Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/182

Rh ment Company, was president of the Erie. The two at once looked into the condition of their joint oil traffic. They found the rebate system abolished a year before again well intrenched. Nevertheless the Erie was not doing much business. The entire shipments of oil over the Erie for 1873 were but 762,000 barrels out of a total of 4,963,000. Naturally they went to work to build up a trade, and their relations being what they had been with the Standard, the company controlling a third of the country's refining capacity, they went to them to see if they could not get a percentage of their seaboard shipments from Cleveland. Mr. Rockefeller was willing to give them shipments if they would make the rates as low as were given to any of his competitors on any of the roads, and if they would deliver his oil at Hunter's Point, Brooklyn, where he had oil yards, and where the Central delivered, or if they would not do that if they would lease their own oil yards to him. There was an excellent business reason for making that latter demand, which Mr. Blanchard explained to the Hepburn Commission:

"The Standard," said Mr. Blanchard, "had a force of men, real estate, houses, tanks and other facilities at Hunter's Point for receiving and coopering the oil ; and they had their cooperage materials delivered over there. The arrangement prior to that time was that the Erie Company performed this service for its outside refiners at Weehawken, for which the Erie Company made specific charges and added them to their rates for freight. The Standard Company said to us: 'We do the business at low cost at Hunter's Point because we are expert oil men and know how to handle it; we pay nobody a profit, and cannot and ought not to pay you a profit for a service that is not transportation any more than inspecting flour or cotton; and the New York Central delivers our oil at that point. Now if you will deliver our oil at Hunter's Point and permit us to do this business, you may do so; we want to do that business,