which its freight solicitors drummed up, must be put to the credit of the guarantee. All that was promised the railroad was that its total should amount to one-quarter of the whole traffic. All the rest the oil combination kept for itself. The contract went at once into vigorous operation. Freight rates to the seaboard, which had been 34 cents, and, as was proved before the Interstate Commerce Commission, were profitable, were advanced to 52 cents a barrel--an increase of one-half. The railroad and the pipe line made the raise in concert, as had been agreed, and when the rates were changed again it was to still higher figures. Why should the clique, which had its principal refineries at the seaboard--to which it had to transport large quantities of oil--scheme in this way to raise the rates of transportation? Because it paid this excessive rate on only a small part of its own shipments, and compelled its rivals to pay it on all of theirs. The independents had no pipe line of their own, but the combination sent its own oil east by its own pipe line, excepting only the quantity it needed to add to the shipments over the Pennsylvania to make good its guarantee to that railroad of one-quarter of the traffic. The cost of the pipe-line service to its owners is very small. When the manager of the pipe lines was before the Interstate Commerce Commission the lawyers of the railroads, as zealous for the oil combination, though it was not a party in the case, as for their own clients, fought through eleven pages of argument against having him compelled to tell the cost of pumping oil through the pipe to the seaboard; and when the Commission finally said, "Go on," all the general manager of the pipe lines had to say was, "I do not believe that it is possible to know."[213] Finally, he was cornered into an estimate that the cost of pumping was 6 or 7 cents a barrel. His questioner, who had been the organizer and manager of a great pipe line--the Tidewater--knew that oil had been pumped through for 4 cents a barrel, but he could not get his witness, who, no doubt, had done it still cheaper, to admit anything of the kind.