Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-02-25

unfortunate owner of nearly a hundred pro-
ducing wells, told story before the supreme
court of Pennsylvania that ought not to be
uninteresting to the million of consumers of
kerosene. One day, returning to his home at
Parker, near Pittsburgh, the center of the great
oil district, he found the citizens in state of
terrible excitement The Standard, through
its pipe line, had refused to run oil, unless sold
to them, and then declared it could not buy,
because the RAILROADS could furnish it no
cars in which to move away the eoil. Hun
dreds of wells were stopped, to their great
damage. Thousands more, whose owners
were afraid to close them for fear of injury by
salt water, were pumping the oil on the
ground. All the influence of a few leading
men was hardly enough to preventan outbreak
and the destruction of railroad and pipe lines.
Mr.. Campbell telegraphed the railroad author
ties, "The refusal of the Standard to run oil,
unless sold upon immediate shipment, and of
the railroads to furnish cars, has created such
excitement here that the conservative citizens
will not be able to control the peace, and fear
the scenes of last July will be repeated in an
aggravated FORM" The interview that fol-
lowed convinced the railroad men that they had
gone too far, and in few hours afterwards
hundreds of empty cars suddenly appeared at
Parker, and for week the railroad, which had
said it could furnish no cars, took away from
Parker fifty thousand barrels of oil day!
If we turn to the experience of the refiners
we find they Jared as badly as the producers.
The handful of New York refiners who sur
vived the conspiracy against them testify that
they had to keep their capacity limited and to
do as little as they could. They did not dare
to build large refneries, because they would
not be able to get oil enough carried to them
to keep them going. Mr.. Alexander, of Cleve-
land tells how he was informed by Rockefeller,
of the Standard, that if he would not sell out
he should be crushed out. The Standard had
a contract with the railroads which made
them master. He had to take their terms, and
sell for S65,000 q refinery which cost him
$150,00O, and was making money. Refiner
after refner in Pittsburgh, buying his crude oil
in the open market, manufacturing it at his
works, shipping it to the seaboard, met with
continued succession of losses, and was forced
into bankruptcy or sale of his works to the
Standard, who always had buyer on the spot
at the right time. The great majority of
these refineries, when bought by the Standard,
to other refneries. The Vesta and Cosmos re-
fineries, which cost 100000, were sold at
sheriff. sale to the Standard for $4,000, and
are now run vigorously by that company. The
Germania, which was run to its full capacity
as long as the Pennsylvania railroad gave its
proprietor transportation, is now leased to the
Standard, but stands idle, as that concern can
make more money by limiting the production
and maintaining an artificial price than by
giving the people cheap light. The Standard
became practically the only refiner of oil in
Western Pennsylvania, and its rule was bank
ruptcy to all attempting to lead an independ-
ent existence. y. P. Reichardt tells us how
the agents of the Standard came to him with
the threat that if he did not come into their
combination they would drive him to the wall.
The Standard called upon this free man to
choose between financial ruin and joining them
on these terms; he was to refine only half as
them tribute OF one cent gallon, tax of
five to- twelve per cent.
The. selling, storing, trans
porting, and price of his oil he was to leave
entirely to the Standard. This testimony with
regard to the regulation of prices by the
Standard is confirmed by the unwilling evil
dence of Mr.. j. j. Vandergrift, president of
the Standards United Pipe Line, and stock
holder in the Standard, who said that the
Standard fixes for the other refiners in the com
bination how much they shall produce each
month, thus excepting up the price" 1t is
also proved to have manipulated the price of
oil on the exchanges by the issue of fictitious
pipeline certificates to the amount of hun
dreds of thousands of dollars.
The Pittsburgh chamber of commerce report
ed April 3, 1876, that there were twenty-one
oil refineries idle in that city, owing to freight
determinations and combinations. There were
100000 invested in these refineries, and if
in operation they would have required the
labor directly of 5000 men, besides the much
larger number OF carpenters, masons, brick
layers, bOller-makers, pumpmakers, and other
workingmen, who would have employment if
the oil refining business were prosperous. A
minute prepared in 1879 by the Hon. Lewis
Emery, Jr., member of the Pennsylvania leg
islature, shows that of the fifty-eight retiner-
les in Pittsburg hin 1867, twenty-eight have
been crushed out and dismantled, and that of
the remaining thirty twenty-nine have been
bought up or leased by the great monopoly.
A partial list prepared by Mr.. Emery of ssthe
petroleum refineries in Pennsylvania bank
rupted, squeezed out, bought up, leased, or
dismantled" by the Standard contains seventy
six refineries, of which thirty one were dis
mantled, twenty-four leased or bought, some
to be run, and some to be shut down, and
twenty-one were driven out of business.
Its genius for monopoly has given the
Standard control of more than the product
of oil and its manufacture. Wholesale
merchants in all the cities of the
country, except New York, have to buy and
sell at the prices it makes. Merchants who
buy oil of the Standard are not allowed to sell
to dealers who buy of its few competitors.
Some who have done so have been warned not
" lCpCd tuC OuCuSc, duu nave. D6eQ informed
that, if they did so, the Standard though under
contract to supply them with oil, would cut
them off, and would fight any suit they might
bring through all the courts without regard
to expense. AT least one case is known where
the deputy oil inspector, in a city to which oil
had been shipped by an outside dealer, re-
ceived from the State inspector peremptory
orders by telegraph, before the oil had arrived,
to condemn it In the South the Standards
control is absolute. 1t has now stretched out
its hands to grasp the turpentine trade, and its
peculiar tactics have already been disastrously
felt in the turpentine market.
These oil producers and refners whom the
Standard was robbing with and without forms
OF law fought with every weapon they could
command. The struggle has been going on
for nine years. All that men
could do who were fighting for self-preserva-
ton was done. They caused to be introduced
into Congress the first original bill to regulate
railroads in Interstate commerce. The out
RACES done by the roads and the Standard were
proved before an Investigating committee of
Congress, but Congress did nothing. The leg.
islature OF Pennsylvania was besought to pass
laws to enforce the constitutional provision for
equal rights on the railroads of the State, but
the money OF the Standard was more powerful |
than the petition of business men who asked
only for fair chance. Numbers of suits were
brought, by individuals and nominally by the |
State, but by the harmonious efforts of the
governor, the attorney general, the courts and |
The defendants they were prevented from COM
ing to any conclusion. Indictments for |