Labor, though, as always, the most silent, suffered the most. Three hundred coopers were thrown out of work in Titusville alone within a short time, and the loss of employment to the workmen in the refineries was still more serious. This was not because trade was bad. Exports were never greater than in 1889. Government statistics reveal as in a mirror what was being done. The exports of refined petroleum increased 21 per cent. in 1889 over 1888. But Perth Amboy, from which the independents shipped for the most part, showed a decrease of over 18-1/2 per cent. By the stroke of a freight agent's pen the business of these men was being taken from them, to be given to others. The general tide was rising, but their feet were sinking in a quicksand. The export business of Boston in oil was given to the "seaboard refiners" by the same stroke. Freights that had been $100 were now $174 to Boston, and $188 to New York. These rates were so high as to stop oil from going through. "The Nova Scotia trade," it was testified, "goes to New York, and from there by water, whereas they used to buy in Boston. Boston brokers will ship oil from New York and get it to Nova Scotia cheaper than if it went from Boston, whereas when we had the export rate we could compete in that market."[246] Two months later most of what remained of the business of the independents in New England was added to the gift of their foreign trade, which had already been made to the "seaboard refiners." By an order of October 25, 1888, the railroads made it known to these "pestilences," as the lawyers of the railroads called the independent refiners in court,[247] that they would not be allowed to send any more through shipments into New England. This was done, as in Ohio in 1879,[248] without the notice required by law, though in the meantime a Federal law had been passed requiring notice.[249] This order was the finishing touch in the task of using the freight tariff to prevent freight shipment. It shut the independents--the hunted shippers--out of over 150 towns in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, including Manchester, Burlington, Portland, Salem, in which they had built up a good business, and it made it impossible to reach these places except by paying high local rates--from station to station--which were not required of their competitor, who shipped on through rates. The railroads would take the oil of the independents for shipment, but would not tell them what the rates would be. In this, as in all the moves of this game, we see the railroad managers of a score of different roads, at points thousands of miles apart, taking the same step at the same time, like a hundred electric clocks ticking all over a great city to the tune of the clock at headquarters that makes and breaks their circuit.