Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/203

Rh Producers' Protective Association, Mr. Rockefeller had not taken his great combination into oil production to any extent, and wisely enough from his point of view. It was a business in which there were great risks, and as long as he could control the output by being its only buyer, why should he take them? Now, however, the situation was changing. A number of sure fields had been developed Bradford, Ohio, West Virginia. Their value was depressed by over-production. Mr. Rockefeller had money to invest. The producers were threatening to disturb his control by a co-operative scheme. It was certain that he had not yet produced a "harmonious feeling." It was not sure he would. If he failed in that they might one day even shut off his supply of oil, as they had done in 1872, and Mr. Rockefeller, with great foresight, determined to become a producer. In 1887 he went into Ohio fields. Soon after he began quietly to buy into West Virginia. When he learned, in 1890, from Mr. Taylor and his partners, that a co-operative company of producers was on foot, he naturally enough concluded that the best way to dismember it was to buy out the largest interest in it. The Union Oil Company saw the advantage of being a member of the Standard Oil Trust, and sold. In this one year, 1890, over 40,000 shares of Standard Oil Trust certificates were issued to oil-producing companies, as follows:

There was general consternation in producing circles, and if there had not been a number of men in the organisation who realised that the life of the independent effort was at