Page:The Rise And Progress Of The Standard Oil Company.djvu/15

 company may be estimated, and the momentary opportunities of railway and industrial conditions may be gauged. And so in what seems at first sight an unaccountable and suspiciously rapid growth may be discerned signs of inevitable development—the operation of motives which are, at any rate, explicable.

In 1865, when Mr. John D. Rockefeller began in a small way to refine petroleum at Cleveland, Ohio, the oil industry was in a singularly inchoate state. With the success of Drake’s oil-well at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, refiners had been released from the necessity of distilling coal into petroleum before refining petroleum into kerosene; and at the same time the sources of petroleum were shown to be enormously greater than they had ever before been guessed. This discovery stimulated consumers to increased use of