Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/150

Rh the business, and I made a speech which, I guess, was pretty warlike. Well, right in the middle of it John Rockefeller stopped rocking and took down his hands and looked at me. You never saw such eyes. He took me all in, saw just how much fight he could expect from me, and I knew it, and then up went his hands and back and forth went his chair."

For fully a week this quiet circulation among the oil men went on, and then, on May 15 and 16, public meetings were held in Titusville, at which the new scheme which they had been advocating was presented publicly. This new plan, called the "Pittsburg Plan" from the place of its birth, had been worked out by the visiting gentlemen before they came to the Oil Regions. It was a most intelligent and comprehensive proposition.

As in the case of the South Improvement scheme, a company was to be formed to run the refining business of the whole country, but this company was to be an open instead of a secret organisation, and all refiners were to be allowed to become stockholders in it. The owners of the refineries who went into the combination were then to run them in certain particulars according to the direction of the board of the parent company; that is, they were to refine only such an amount of oil as the board allowed, and they were to keep up the price, for their output as the board indicated. The buying of crude oil and the arrangements for transportation were also to remain with the directors. Each stockholder was to receive dividends whether his plant operated or not. The "Pittsburg Plan" was presented tentatively. If anything better could be suggested they would gladly accept it, its advocates said. "All we want is a practical combination. We are wed to no particular form."

The first revelation of the public meetings at which the "Pittsburg Plan" was presented was that in the days Mr.