Such is the superiority of a simple business organization, where "evolution" has not carried the details of the industry out of sight of the owner, and where the master and man, buyer and seller, are in touch, that the independent refiners could overcome the tax imposed on them by this pooling of the pipe line and the railroads, and not only survive but prosper moderately. During the three years--from 1885 to 1888--following the first attack upon them under the contract just described, they state, in their appeal to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1888, they were "enabled by their advantages in the local markets to keep up, maintain, and even increase their business."[227] These "outsiders" shipped their oil largely in barrels because the trunk-lines had made it as nearly impossible as they could for them to ship in tank-cars. They, like all in the trade, could not live without access to the European market. Out of every hundred barrels of various kinds of products from the distillation of petroleum, forty are of an illuminating oil not good enough to be burned in this country. It must be sold in Europe or not sold at all; and a manufacturer who cannot get rid of 40 per cent. of his product must give up manufacturing. To destroy the barrel method of shipment would destroy those who could use no other; and to close their outlet to Europe would make it impossible for them to continue to manufacture for the home supply. The barrel was the only life-raft left to the sinking independent. They who had planned the secret pool of 1885 between the pipe line and the railroads, and the further advance of rates by both in 1888, now called upon the railroads to deliver a final stroke against the independents.[228] The railroads, when directed in previous years to say "no" to applications for transportation, and "no" to those who wanted the right to put their own tank-cars on the road, had obeyed; they obeyed again.