The independents were saved by a Canadian railroad from the destruction which American railroads had planned for them. The Grand Trunk gave them a rate by which they could still do some business in the upper part of New England, though to do this they had to ship the oil into Canada and back into the United States. The effect of this abolition of through rates in "cheapening" oil was that the people of Vermont, for instance, had to pay 2 cents a gallon more than any other place in New England.[250] While all access for others to New England was cut off, the "seaboard refiners," sending the oil in free tanks to the seaboard, transshipping it there into vessels by the facilities of "which they have a monopoly,"[251] easily made their own the business of their rivals in the 150 towns from which the latter were thus cut off. No one has been able to move all the railroads in this way, as one interlocking switch, to obey a law or accommodate the public. But it was done easily enough for this kind of work. Possession was got of the railway managers at the initial points, as was done so successfully in another case,[252] and all the other railway managers, as far as Boston, followed in their trail. Reproducing the tactics in Ohio in 1879, it was only against oil that this attack of the tariff was made. Other freight for export, of which there was a vast variety, continued to be carried to Boston at the same rate as before.[253] All the freight agent of the initial road had to do with the oil on its way to Europe was to pass it along to the next line. Whether, after leaving his road, it went by the way of Boston or that of New York made no difference to his road, and was in no way his affair. But it made a great deal of difference to those who wanted all the business of Europe and America for themselves, and we consequently find him serving them, and dis-serving his employer (the railroad), by charging 21 cents a barrel if the oil was going to Boston after leaving his line, but only 15-56/100 cents if it was going to New York. When asked if he thought he was justified as a railroad man under the law in making the charges for what he did vary according to what was done by the business after it left his hands, he refused to answer. "You will not answer?" "Not at present."[254]