Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/55

 and it would pay the railroad $104,000 less $20,800, or $83,200. The pipe-line probably never ran the whole amount. More or less refined oil—naphtha, benzine, and other petroleum products—would necessarily go by rail. Large sums were paid monthly by the National Transit, however, to the railroad. Mr. Rockefeller seems to have been paying the Pennsylvania Railroad this money not to compete with him as an oil carrier. It would be difficult to find in our variegated commercial history a more beautiful example of the beneficence of combination to those in the deal!

With the removal of danger of any competition by the Pennsylvania Railroad, the transportation department of the Standard Oil Trust seems to have been as nearly a perfect machine, both in efficiency and in its monopolistic power, as ever has been devised. It was more perfect, indeed, than the refining end of the trust, for independent refiners did exist, and since 1880 they had been showing increasing vigour, whereas there seemed now no opportunity for an independent pipe-line ever again to develop. Who, with the Tidewater's story in mind, would be bold enough to attempt to reach the sea? For the time being, then, the Standard Oil Company had things all its own way. It collected with its ally, the Tidewater, practically the entire output of a great raw product. It manufactured fully ninety per cent of this product, and aimed to manufacture 100 per cent. It was a common carrier, and so obliged to deliver oil to rival refineries if they called for it, but these refineries paid forty or forty-five cents for a service which cost the Standard Oil Trust not over one-fourth of the sum.

Mr. Rockefeller had every reason to be satisfied with oil transportation in 1884, but there was a part of the oil business which was not so completely in his grasp. The markets of the country were still open. There the few independent refiners who had escaped strangulation were free to barter as they