Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/159

Rh the Oil Regions did not understand in 1872 was economy. As a matter of fact the oil-producing business was going through a stage in its natural development similar to oil refining. Both, under the stimulus of the enormous profits in the years immediately following the discovery of oil, had been pushed until they had outstripped consumption. The competition resulting from the inrush of producers and refiners and the economies which had been worked out were bringing down profits. The combinations attempted by both refiners' and producers in these years were really efforts to keep up prices to the extravagant point of the early speculative years.

Now the drop in the price of oil everybody recognised to be due to a natural cause. Where a year before the production had been 12,000 barrels a day, it was now 16,000. The demand for refined had not increased in proportion to this production of crude, and oil stocks had accumulated until the tanks of the region were threatening to overflow. And there was no sign of falling off. Under these circumstances it needed little argument to convince the oil men that if they were to get a better price they must produce no more than the world would use. There was but one way to effect this—to put down no new wells until the stocks on hand were reduced and the daily production was brought down to a marketable amount.

Under the direction of the Producers' Association an agitation at once began in favour of stopping the drill for six months. It was a drastic measure. There was hardly an oil operator in the entire region who had not on hand some piece of territory on which he was planning to drill, or on which he had not wells under way. Stopping the drill meant that all of the aggressive work of his business should cease for six months. It meant that his production, unreplenished, would gradually fall off, until at the end of the period he would have probably not over half of what he had now; that then he must begin over again to build up. It meant, too, that he was