Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/242

 the control is so complete that the price of oil, both crude and refined, is actually issued from its headquarters.

Now, with the help of the chart, let us see what Mr. Rockefeller and his colleagues have been able to do from 1872 to 1904 with their power over the price of oil. The first association which worked was brought about late in 1872. What happened? Prices for refined oil were run up from 23 cents a gallon in June to 27 cents a gallon in November, and the margin increased from 13.6 cents to 17.7 cents. From a profit of about 1½ cents a gallon they rose to one of over 4 cents. Unfortunately, however, the refiners of that period were not educated to the self-restraint necessary to carry out this scheme. They very soon failed to keep down their output of oil and overstocked the market, and the whole machine went to pieces. Mr. Rockefeller had been able to make oil dear for a short time, but only for a short time. Worse than that, what he had been able to do brought severe public condemnation. It had, indeed, produced exactly the result the economists tell us too high prices must produce—limitation of the market and stimulation of competition in rival goods. Mr. Rockefeller's second scheme to work out the good of the oil business by making oil dear resulted in decreasing oil exports for the first time since the discovery of oil. It also increased one of the chief grievances of the American refinery—that was, the exporting of the crude oil to be refined in Europe. Where the exports of crude had been something over eleven million gallons in 1871, they were now over sixteen millions. And it set the shale-oil factories of Scotland to work merrily. It was cheaper for Great Britain to use oil from Scottish shales than to buy oil sold under Mr. Rockefeller's great plan for benefiting the oil business. So for the time the scheme fell down.