Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/247

 independents through 1877, 1878 and 1879. In the latter year it touched five cents for the first time in the history of the business. Competition resulting in economies, in a revolutionising transportation invention—the seaboard pipe-line



—in a greatly extended foreign market, brought down this margin in 1879. Nothing else.

Those who have read this history know what became of the competitive movement of these years of 1878-1879. They remember how the Producers' Union compromised its suits and abandoned its efforts for interstate commerce regulation. They remember, too, how, just before the great seaboard pipe-line project was proved to be a success, all but one of the independent refineries were, by one means or another, persuaded to sell or to combine with the Standard, leaving the Tidewater without an outlet for its oil. Before the end