Yours very truly,

     John D. Rockefeller.

Neither of these offers was accepted.  In order that this may not rest on my unsupported assertion, I submit the following documents:  The first is a letter from Mr. H.M.  Backus, a brother of Mrs. Backus’s deceased husband, who had been associated with the business and had remained with the company after his death.  The letter was written without any solicitation whatever on my part, but I have since received permission from Mr. Backus to print it.  It is followed by extracts from affidavits made by the gentleman who conducted the negotiations on behalf of Mrs. Backus.  I have no wish to reprint the complimentary allusion to myself in Mr. Backus’s letter, but have feared to omit a word of it lest some misunderstanding ensue: 

     Bowling Green, Ohio, September 18, ’03.

     Mr. John D. Rockefeller,
     Cleveland, Ohio.

I do not know whether you will ever receive this letter or not, whether your secretary will throw it into the waste-basket or not, but I will do my part and get it off my mind, and it will not be my fault if you do not receive or read it.  Ever since the day that my deceased brother’s wife, Mrs. F.N.  Backus, wrote you the unjust and unreasonable letter in reference to the sale of the property of the old Backus Oil Company, in which I had a small interest, I have wanted to write you and record my disapproval of that letter.  I lived with my brother’s family, was at the house the day you called to talk the matter of the then proposed purchase of the property with Mrs. Backus by her request, as she told Mr. Jennings that she wanted to deal through you.  I was in favour of the sale from the first.

I was with Mrs. Backus all through the trouble with Mr. Rose and with Mr. Maloney, did what I could to encourage her, and to prevent Mr. Rose from getting the best of her.  Mrs. Backus, in my opinion, is an exceptionally good financier, but she does not know and no one can convince her that the best thing that ever happened to her financially was the sale of her interest in the Backus Oil Company to your people.  She does not know that five more years of the then increasing desperate competition would have bankrupted the company, and that with the big debt that she was carrying on the lot on Euclid Avenue, near Sheriff Street, she would have been swamped, and that the only thing that ever saved her and the oil business generally was the plan of John D. Rockefeller.  She thinks that you literally robbed her of millions, and feeds her children on that diet three times a day more or less, principally more, until it has become a mania with her, and no argument that any one else can suggest will have any effect upon her.  She is wise and good in many ways, but on that one subject she is one-sided, I think.  Of course, if we could have been assured of continued dividends, I would have