Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/437

Rh the Conduit or Empire lines. The use and export of crude oil is but a small proportion of the consumption, and time and money were required to re-establish this great product upon its former basis, and these people were glad to furnish all needed means to accomplish this end, as are also capitalists at other points not strictly within the Oil Region, yet upon your lines.

We are met in the midst of this preparation by assertion of agents of the combination, and as accepted news by the press, that such a combination is entered into, or under consideration by your road and the Empire Transportation Company, the Erie, Central, Lake Shore, and Baltimore roads of the one part, and the Standard Oil Company of the other, as would preclude your road from carrying out the policy announced by your president at the interview heretofore referred to.

We believe there is danger that such a result may be reached, and we in behalf of these whom we represent, in making our efforts to prevent its accomplishment, or if accomplished to defeat it, as the first step, address this communication to you, desiring to present its aspect as affecting your road from our standpoint.

So far as we, and the general public are affected, you will not question that the present scheme is but the repetition of the South Improvement scheme, never abandoned by its authors, and seeking the sole and absolute control of all petroleum produced, purchased, refined, and shipped within the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, or West Virginia.

The overproduction of 1873, 1874, 1875, and the consequent almost entire destruction of petroleum values, gave the Standard Oil Company, with its organisation and capital, almost the desired monopoly. The equalisation of consumption and production of 1876-1877 brought that combination to the same point that they were in 1872—utterly unable by reason of geographical position, if for no other, to monopolise this product without the co-operation of all the transportation, and then only under a contract similar to that of the South Improvement Company, and including all of its dangerous and extraordinary features. None other can serve them, and so they stand to-day, and we believe that your road can enter into no compromise, treaty, or arrangement which will serve the ends of the monopoly, under any less stringent stipulations and devoid of the liabilities thereof.

Under such an arrangement it is probable that the Central and Erie have transported its oil, during nearly all of this year. It is now an open secret in the producing region, that no charges follow the shipments over at least one of these roads, and crude oil is delivered in New York, on shipping order, at prices which barely repay the cost of packages and contents, with little or no remainder for transportation charges. This aid to the scheme of the combination is possibly given in view of the high tariff and consequent large revenue promised to be derived hereafter, when the scheme has been made a success, and all opposition in trade and transportation extinguished.

Suppose your opposition to be withdrawn, and you join the alliance, when does