Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-12-08
AN IMPRACTICABLE PLAN.

A contributor from Oil City, elsewhere,
presents his theory of a plan to remedy the
depressed condition of the petroleum busi-
ness. The controlling idea is that what the
oil interests need is organization. This is
not the organization that is necessary to per-
form such legitimate industrial or CONNER
cial purposes as the refining of petroleum or
taking the products to domestic or foreign
markets. Any such plans as those based
upon the fundamental conditions of trade
are waved aside in a summary and rather dog
matte declaration of their unworthiness.
The only remedy that will serve, according
to this theory, is the organization of the
thousands of producers into an association
of such compactness that they can confront
the Standard and name their own price for
oil, and at the same time order the entire
stoppage of new developments.
If it were possible to organize the oil pro-
ducers into single unit, so that as one
seller it would confront the Standard as one
buyer-which every one with even super
fetal knowledge of the petroleum business
knows to be impossible-what would
be the result? The fixing of the
price of crude petroleum would be
simply trial of strength between
the two forces. The spontaneous action OF
demand and supply would have nothing to
do with it. If the Producers organization
should declare that they would sell no oil
at less than a dollar q barrel, the Standard
could respond with the assertion that it
would buy no oil at more than sixty cents;
and the question would be decided in favor
of the side that could hold out longest with
the operations of the trade in utter suspen-
sion. The manifest probability that the
Standard would exhibit the greatest power
of endurance, Joined with the utter impossi-
bility of bringing all the producers under
an organization of such compactness, makes
it unnecessary to discuss this ideality any
further.
AS to the organization which is within the
range of possibility, it is worth while to note
that any attempt to prohibit new operation
must be futile while the ability to lease
and drill new territory is open to any one,
the Standard included, whether inside or
outside of the Producers association. In
to enforce its demands for better prices upon
the Standard, any such power is reduced to
a fgment of the Imagination by the fact that
the Standard controls about thirty per cent
of the production. Any organization of
the producing interest must either in
clude the Standard production or exclude it.
If the former is done, all trials of strength,
on the subject of prices or pipe line charges,
must be made with an enemy in the camp,
informing the opposing party of the plans,
the weakness or the doubts of the organzl-
ton; furnishing the lever by which to divide
counsels, and providing the facilities by
which to neutralize every movement to en-
force the higher values. On the other hand
if the Standard production is excluded,
there could hardly be an arrangement which
the Standard could contemplate with more
equanimity than that of the producers with
holding their oil for a better price while it
drew from its own production all the oil re-
quired for its present needs, secured all the
advantages of the decrease of supply, and
the producers kept out of market until they
were frozen out of the business altogether
ana were OOllSeu 10 Sell luelE IeETlIOTy 10 II
at its own figures.
Add to these considerations the fact that in
any such attempt of a producers organiza-
ton to force good prices from the Standard,
they would 60 into the fight with their stocks
already In the hands of the Standard, from
which, under the conditions of the plan pro-
posed, they could not withdraw them,
except by selling to the Standard, and
which the Standard might. as it has done
in previous emergencies, draw upon for its
pressing needs, and make good when it won
the fight. All these factors in such a pro-
ject as is proposed, show its utter futility
1t is impossible of realization in the first
place, and if any measure of realization
could be obtained, it would only strengthen
the hands of the monopoly in its work of
absorbing petroleum production at hard pan
prices.
We must credit our correspondent with
sincerity, in the absence of evidence to the
contrary, but 1t is necessary to say that if
the Standard were now seeking to draw up
a plan to divert the producers from the work
of building independent refneries and pipe
lines, as the shutdown movement was used
for the same purpose three years ago, it
could hardly have devised one which would
put the producers more completely at its