Under these conditions they naturally obtained the monopoly, the extent of which has been already described.
Their competitors could rage, hold public meetings, start riots, threaten to lynch Mr.Rockefeller and all his associates, but they could not long survive in face of these advantages.

The only way in which the smaller shippers could overcome this handicap was by acquiring new methods of transportation.

It was this necessity that inspired the construction of pipe lines; but the Standard, as already described, succeeded in absorbing these just about as rapidly as they were constructed.
Not only did the Standard obtain railroad rebates but it developed the most death-dealing methods in its system of marketing its oil.

In these campaigns it certainly overstepped the boundaries of legitimate business, even according to the prevailing morals of its own or of any other time.

While it probably did not set fire to rival refineries, as it has sometimes been accused of doing, it undoubtedly did resort to somewhat Prussian methods of destroying the foe.