Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/257

 ducers in the McDonald oil field built a pipe-line from Pittsburg to Baltimore, the Crescent Line, and began to ship crude oil to France in great quantities. It looked as if both combinations meant to do business, and the Standard set out to get them out of the way. One method they took was to prevent the refiners in the combination making any money on export oil.

The extent to which cutting was carried on for two years, beginning with the fall of 1892, has been referred to in the last chapter, but is perhaps worth repeating in this connection. In January of 1892 crude oil was selling at 53½ cents a barrel at the wells, and refined oil for export at 5.33 cents a gallon in barrels. Throughout the year the price of crude advanced, until in December it was 78⅜ cents. Refined, on the contrary, fell, and it was actually 18 points lower in December than it had been twelve months before. Throughout 1894 the Standard kept refined oil down; the average price of the year was 5.19 cents a gallon, in face of an average crude market of 83¾ cents, lower than in January, 1893, with crude at 53½ cents a barrel.

After two years they gave it up. It was too expensive. The Crescent Line sold to them, but the other independents were too plucky. They had lost money for two years, but they were still hanging on like grim death, and the Standard concluded to concentrate their attacks on other points of the combination rather than on this export market where it was costing them so much.

About the end of 1894 the depression of export oil was abandoned, as the chart shows. Notice that from 1895 to 1898 the margin remained at about four cents, that in 1900 it rose to six cents, and from that time until June, 1904, it swung between four and a half and five. The increasing competition in Western Europe of independent American oils, and the rapid rise since 1895, particularly of Russian