Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/211

 organised his company—the United States Pipe Line Company—with a capital of $600,000. Among the incorporators were representatives of the independents' interests, both in New York and in the Oil Regions, and much of the stock was soon placed in the hands of the men who were interested in the independent concerns described above.

It looked very much as if the United States Pipe Line were to be laid. Now, the strength of the Standard Oil Trust had always been due to its control of transportation. An independent pipe-line, especially to the seaboard, was considered rightly as a much more serious menace to its power than an independent refinery. The United States Pipe Line could not be allowed, and prompt and drastic measures were taken to hinder its work. There is no space here for an account of the wearisome obstructive litigation which confronted the company, for the constant interference, even by force, which followed them for months. It culminated when an attempt was made to join the pipes laid to each side of the Erie tracks near Hancock, New York, the Eastern terminal of the pipe-line. Mr. Emery, relying on the promise of the Erie's president to allow a crossing, sent his men to the railway to connect the pipes. Hardly had they arrived before there descended on them a force of seventy-five railroad men armed for war. These men took possession of the territory at the end of the pipes and intrenched themselves for attack. The pipe-line men camped near by for three months, but they never attempted to join the pipes. Mr. Emery had concluded, on investigation, that the Erie officials, like the Reading, had found that it would be unwise to disturb their relations with the Standard, and while his men were keeping attention fixed on that point he was executing a flank movement, securing a right of way from a point seventy miles back to Wilkesbarre, on the Jersey Central. This new movement was executed with such celerity that by