The sharpest legal struggle of the case was made on the demand that this paper be produced. The Commission decided that it was "wholly immaterial," although the chairman had previously said: "It seems to us that we cannot exclude this evidence." It was a document establishing interstate rates, and these are required by law to be published, and the Commission had always before this been liberal in compelling the production of papers which related to the making of rates.[217] The Commission had shortly before been threatened in this case by the counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad with extinction if it insisted upon evidence of the cost of piping oil which the oil combination refused to give. "It is possible that the powers of this Commission may be tested,"[218] bullied the counsel of the railroad. The members of the Commission laughed ostentatiously, but, for whatever reason, they gave the powerful corporations on trial no cause thereafter to "test their powers," which have slept while justice tarried, and the victims of this "contract" were kept under its harrow for three long years more, where they still lie. The tax levied upon the consumers of oil by this agreement for high freights amounts to millions a year. This agreement is at this writing still in force. There is reason to believe that similar arrangements exist with the other trunk-lines. The result is the surprising fact that "oil rates are very much higher than they were twelve years ago, and when there was no pipe-line competition!"[219] This is true also in the field of local pipeage--the transportation of the oil from the wells to refineries and railroads. Under the caption of "cheapening transportation" the counsel of the oil trust said, before the New York Legislature in 1888: "In 1872 the pipe-line system was in its infancy. A number of local lines existed. Their service was inefficient and expensive. There was no uniform rate. The united refiners undertook to unite and systemize this business. They purchased and consolidated the various little companies into what was long known as the United Pipe Line System. The first effect of this combination was a reduction of price of all local transportation to a uniform rate of at first 30, and soon after 20 cents per barrel."[220]