Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/283

 hard, with the Standard Oil Company of Cleveland. How could this be? Being bitter in heart and reckless in tongue, the oil men denounced the statements as perjury, but they were the literal truth. Each refinery in the alliance was required to make to Mr. Rockefeller each month a detailed statement of its operations. These statements were compared and the results made known. If the Acme at Titusville had refined cheaper that month than any other member of the alliance, the fact was made known. If this cheapness continued to show, the others were sent to study the Acme methods. Whenever an improvement showed, that improvement received credit, and the others were sent to find the secret. The keenest rivalry resulted—every factory was on its mettle.

This supervision took account of the least detail. There is a story often told in the Oil Regions to illustrate the minuteness of the supervision. In commenting as usual on the monthly "competitive statements," as they are called, Mr. Rockefeller called the attention of a certain refiner to a discrepancy in his reports. It referred to bungs—articles worth about as much in a refinery as pins are in a household. "Last month," the comment ran, "you reported on hand 1,119 bungs. Ten thousand were sent you at the beginning of this month. You have used 9,527 this month. You report 1,012 on hand. What has become of the other five hundred and eighty?" The writer has it on high authority that the current version of this story is not true, but it reflects very well the impression the Oil Regions have of the thoroughness of Mr. Rockefeller's supervision. The Oil Regions, which were notoriously extravagant in their business methods, resented this care and called it meanness, but the Oil Regions were wrong and Mr. Rockefeller was right. Take care of the bungs and the barrels will take care of themselves, is as good a policy in a refinery as the old saw it paraphrases is in financiering.

There were other features of this revolutionary management