The Portland daily press., 1881-02-19
A Great Monopoly.
rH. D. Lloyd. in Atlantic Monthly

IN. ~. LlOyd IN Atlantic M0nthy.1
Very few of the forty millions of people in
the United States who burn kerosene know
that its production, manufacture, and export,
its price, at home and abroad have been con-
trolled for years by single corporation-the
Standard Oil Company. This company began
In partnership, in the early years of the civil
war, between Samuel Andrews and John
Rockefeller yin Cleveland Rockefeller had
been bookkeeper in some interior town in
Ohio and had afterwards made a few thous-
and dollars by keeping -four store in Cleve-
land. Andrews had been day laborer in re-
fneries, and so poor that his wife took in sew
: ing. He found way of refining by which
more kerosene could be got out of barrel of
petroleum than by any other method, and set
up for himself ten-barrel still in Cleveland,
by which he cleared $500 in six months
Andrews still and Rockefellers savings have
grown into the Standard Oil Company. 1t has
a capital, nominally $3,5oO,ooO. but really
much more, on which it divides among its
stockholders every year millions of dollars of
profits. 1t has refneries at Cleveland, Balti-
more and New York. Its own acid works,
glue factories, hardware stores and barrel
shops supply it with all the accessories it needs
in its business. 1t has bought land at Indian,
apolis on which to erect the largest barrel fac
tory in the country. 1t has drawn its check
for 81 100000 to suppress rival 1t buys 3d.
600 to 10000 barrels of crude oil day. at a
price fixed by itself, and makes special con-
tracts with the railroads for the transporta
ton OF 13,0O0,0 600 to 140 900 600 barrels of oil a
year. The four quarters of the globe are par
tltloned among the members of the Standard
combinations. One has the control of the
China trade; another that of some country of
Europe; another that of the United States. In
New York, you cannot buy oil for East Indian
export from the house that has been given the
European trade; reciprocally, the East Indian
house is not allowed to sell for export to Eu-
rope. The Standard produces only one fiftieth
price of all, and refines nine-tenths Circulars
are issued at intervals by which the price of
oil is fixed for all the cities of the country ex-
cept New York, where little competition still
survives. Such is the Indifference of the
Standard Oil Company to railroad charges
that the price is made the same for points SO
Tar apart as Terre Haute, Chicago and Keo-
kuk. There is not to-day merchant In Chi
cago, or in any other city in the New England,
Western, or Southern States, dealing in kero-
sene, whose prices are not fixed for him by the
Standard. In all cases the prices are SO graded
that a merchant in one city cannot export to
another. Chicago, Cincinnati Cleve-
land is not allowed to supply the trb-
utary towns. This is done by the Stand
ard itself, which runs on in its own tank cars
to all the principal points of distribution
The corporation has driven into bankruptcy, or
out OF business, or into union with itself, all
the petroleum refneries of the country except
i've in New York, and few of little conse-
quence in Western Pennsylvania Nobody |
knows how many millions Rockefeller is |
worth. Current gossip among his business ac-
quaintance in Cleveland puts his income last
year at figure second only, if second at all, to
that of Vanderbilt. His partner, Samuel An
drews, the poor English day laborer, retired
years ago with millions. just who the Stand
ard Oil Company are, exactly what their capi-
tai is, and what are their relations to the rail
roads, nobody knows except in part. Their
officers refused to testify before the Supreme
Court Of Pennsylvania, the late New York
Railroad Investigating Committee, and a
committee of Congress. The New York
Committee found there was nothing to |
be learned from them, and was compelled
to confess its inability to ascertain as much as
1t desired to know "of this mysterious organi-
Zation, whose business and transactions are of
such character that its members declined
giving history or description lest their testi-
mony be used to convict them of crime"