among the railroads, with a double share going to Pennsylvania Railroad; and (5) South would provide tank cars and loading facilities. The secret concessions would have helped lessen the "vicious" competition among the railroad lines by giving a steady, standardized flow of commerce. Shares of the South Improvement Company were allocated to interests in the oil refining cities as follows: Pittsburgh received 485, Philadelphia received 505, Cleveland received 720, and New York received 180 (represented by Jabez A. Bostwick). Peter H. Watson, as president of the South Improvement Company, received 100 shares. Since both Bostwick and Watson were secretly allied with Standard Oil, Rockefeller kept control of the company from the Pennsylvania oil refiners and Pennsylvania Railroad interests. 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. Rockefeller used the company as a tool to force Cleveland refiners to further consolidate. 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. Historians would come to call this the "Cleveland Massacre." 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. Rockefeller had offered every important Cleveland banker a chance to buy Standard Oil stock, ensuring the welfare of the Standard Oil company. Dissolution 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. 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. The producers' union also agreed to stop drilling wells for 30 days. On March 2, 1872, the Pennsylvania Railroad sent a message to the oil regions indicating that their lines would not harm the mutually beneficial relationship between the railroads and the producers. By March