San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1881-03-10
A GREAT MONOPOLY.
BY II. d. LLOYD.

Very few of the forty millions o.
people in the United States who burr
kerosene know that its production
manufacture and export its price a,
home and abrod have been controlled
for years by o single corporation
the Standard Oil Company. This
company began in partnership, in
the early years Of the civil war, be
tween Samuel Andrews and John
Rockefeller in Cleveland.
Rockefeller had been bookkeeper
in an interior town in Ohio, and had
afterwards made few thousand dol.
lars by keepinga -four store in Cleye-
land. Andrews had been day Ia
borer in refneries, and 80 poor that
his wife took in sewing. He found a
way of refining by which more kero-
some could be got out of a barrel OF
petroleum than by any other method,
and set up for himself a 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 aclpital,nominally $3,5OO,OOO but
really much more, on which it di-
vides among its stockholders every
year millions of dollars of profits. 1t
has refineries at Cleveland, Baltimore,
and New York. Its own acid works,
glue factories, hardware stores, and
barrel shops supply it with all the &C
cessories it needs in it's business.
It has bought land at Indianapolis on
which to erect the largest barrel fac
| tory in the country. 1t has drawn
its check for a $1,000, 900 to suppress
rival 1t buys 10000 to 10000 bar
rels of crude oil day, at price fixed
by itself, and makes special contracts
with railroads for the transportation
of 13,OOO,0O0 to 14,000,000 barrels OF
oil year.
The four quarters of the globe are
partitioned off among the members OF
the Standard combinations. One has
the control of the China trade; an
other 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 Elst Indian
house is not allowed to, sell for en-
port to Europe. The Standard pro.
duces only one fiftieth or sixtietn OF
our petroleum, but dictates the price
of al, and retines nine tenths Cir
culars areissued at intervals by which
the price of oil is fixed for all the
cities of the country,except New York,
where q little competition survives.
Such is the indifference OF the Stand
ard oil Company to railroad charges
that the price is made the same for
points 80 far apart as Terre Haute,
Chicago and Keokuk.
There is not to day a merchant
in Chicago, or in any other city in the
New England, Western, or Southern
States, dealing in kerosene, whose
prices are not fixed for him by the
Standard In all cases these prices
are graded SO that q merchant in one
city cannot export to another. Chi
cago, Cincinnati or Cleveland is not
allowed to supply the tributary towns.
That is done by the Standard itself,
which runs oil in its own tank cars to
all the principal points of distribution.
This corporation has driven into
bankruptcy, or out of business, or in
to union with itself, all the petroleum
refneries of the country except five
in New York, and few of little con-
sequence in Western Pennsylvania.
Nobody knows how many millions
Rockefeller is worth. Current gos-
sip among his business acquaintance
in Cleveland puts his income last year
at figure second only, if second at
all, to that of Vanderbilt. His part
ner, Samuel Andrews, the poor Eng
lish day laborer, retired years ago with
millions.
Just who the Standard Oil Compa-
ny are, exactly what their capital is,
and what their relations to the rail
road, nobody knows except in part
Their officers refused to testify before
the late New York Railroad Investi-
eating Committee, and a committee
of Congress. The New york commit
tee found there was nothing to be
be learned from them, and was com
PEELED to confess its inability to as
certa n as much as it desired to know
"of hlsmysterious organization, whose
business and transactions are Of such
a character that its members declined
giving a history or description. lest
their testimony be used to convict
them of crime March Atlantic.
Many young girls are unfit for active
life. aud thousands Of mothers drag out
a misersble existence on account OF
peculiar female weakness which they