Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/216

 oped, and for twenty months the independent refiners met the demand of their export agents and foreign dealers for lower prices with cut cargoes. For twenty months they lost money on every barrel they sold. Oil was sold by the Titusville refiners as low as 1.98 cents a gallon. The Lewis Emery works at Bradford sold one cargo at 1.07 cents net, and many at or below two cents. Had it not been for the union with pipe-lines such prices would have been impossible, but all through the struggle in the market the United States Pipe Line and the Producers' and Refiners' lines carried oil at cost or below. The pipe-lines were heavily in debt to the Reading Iron Works, but that company stood by them valiantly, extending their notes until the struggle was over and the pipe-lines able to meet them.

Such a situation could not go on forever, evidently. It had come apparently to be a question of how long the refiner had money to lose, and, as month after month the independents saw their bank accounts diminishing, and no relief in sight, the courage of a few began to ooze. Finally, late in 1894, a committee of the Western refiners, consisting of John Fertig of Titusville, H. P. Burwald of Titusville and S. W. Ramage of Oil City, went to New York to consult the Standard. Is there no hope of a better market? Is there any chance for us? None whatever, they were told, except to sell. We will buy the refineries and the stock of the independent concerns, but that is all we can do. The committee came home to report. The situation was hopeless, they said, and, as for them, they should sell. As they represented three of the largest concerns in the Union, and all carried stock in the allied enterprises, their withdrawal seemed at the moment a death-blow. It was a glum and beaten body of men which listened to the report, surrender written in every line of their faces.

Now Mr. Lee and Mr. Wood, two active men of the Pro-