Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/195

Rh which concerned the oil business which John Rockefeller was not on the inside of. Mr. Blanchard later stated that the "crude equivalent" scheme was suggested by certain Western refiners. The tremendous advantage Cleveland secured by the new arrangement, practically 300 miles of free transportation, seemed to prove, too, that Mr. Rockefeller had not been inactive during the conference. Whether he had or had not suggested the points in the "Rutter circular" so advantageous to his interests, he used them now to aid him in accomplishing one of the shrewdest and most far-reaching moves of his life—the move which was to lead at last to the realisation of his Great Purpose—the concentration of the oil business in his own hands. For Mr. Rockefeller, quiet as he had been since the breaking up of the Refiners' Association in the summer of 1873, had by no means given up the idea of doing for the refining interest of the whole country what he had done for that of Cleveland through the South Improvement Company.

Mr. Rockefeller has shown repeatedly in his conquering business career remarkable ability to learn from experience. The breaking up of the Refiners' Association may have seemed a disaster to him. He did not allow it to be a profitless disaster. He extracted useful lessons from the experience, and, armed with this new wisdom, bent his whole mind to working out a third plan of campaign. He now knew that he could not hope to make again so rich a haul as he had made through the defunct South Improvement scheme. The experience of the past year with the refiners convinced him that it would take time to educate them to his idea of combination; but he had learned who of them were capable of this education. As for the producers, the alliance attempted with them was enough to demonstrate that they would never endure long the restraints of any association. Besides, the bulk of them still held the, to him, unpractical belief that rebates were wrong. Mr. Rockefeller had also re-learned in these eighteen months