Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/270

 Oil Company route, there was a fall of 2½ cents, in crude there was a fall of but four-tenths of a cent. Refined fell from 7 cents in April to 6 cents in May, and crude fell one-tenth of a cent. John D. Archbold, in answering the figures given by the Pure Oil Company to the Industrial Commission, accused them of "carelessness," and gave the average monthly price of crude and refined to show that no such glaring discrepancy had taken place. Mr. Archbold gives the average price in March, for instance, as 7.98 and in April as 7.31 cents. However, his price is the average to "all the trade of Greater New York and its vicinity," whereas the prices of the Pure Oil Company are those they met in their limited competition. As Professor Jenks remarked at the examination: "It might easily be, therefore, that your" (Standard) "average price would be what you had given, and that to a good many special customers with whom the Pure Oil Company was trying to deal it could be five and a half cents." That this was the fact seems to be proved by the quotations for water-white oil from tank-wagons, which were published from week to week in trade journals like the Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter. These prices show 9⅞ cents for water-white on March 21, and an average of 9.4 cents in April. Evidently only a part of the trade of "all Greater New York and vicinity" got the benefit of averages quoted to the Industrial Commission by Mr. Archbold.

If competition persists the result usually has been permanently lower prices than in territory where competition has been run out or has never entered. For instance, why should oil be sold to a dealer at nearly four cents more on an average in Kansas than in Kentucky, when the freight from Whiting to Kansas is only a cent more? For no reason except that in Kentucky there has been persistent competition for twenty-five years, and in Kansas none has ever secured a solid