Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/320

 Rockefeller's concern control. First as to oil production. In 1898 the Standard Oil Company reported to the Industrial Commission that it produced 35.58 per cent. of Eastern crude—the production that year was about 52,000,000 barrels. (It should be remembered that it is always to the Eastern oil fields—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia—that this narrative refers. Texas, Kansas, Colorado and California are newer developments. These fields have not as yet been determining factors in the business, though Texas particularly has been a distributing factor.) But while Mr. Rockefeller produces only about a third of the entire production, he controls all but about ten per cent. of it; that is, all but about ten per cent. goes immediately into his custody on coming from the wells. It passes entirely out of the hands of the producers when the Standard pipe-line takes it. The oil is in Mr. Rockefeller's hands, and he, not the producer, can decide who is to have it. The greater portion of it he takes himself, of course, for he is the chief refiner of the country. In 1898 there were about twenty-four million barrels of petroleum products made in this country. Of this amount about twenty million were made by the Standard Oil Company; fully a third of the balance was produced by the Tidewater Company, of which the Standard holds a large minority stock, and which for twenty years has had a running arrangement with the Standard. Reckoning out the Tidewater's probable output, and we have an independent output of about 2,500,000 in twenty-four million. It is obvious that this great percentage of the business gives the Standard the control of prices. This control can be kept in the domestic markets so long as the Standard can keep under competition as successfully as it has in the past. It can be kept