Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/256

Rh ness, whose experience up to 1876 was related in the preceding chapter. Mr. Harkness's next experience in the oil business was related to the same committee as that already mentioned:

"'When I was compelled to succumb,' he said, 'I thought it was only temporarily; that the time would come when I could go into the business I was devoted to. We systematised all our accounts and knew where the weak points were. I was in love with the business. I selected a site near three railroads and the river. I took a run across the water—I was tired and discouraged and used up in 1876, and was gone three or four months. I came back refreshed and ready for work, and had the plans and specifications and estimates made for a refinery that would handle 10,000 barrels of oil a day, right on this hundred acres of land. I believed the time had arrived when the Pennsylvania Railroad would see their true interest as common carriers, and the interest of their stockholders and the business interest of the city of Philadelphia, and I took those plans, specifications, and estimates, and I called on Mr. Roberts, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. I had consulted one or two other gentlemen, whose advice was worth having, whether it would be worth my while to go to see President Roberts. I went there and laid the plans before him, and told him I wanted to build a refinery of 10,000 barrels capacity a day. I was almost on my knees begging him to allow me to do that. He said; 'What is it you want?' I said; 'I simply ask to be put upon an equality with everybody else, and especially the Standard Oil Company.' I said; 'I want you to agree with me that you will give me transportation of crude oil as low as you give it to the Standard Oil Company or anybody else for ten years, and then I will give you a written assurance that I will do this refining of 10,000 barrels of oil a day for ten years.' I asked him if that was not an honest position for us to be in; I, as a manufacturer, and he, the president of a railroad. Mr. Roberts said there was a great deal of force in what I said, but he could not go into any written assurance. He said he would not go into any such agreement, and I saw Mr. Cassatt. He said in his frank way; 'That is not practicable, and you know the reason why.''"

As this work of absorption went on steadily, persistently, the superstitious fear of resistance to proposals to lease or sell which came from parties known or suspected to be working in harmony with the Standard Oil Company, which had been strong in 1875, grew almost insuperable. In Cleveland this was particularly true. A proposal from Mr. Rockefeller was certainly regarded popularly as little better than a command to "stand and deliver." "The coal oil business belongs