Oil company

“ The Standard Oil Company never lowered the price of its oil except when compelled to do so by competition. The largely increased output of crude oil, the improved methods of refining, the greatly lowered cost of transportation would have lowered the price of coal oil without the philanthropy of the Standard Oil Company. ”

“ That odious combine, which included a number of railroad-officials, oil-operators and refiners, disbanded without producing, refining, buying, selling or transporting a gallon of petroleum. “Politics makes strange bedfellows” and so does business. Among subscribers for South-Improvement stock were certain holders of Standard stock and also their bitterest opponents; among those most active in giving the job its death-blow were prominent members of the Standard Oil-Company. ”

“ Benjamin Brewster once said to a Federal Investigating Committee, which had asked if the Standard could not fix the price of oil as it wished: "At the moment many things may be done, but the reaction is like a relapse of typhoid fever. The Standard Oil Company can never afford to sell goods dear. The people would go to dipping tallow candles in the old-fashioned way if we got the price too high." ”

“ He found the region hampered by an expensive, tedious method of moving oil and left it a transportation-system that serves the industry as no other on earth is served. He substituted the steam-pump for the wearied mule, the iron-artery for the roads of bottomless mire and the huge cistern of boiler-plate for the portable tank of wooden staves that leaked at every pore. To Oil City he was a munificent benefactor. He projected the Imperial Refinery, with a capacity of fifteen-thousand barrels a week, by the sale of which he became a stockholder and officer of the Standard Oil-Company. ”

“ It does not seem to me inherently to lessen this real competition when an oil company tries to establish superior service by providing the consumer with a responsible dealer from which the public can purchase adequate and timely supplies of oil, gasoline and car accessories of some known and reliable standard of quality. No retailer, whether agent or independent, can long remain in business if he does not always, and not just intermittently, have gas to sell. ”

“ There have been so many tales told about the so-called speculations of the Standard Oil Company that I may say a word about that subject. This company is interested only in oil products [94] and such manufacturing affairs as are legitimately connected therewith. It has plants for the making of barrels and tanks; and building pumps for pumping oil; it owns vessels for carrying oil, tank-cars, pipes for transporting oil, etc., etc.—but it is not concerned in speculative interests. ”

“ The Standard Oil Company proposes to ship or control the shipping of a large amount of oil over your road, say a quantity sufficient to yield to you $3,000 freight per month. That company also owns the pipes through which oil is conveyed from the wells owned by individuals to your railroad, except those pipes leading from the wells of George Rice, which pipes are his own. ”

“ Co-operating as we are doing with the Standard Oil Company and the trunk lines in every effort to secure for the railroads paying rates of freight on the oil they carry, I am constrained to say to you that in justice to the interests I represent we should receive from your company at least twenty cents on each barrel of crude oil you transport. ”

“ For years the Standard Oil Company has developed step by step, and I am convinced that it has done well its work of supplying to the people the products from petroleum at prices which have decreased as the efficiency of the business has been built up. ”

“ In 1895 the Standard Oil-Company was given a refusal of the Hovey and surrounding interests, in order to test the territory fully and lay a pipe-line to Glasgow or Louisville, should the production warrant the expenditure. Wells have been sunk east of the Carter nearly to Monticello, eighteen miles off, finding gas and indications of oil. Every true Clintonite is positive an ocean of petroleum underlies his particular neck of woods, impatient to be relieved and burden landholders and operators alike with excessive wealth! ”

“ These companies, such as the Gulf Refining Company and the Texas Refining Company, have their gathering pipe lines, their great trunk lines, their marketing stations, and their export trade, like the Standard; the Pure Oil Company has its tank cars, its tank ships, and its barges on the great rivers of Europe. The ending of the rebate system has stimulated the growth of independents, and the production of crude oil and the market demand in a thousand directions has increased the business to an extent which is now far beyond the ability of any one corporation to monopolize. ”

“ Oil seemed a curse to many a man in those days as he stood by his silent wells and wondered what was to become of his business, of his family, in this clash of interests.
While the producers were inaugurating these movements, Captain Hasson and a committee were busy making out the plan of the permanent association which was to control the business of oil-producing and prevent its becoming the slave of the refining interest. The knowledge that such an organisation was being worked out kept the oil country in a ferment. ”

“ We have recently been on the very verge of granting independence, but, unfortunately, oil has been discovered by the Standard Oil Company, and the question will doubtless now depend on the amount of oil there is. ”

“ The Standard Oil Company, incorporated in New Jersey, with a capital stock of $110,000,000, controls, directs and manages more than seventy corporations through its possession of a majority of their stock. Some of these companies own stock in still other corporations, and all together the combine operates more than 400 separate and distinct properties, thus monopolizing 90 per cent, of the export oil trade and 84 per cent. ”

“ Bulk-boats, leaky barrels and long hauls through fathomless mud are superseded by pipe-lines, which pump oil from the wells to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago. The rickety stills and dangerous devices of former times have yielded to the splendid refineries that utilize every vestige of crude and furnish two-hundred merchantable commodities. For much of this important advance in tools, appliances and machinery the great Oil-Well Supply-Company is directly responsible. From small beginnings it has grown to dazzling proportions. ”

“ It seems to me that a great responsibility rests with somebody among you for stimulating the present causeless excitement, and the lawless destruction of property. On meeting you here on your return from the South, I explained to you, very briefly, that the whole plan of the South Improvement Company was founded upon the expectation of co-operation with the oil producers to maintain a good price for crude oil, as the only means of securing a fair remuneration to either the transporter, the refiner, or the merchant. ”

“ As men and means were found to put down wells, to devise and build tanks and boats and pipes and railroads for handling the oil, to adapt and improve processes for manufacturing, so men were found from the beginning of the oil business to wrestle with every problem raised. They came in shoals, young, vigorous, resourceful, indifferent to difficulties, greedy for a chance, and with each year they forced more light and wealth from the new product. ”

“ A. We were advancing the interests of the railroads, the transporting interest, the interest of the producers, those who mine oil, the interest of the refiners, those who manufacture it, and the interests of the American trade and business generally, for five-sixths of the oil produced is exported, and an increase in the price of crude oil at the mines is essential to the payment of a fair business profit to the refiners ”

“ An organisation to protect the oil capital is imperatively needed. Oil to yield a fair profit should be sold for twenty-five cents per gallon. That price would protect every interest and cover every outlay for getting out the crude petroleum, transporting by railroad, refining and the incidental charges of handling, etc. The foreign markets will regulate the price to a great extent, because they are the greatest consumers. The people of China, Germany, and other foreign countries cannot afford to pay high prices. ”

“ I do not believe there is any intention among the oil men to 'bull' the market: The endeavour is to equalise all around and protect the capital invested. If by common consent, in good faith, the refiners agree to reduce the quantities to an allotment for each, made in view of the supply and demand, and the capacity for production, the market can be regulated with a reasonable profit for all. The price of oil to-day is fifteen cents per gallon. The proposed allotment of business would probably advance the price to twenty cents. ”

“ No proofs were made of its rapacity or of the greed with which it lays hold of every competitive industry, except such as might be drawn from the fact that it is the almost sole occupant of the field of oil operations, from which it has driven nearly every competitor. ”

“ As the business grew it organized corporations under the laws of these states, to carry on the industry under corporate agencies. Manufactories were located at the seaboard for the export-trade. It was easier and cheaper to pipe crude to the coast than to refine it at the sources of supply and ship the varied products. Thus the refining of export-oil was done at the seaboard, just as iron is manufactured at Pittsburg instead of at the ore-beds on Lake Superior. The company aimed to open markets for petroleum by reducing the cost of its transportation and manufacture and bettering its quality. ”

“ But why, cried the producer, when oil is already so low, take advantage of our necessity and force us into competition with each other; why enforce this immediate shipment? They answered their question themselves, and began then to make a charge against the Standard, which they continue to make to-day; that is, that it habitually meets the extraordinary expenses to which it is put by depressing the price of crude oil—"taking it out of the producer." The Bradford region demanded great investments, therefore immediate shipment. "The producer pays." ”

“ The oil business does not demand it. There is plenty of reserve for all of its ventures. It must go into other industries. Naturally, the interests sought will be allied to oil. They will be gas, and we have the Standard Oil crowd steadily acquiring the gas interests of the country. They will be railroads, for on transportation all industries depend, and, besides, railroads are one of the great consumers of oil products and must be kept in line as buyers. ”

“ If by reason of our position we possess advantages for refining oil here, over refiners outside, we have strong objections against the action of the railway companies in taking from us such advantages, by requiring us to pay for hauling a given quantity of oil as much as they require of Cleveland refiners for hauling the same amount of oil 300 miles greater distance; or for requiring us to pay as much for hauling 715 barrels of refined oil as they require for hauling 1,000 barrels of crude oil the same distance. ”

“ The use and export of crude oil is but a small proportion of the consumption, and time and money were required to re-establish this great product upon its former basis, and these people were glad to furnish all needed means to accomplish this end, as are also capitalists at other points not strictly within the Oil Region, yet upon your lines. ”

“ It was evident that the Producers' Association had a long and severe task before it to bring the crude output down to anything like the demand. Could the great body of producers be depended upon to take still further measures to lesson their production, and at the same time would they hold their oil until the agency had the mastery of the situation? ”

“ For the first time in the history of the oil business the pro- ducers were united in an organisation, which, if carried out, would regulate the production of oil to something like the demand for it, would prevent stocks from falling into the hands of speculators, and would provide a strong front to any combination with monopolistic tendencies. ”

“ These independents could get rid of their export oil only by selling to the combination. Through its other self—the company which controls the terminals—it has kept an agent [Pg 141] in the oil regions for years to buy for export this refined oil which its owners and makers could not export themselves. ”

“ Its efforts to drive out the independent refineries by the manipulation of the railroads drove the producers and refiners to combine. The heavy charges for handling oil by the Standard pipe-line and by the railways drove these independents to build a seaboard pipe-line for both refined and crude, and to demonstrate that refined as well as crude could be pumped to the sea in pipes. The buying out of their foreign agents forced them to develop their own market in Europe. ”

“ The low price for crude which these vast stocks caused, the high charges for gathering, transporting and storing, all services out of which the Standard was making big profits, the fact that the profit on refined oil steadily increased in these years—the result of the overthrow of independent refiners and pipe-lines—while the profit on crude steadily diminished, were facts which the oil producers brooded over incessantly, and the more bitterly because they felt they could do nothing to help themselves. ”

“ The Columbia has "terminal privileges," that is, a place on the water-front from which it can ship oil—an almost impossible privilege to secure around New York harbour. The Producers' Oil Company now obtained from Hugh King, the president of the Columbia, the use of his terminal. They at once had fifty tank-cars built, and prepared to ship their crude oil, but the market was against them, stocks were increasing, prices dropping. The railroad charged a price so high for running their cars that there was no profit, and the fifty tank-cars were never used in that trade. ”