Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/108

Rh in three months' time to one of 10,000 barrels. By this manoeuvre it became master of over one-fifth of the refining capacity of the United States. Its next individual competitor was Sone and Fleming, of New York, whose capacity was 1,700 barrels. The Standard had a greater capacity than the entire Oil Creek Regions, greater than the combined New York refiners. The transaction by which it acquired this power was so stealthy that not even the best informed newspaper men of Cleveland knew what went on. It had all been accomplished in accordance with one of Mr. Rockefeller's chief business principles—"Silence is golden."

While Mr. Rockefeller was working out the "good of the oil business" in Cleveland, his associates were busy at other points. Charles Lockhart in Pittsburg and W. G. Warden in Philadelphia were particularly active, though neither of them accomplished any such sweeping benefaction as Mr. Rockefeller had. It was now evident what the stockholders of the South Improvement Company meant when they assured the railroads that all the refiners were to go into the scheme, that, as Mr. Warden said, they "never had any other purpose in the matter!" A little more time and the great scheme would be an accomplished fact. And then there fell in its path two of