Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/55

Rh naphtha to cut the paraffine which coated the sand and stopped the flow of oil, seed bags to stop the inrush of a stream of water. They lost their tools less often, and knew better how to fish for them when they did. In short, they had learned how to put down and care for oil wells.

Equal advances had been made in other departments, fewer cars were loaded with barrels, tank cars for carrying in bulk had been invented. The wooden tank holding 200 to 1,200 barrels had been rapidly replaced by the great iron tank holding 20,000 or 30,000 barrels. The pipe-lines had begun to go directly to the wells instead of pumping from a general receiving station, or "dump," as it was called, thus saving the tedious and expensive operation of hauling. From beginning to end the business had been developed, systematised, simplified.

Most important was the simplification of the transportation problem by the development of pipe-lines. By 1872 they were the one oil gatherer. Several companies were carrying on the pipe-line business, and two of them had acquired great power in the Oil Regions because of their connection with trunk lines. These were the Empire Transportation Company and the Pennsylvania Transportation Company. The former, which had been the first business organisation to go into the pipe-line business on a large scale, was a concern which had appeared in the Oil Regions not over six months before Van Syckel began to pump oil. The Empire Transportation Company had been organised in 1865 to build up an east and west freight traffic via the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, a new line which had just been leased by the Pennsylvania. Some ten railroads connected in one way or another with the Philadelphia and Erie, forming direct routes east and west. In spite of their evident community of interest these various roads were kept apart by their jealous fears of one another. Each insisted on its own time-table, its own rates,