Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1883-06-14

Growth and Power of the Standard oil
Company.


Neu York World.
Never among free people-never, in
fact, since the world was created and
man became grasping-has there been
such another monopoly as the great cor
poration known as the Standard Oil Com
pany. And yet, although BY far the
greater part of the people in the United
states pay tribute to it every time they
light lamp, and though it has controlled
railroads, bought Legislatures, pocketed
Governors and whipped Congress. few
persons know anything definite about the
history or the character of this great
monopoly.
Early in the sixties John Rockefeller
and Samuel Adams formed a copartuer-
ship IN the oil business. The productive
Oil region in the United States is really a
very small area. From Cattaraugus
county, n. Y, the oil district extends
INTO INTO pennsylvania for distance of about
lOU miles, andlS about thirteen miles wide.
Mexican county, in Pennsylvania, and
Cattaraugus county, in New York, are by
far the two richest spots of the whole oil
producing section.
Adams was at first only laborer in
the oil region. He hit on a new process
OF refining, from which he made a few
hundred dollars, and he took Rockefeller
INTO cOpartnership with him, because the
latter had few more hundred dollars.
ms Rockefeller and some of his kinsmen
are yet the 0Wners-at least the control
lers-of the gigantic corporation which
mas grown from such an humble begin
ming. so deXter0usly has he used, con-
cealed, divided and diverted his wealth
that the general newspaper writer usual
ly forgets to place his name in the list of
mIlllonaires. Yet it is doubtful whether.
except Gould and Vanderbilt, there is a
richer man in the country, Indeed.
whether he is not richer than they. is ut
terly unknown. The Standard Oil Com
pany has an ostensible capital of about
$4,OOO,0oO but that does not even give
hint of its wealth.
In one word, the secret of the STAN
dard's growth is its management of the
railroads. Not only did it in its early
days get such special rates for transpor-
tatlon as enabled it to bankrupt COMPETE
tors, but afterwards it came to its own
cars, and the terminal facilities of the
railroad, and by not allowing other COM
panles to use these facilities, or these
cars, 1t had practically the whole oil in
its own hands. In the days of old Com
mOdore Vanderbilt it was said and gen.
orally credited that there was only one
man living who could dictate to him, and
that man was Rockefeller. Railroad
Commissions, Legislatures and railroad
managers-these have been as clay in the
hands of the potter.
There were dozens and dozens of other
companies in the oil region who under
took to get the oil from their wells to
transport 1T, to refine it and to place it on
the market purely as legitimate bust
ness investment. 1t is remarkable that
disaster in some shape or other has over
taken every one of them which was of
any Importance. Several, after making
an expensive plant, had thought their
prosperity secure, when, to their surprise
and Indignation, they found that when
they got their refined product to the mar
ket they could find no purchasers.
Inc standard Company not only under
sold them. but in not a few cases bluntly
informed them that there were no pur-
chasers in the market but those in the
Standard combination; and the innocent
oilmen were given their choice to hold
their product forever or to sell at a ruin
Gus price to their great competitor.
Ia other cases establishments which
gave promise of success were brought out
by mysterious agents and dismantled.
Hundreds of fortunes have in this way
been swallowed up. Whenever a rival
company refused a mysterious invitation
to consolidate and in course of time fell
under the Sherlff's hammer, the great
octopus always had a purchaser on the
ground.
The result, told in a few words. is SIM
ply this: With the exception of one or
two refining companies in this city, all of
the oil produced in the great American oil
region, which supplies the world, goes
through the hands of this one company.
Its dominion, therefore, is the whole
wOrld-wherever lamps burn. In every
market, except New York, the price of
oil is precisely what it chooses to make
it. 1t has divided the world among its
several branches, which all operate under
different names. One supplies certain
European countries; another supplies the
trade of Asia and Africa; another GER
tain American markets, and so on.
Except cotton, our most important sim
gle article of expectation is now petro-
leum. The world depends on our little
but productive oil section for it's supply:
that is to say, it depends ON the Standard
Oil Company. And every human being
who burns kerosene, from Alaska to the
Cape of Good Hope, enriches this grasp
ing monopoly.
1t makes its own barrels, it has its own
pipes, it practically owns the railroads, it
controls the markets of all the materials
used in refining and is in fact an autocrat
not less absolute than the Car.
And 1t has done all this in mysteri-
Gus way that nobody has ever fully I'M
derstood its workings. Rockefeller him.
self is seldom or never heard of: the inn
mense corporation has innumerable sub
divisions and is known by many different
names. 1t has made prominent politi-
clans and powerful railroad men secret
sharers in just enough. of it's indetermina-
bic income to keep them ''SOlid." 1t has
turned up in courts, i'll the Legislature.
in Congress, in government places high
and low, at the most mysterious times
and in the most mysterious ways. 1t
combines the audacity and secrecy of the
Nihilists with the opposition of the Car.
No man can ever put his hand on it
when he wants it, but it puts its hand ON
any man when it wants him. There is
only one power that can now grapple sue
cesstully with it and that seems to be the
National Government. When it causes
another great strike, as it Indirectly had
much TO do with the great strike few
years ago, the people will become alarmed
and the MISUNDERSTANDING Oil Company