Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/293



Exports grew rapidly through the same machinery which had created the foreign market. In 1870 there were something over one hundred and forty million gallons of petroleum products going abroad, in 1873 nearly two and one-half hundred million, in 1878 three and one-half hundred million. In 1870 the Standard began its work on the foreign trade by sending a representative abroad. Country after country seems to have been taken up, the idea being that the daily Standard Oil meeting should have the same full information before it concerning every place of foreign trade as it had of the American trade, and that gradually the company should control the foreign trade as it did the American industry, doing away with middlemen, "paying nobody a profit." This work, begun in 1879, has been carried on steadily ever since. Through it the Standard soon became largely its own exporter. It established stations of its own in one port after another of Europe, Asia, South America, and has built up a large oil fleet. It carried on an aggressive campaign for developing markets; it looked after hostile legislation; it studied the possible competition of native oils; it met every difficulty—prejudice, ignorance, poverty. Little by little it has done in foreign countries what it has done in the United States. To-day it even carts oil from door to door in Germany and Portugal and other countries, as it does in America, thus realising Mr. Rockefeller's vision of controlling the petroleum of America from the time it leaves the ground until it is put into the lamp of the consumer.

The same economy and alertness were applied to the matter of making oils. In laying hands on the refineries of the coun-