The Oil Regions watched it with keenest interest. That Mr. Patterson had made some settlement with the Standard was generally known, and the charge was freely circulated that they had bribed him to bring this suit in hopes of blasting the credit of the Tidewater and getting its stock for a song. The testimony brought out in the trial did not bear out this popular notion. The case was rather more complicated. That the suit was backed by the Standard, one would have to be very naïve to doubt, but they were using other and stronger parties than Mr. Patterson, and that was a faction of the company known as the "Taylor-Satterfield crowd." These men, controlling some $200,000 worth of Tidewater stock, had been professing themselves dissatisfied with the management of the business for some months, though always refusing to sell their holdings at an advanced price. It was generally believed in the Oil Regions that their "dissatisfaction" was fictitious, that they were in reality in league with the Standard in an attempt to create a panic in Tidewater stock, a belief which was strengthened when it was learned that a big oil company, which the gentlemen controlled, the Union, had been sold about that time to the Standard Oil Trust for something like $500,000 in its stock. The first manœuvre of the Taylor-Satterfield faction had been the attempt to dissuade the First National Bank from taking the Tidewater loan referred to above. Failing in this, they seem to have imbued Mr. Patterson thoroughly with their pretended dissatisfaction and to have persuaded him to bring the suit. For some reason which is not clear they failed properly to support him in the suit, and when it came off they practically deserted him. The Tidewater had no trouble in proving that the complaints of insolvency and mismanagement were without foundation, and Judge Pierson Church, of Meadville, before whom the case was argued, refused to appoint the receiver, intimating strongly that, in his judgment, the case was an attempt to levy a species of blackmail, in which it must not be expected that his court would co-operate. Judge Church's decision was given on January 15. Two days later a sensation came in Tidewater affairs, which quite knocked the Patterson suit out of the public mind; it was nothing less than a bold attempt by the Taylor party, or, as it was now known, "the Standard party," to seize the reins of government. It was a very cleverly planned coup.

The yearly meeting for the election of officers in the company was fixed for a certain Wednesday in January. By verbal agreement it had been postponed, in 1882, to some time in February, the controller, D. B. Stewart, a member of the Taylor faction, representing that he could not have his statement ready earlier. No notices were sent out to this effect, although this should have been done. Taylor and his party, taking advantage of this fact perfectly well known to them, appeared at the Tidewater offices on January 17, and although one of the Benson faction, as the majority was known from the name of the company's president, was present with sufficient proxies to vote nearly two-thirds of the stock, they overruled him and elected themselves to the control. They also elected to the Board of Managers, Franklin B. Gowen, the president of the Reading, and James R. Keene, the famous speculator, both large holders of Tidewater bonds. They followed their election immediately by sending out notices to the banks with which the company did business not to honour checks drawn by the Benson party, and to the post-office to deliver mail to no one but themselves.

The announcement caused a terrible commotion in oil circles. Both Mr. Keene and Mr. Gowen refused to recognise the new board, Mr. Gowen telegraphing in answer to the notification of his election:

JOHN SATTERFIELD,

Titusville.

At quarter of three o'clock to-day I received a despatch signed with your name as manager and chairman, stating that a meeting of the Board of Managers would be held at noon to-day. While the notice itself is sufficient to render invalid any action you may have attempted at such meeting as has been held, even if you had power to act at all, I deny your right to call any meeting or act in any manner as an officer of the company, and will hold you and all your associates responsible at law for the occurrences of yesterday, and for your subsequent action thereunder.

(Signed)        F. B. GOWEN.

The Benson party took immediate action, applying for an injunction restraining the new board from taking possession of the books and offices. This was granted and a date for a hearing appointed. Up to the hearing the old board did business behind barricaded doors! The case was heard in Meadville before Judge Pierson Church — the same who had heard the Patterson case. As it was a case to be decided on purely technical matters — the rules governing elections — no sensation was looked for, but one came immediately. It was a long affidavit from James R. Keene, even more notorious then than now — there were fewer of his kind — for deals and corners and devious stock tricks, declaring that both the Patterson case and this attempt to obtain control were dictated by the "malicious ingenuity" of the Standard for the purpose of destroying the Tidewater and getting hold of its property:

"From my first connection with the company," said Mr. Keene, "it has been hampered and embarrassed in its business by the unscrupulous competition of the Standard Oil Company. When it first began to transport and deliver oil at tidewater, the refineries which purchased and refined oil were one after another bought up by the Standard Oil Company or driven out of business by vexatious and oppressive annoyances. The most private details of our business have been communicated to the officers of the Standard Oil Company, and they have, by every means in their power, interfered with our affairs. By the arrangement which they were able to make with the railroads leading from the Oil Regions, other than the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company and the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Standard Oil Company have been able to obtain a control of the business of transporting and refining oil, with the exception of that part of the business which has been carried on by the Tidewater Pipe Company and their refineries, to which it had made deliveries. Repeated efforts have been made by parties in their interest to secure the control of the Tidewater Pipe Company, and if they could succeed, the monopoly thereby secured would add many million dollars a year to their profit."

Mr. Keene's putting of the case was undoubtedly correct, but pious horror of commercial brigandage, coming from "Jim" Keene, was useful only to give joy to a cynical world, unencumbered by the possession of stock in either concern. The Keene sensation was followed by a second, an affidavit from John D. Archbold, of the Standard Oil Company, denying that his company had any interest in the present suit, but adding that for some time the officers of the Tidewater had been seeking an alliance with the Standard:

"Byron D. Benson and David McKelvy have at various times for the past years met me at their own instance, and have proposed to combine the business of the Tidewater Pipe Company with that of the Standard Oil Company, desiring the Standard Oil Company to agree on a division of the business of transporting and refining oil, and to agree with the Tidewater Pipe Company in fixing the rate of transporting oil and the price of refined oils. These proposals were renewed to me by B. D. Benson during the summer of 1882, he coming to my office at his own instance and urging, by various arguments, such an arrangement. These proposals, in whatever shape made, have always been declined. This deponent has also had many interviews with James R. Keene, and always at his request, upon the same subject, in which interviews said Keene has earnestly urged such a combination and has used many arguments in favour of the advantage which would result from such a combination. These proposals have always been declined."

Naturally they were declined — the Standard was not seeking an alliance, it was seeking ownership of the Tidewater; and it expected so to discredit the company that it could buy in its stock for a song. Mr. Archbold's affidavit cooled popular sympathy for the hunted concern no little, however. A suggestion of any kind of a compromise with the Standard was looked upon as rank disloyalty by the Oil Regions, free competition in rates and in prices being, they contended, the only hope of the country. Mr. Archbold's affidavit must have something in it, everybody thought, though it might be, as Mr. Benson immediately swore, "grossly inaccurate."

Such was the character of the charges and countercharges in this purely technical case. The judge took little notice of them in his decision, but, after an exhaustive discussion of the points involved in the election, decided it was illegal and continued the injunction he had granted against the new board. Judge Church's decision aroused general exultation in the Oil Regions — as any failure of the Standard to get what it wanted was bound to do, and with good reason. The Tidewater's growth in the face of the Standard's constant interference with its business was proof that independent pipe-lines and independent refineries could be built up if men had sufficient brains and courage and patience. What one set of men had done, another could do. Their hope of restoring freedom of competition to the oil business was still further brightened in June by the news that the Legislature of Pennsylvania had passed a free pipe-line bill — the measure that they had been urging for twelve years without avail. With a sturdy example of independence, like the Tidewater, before them, and the right of eminent domain for pipes, the future of competition in oil seemed to be up to the oil men themselves.

But the Oil Regions have always been prone to jump at conclusions. They were forgetting Mr. Rockefeller's record when they concluded that he was through with the Tidewater. Because he had failed in his old South Improvement Company trick, that is, failed to create a panic among Tidewater stockholders, and so get their property at panic prices, was no reason at all to suppose he had abandoned the chase. There still remained a legitimate method of getting into the company, and, as a last resort, Mr. Rockefeller accepted it. He bought the minority stock of the concern, held by the Taylor party. Up to this time Mr. Rockefeller had appeared in Tidewater affairs as a destroyer. He now appeared in a role in which he is quite as able — as a pacifier, and his extraordinary persuasiveness was never exercised to better effect. "We own $200,000 worth of your stock," he could tell the people he had been fighting. "If you will consent to confine yourselves to a fixed percentage of our joint business, and will sustain pipage rates and the price of refined oil, we will let you alone. Let us dwell together in peace."

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