To the almost weeping expostulations of the Commission in interviews and letters, to show that it had said nothing which could justify the action of the roads, the officials made not the slightest concession. "I did not consider it in that way," said one of them.[240] "That was their (the Commission's) view of the case, but it was not shared by us," said the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. "It was considered best to continue the practice," he said.[241] "Why did you not rescind the order?" he was asked before the Interstate Commerce Commission. "We understood their ruling to be a ruling for the whole country," he incorrigibly replied. The railway president studiously withheld any assurance that he would obey if the Commission issued a direct command, which it had not done, though it had the authority. "We would then take the subject up," he said. Change the order to comply with the ruling of the Interstate Commerce Commission the roads would not and did not.[242] All the roads to the seaboard and New England had made the order in concert, and together they maintained it. It was one hand, evidently, that moved them all, and though that hand moved them, for the benefit of a carrier rival of theirs--the pipe line of the trust--against their own customers, against their own employers, against the authority of the United States Government, all these railroad presidents and freight agents obeyed it with the docility of domestic animals. These officials were the loyal subjects of a higher power than that of the United States, higher even than that of their railway corporations. They serve the greatest sovereign of the modern world--the concentrated wealth, in whose court the presidents of railways and republics, kings, parliaments, and congresses are but lords in waiting. Thanks to the superior enterprise of their greater need, the independents of Oil City and Titusville had been able to survive the blows that had preceded, but this was too much. They had weathered the surrender in 1883 of the Tidewater Pipe Line, which had promised them freedom forever. Even the "contract" which made the allied pipe lines and the railroads in 1885 one, to tax them half as much again for transportation, had not broken them down. In spite of it they had been able "to maintain and increase their business."[243] But now they closed their works. The new attack had been shrewdly timed to spoil for them in that year--1888--the season of greatest activity in the export to Europe and Asia. They appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission. "The greater proportion of our refineries are idle."[244] "I have not a customer in the entire New England States. I have not had since the advance of last September." "How was it before the advance?" "I had a number of customers."[245]