"How are you going to get your crude oil?" Albert and Matthews were asked when they went to tell their employer what they were going to do.
"You will wake up some day and find that there is no Atlas Oil Company.
"We have ways," he continued, "of making money you know nothing about," using, singularly enough, the phraseology employed by a greater man in the interview with another would-be competitor.[455]
"As gentlemen," he went on to say, "I respect you, but as to the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company I shall do all in my power to injure or destroy it."[456]
Afterwards Albert alone was sent for. "Don't you think it would be better for you to leave these men, and have $20,000 deposited to your wife's credit than go with these parties?"
"I went out with them in good faith, and I propose to stay."
"It will be only a matter of a few days with the Buffalo institution at the furthest. We will crush them out, and you will lose what little you have got."
Albert was shown an elaborate statement of the cost of making oil and its selling price, proving that there was no money in oil.[457] The record of dividends was produced in court afterwards. It showed that just before this--January 18, 1881--a dividend of 50 per cent. had been paid in one month.[458] Dividends of $300,000 had been paid in 1881 on the capital of $100,000. "No wonder they did not want competition," said the New York _World_.
These negotiations had been with the son. Albert not yielding to this pressure, and pushing ahead with the construction of the rival stills, the father, who was in California, came back. At his request Albert again interrupted the work on the new refinery, which he alone of the partners could direct, and came from Buffalo to Rochester for an interview.
"You have made a grand mistake," said his old employer, "by going out with those fellows.... The company will not last long.... The result will be, if you stay with them, you will lose all you have got in it.... We are going to commence suits against them. We will not only sue them, but serve an injunction on them and stop their work. The result of it is that when these suits commence, if you are in it, you will be responsible, and you have got a little money, and you will lose it all.... If you come back and work with us everything will be all right, and we will make everything satisfactory to you."