The secret concessions would have helped lessen the "vicious" competition among the railroad lines by giving a steady, standardized flow of commerce.
[4] Charles Pratt of New York and John Dustin Archbold and Jacob Vandergrift of the oil regions had refused to join and so did not receive shares.
Between mid-February and mid-March 1872, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler bought twenty-three companies, eighteen of which were oil refineries, and all but one of them were located in Cleveland.
An independent refiner who thought he could survive found that when he went to borrow money, all the Cleveland banks were in Standard Oil's pocket.
[7] Word leaked out of the South Improvement scheme, and the proposed 100% increase in rail shipping rates inflamed the independent producers and many smaller refineries.
Following a summit and vocal protest by the independent oil producers and refiners led by Henry Huttleston Rogers and the Charles Pratt and Company refining interests of Brooklyn, New York, which came close to physical warfare in western Pennsylvania in March 1872 (and came to be known as the "Oil War"), the railroads agreed to back down.
[citation needed] Crude oil suppliers formed their own organization called the Petroleum Producers' Union which levied a boycott on all members of the South Improvement Company on March 1, 1872.
On March 11, 1872, New York refiners sent a delegation to the oil regions to back the suppliers' opposition to the South Improvement Company.