THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
benzine for export. Three grades of illuminating oils-"prime white," 'standard white," and "straw colour"-were made everywhere; paraffine, refined to a pure white article like that of to-day, was manufactured in quantities by the Downer works; and lubricating oils were beginning to be made.
As men and means were found to put down wells, to devise and build tanks and boats and pipes and railroads for handling the oil, to adapt and improve processes for manufacturing, so men were found from the beginning of the oil business to wrestle with every problem raised. They came in shoals, young, vigorous, resourceful, indifferent to difficulties, greedy for a chance, and with each year they forced more light and wealth from the new product. By the opening of 1872 they had produced nearly 40,000,000 barrels of oil, and had raised their product to the fourth place among the exports of the United States, over 152,000,000 gallons going abroad in 1871, a percentage of the production which compares well with what goes to-day.* As for the market, they had developed it until it included almost every country of the earth-China, the East and West Indies, South America and Africa. Over forty different European ports received refined oil from the United States in 1871. Nearly a million gallons were sent to Syria, about a half million to Egypt, about as much to the British West Indies, and a quarter of a million to the Dutch East Indies. Not only were illuminating oils being exported. In 1871 nearly seven million gallons of naphtha, benzine, and gasoline were sent abroad, and it became evident now for the first time that a valuable trade in lubricants made from petroleum was possible. A discovery by Joshua Merrill of the Downer works opened this new source of wealth to the industry. Until I869 the impossibility of deodorising petroleum had prevented its use largely as a lubricant, but in that year
* In 1871 the petroleum exports were 152,195,167 gallons. The production was 5,795,000 barrels' or 243,390,000 gallons.
[21]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
Mr. Merrill discovered a process by which a deodorised lubricating oil could be made. He had both the apparatus for producing the oil and the oil itself patented. The oil was so favourably received that the market sale by the Downer works was several hundred per cent. greater in a single year than the firm had ever sold before. The oil field had been extended from the valley of Oil Creek and its tributaries down the Allegheny River for fifty miles and probably covered 2,000 square miles. The early theory that oil followed the streams had been exploded, and wells were now drilled on the hills. It was known, too, that if oil was found in the first sand struck in the drilling, it might be found still lower in a second or third sand. The Drake well had struck oil at 69 l/2 feet, but wells were now drilled as deep as 1,600 feet. The extension of the field, the discovery that oil was under the hills as well as under streams, and to be found in various sands, had cost enormously. It had been done by "wild-catting," as putting down experimental wells was called, by following superstitions in locating wells, such as the witch-hazel stick, or the spiritualistic medium, quite as much as by studying the position of wells in existence and calculating how oil belts probably ran. As the cost of a well was from $3,000 to $8,000,* according to its location, and as 4,374 of the 5,560 wells drilled in the first ten years of the business (1859 to 1869) were "dry-holes," or were abandoned as unprofitable, something of the daring it took to operate on small means, as most producers did in the beginning, is evident. But they loved the game, and every man of them would stake his last dollar on the chance of striking oil.
With the extension of the field rapid strides had been made in tools, in rigs, in all of the various essentials of drilling a well. They had learned to use torpedoes to open up hard rocks,
* Estimate of J. T. Henry in his " Early and Later History of Petroleum," 1873 The " Petroleum Monthly " in 1873 estimated the cost to be from $2,725 to $4,416.
[22]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
naphtha to cut the paraffine which coated the sand and stopped the flow of oil, seed bags to stop the inrush of a stream of water. They lost their tools less often, and knew better how to fish for them when they did. In short, they had learned how to put down and care for oil wells.
Equal advances had been made in other departments, fewer cars were loaded with barrels, tank cars for carrying in bulk had been invented. The wooden tank holding 200 to 1,200 barrels had been rapidly replaced by the great iron tank holding 20,000 or 30,000 barrels. The pipe-lines had begun to go directly to the wells instead of pumping from a general receiving station, or "dump," as it was called, thus saving the tedious and expensive operation of hauling. From beginning to end the business had been developed, systematised, simplified.
Most important was the simplification of the transportation problem by the development of pipe-lines. By 1872 they were the one oil gatherer. Several companies were carrying on the pipe-line business, and two of them had acquired great power in the oil Regions because of their connection with trunk lines. These were the Empire Transportation Company and the Pennsylvania Transportation Company. The former 'which had been the first business organisation to go into the pipe-line business on a large scale, was a concern which had appeared in the Oil Regions not over six months before Van Syckel began to pump oil. The Empire Transportation Company had been organised in 1865 to build up an east and west freight traffic via the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, a new line which had just been leased by the Pennsylvania. Some ten railroads connected in one way or another with the Philadelphia and Erie, forming direct routes east and west. In spite of their evident community of interest these various roads were kept apart by their jealous fears of one another. Each insisted on its own time-table, its own rates,
[ 23 ]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
its own way of doing things. The shipper via this route must make a separate bargain with each road and often submit to having his freight changed at terminals from one car to an other because of the difference of gauge. The Empire Transportation Company undertook to act as a mediator between the roads and the shipper, to make the route cheap, fast, and reliable. It proposed to solicit freight, furnish its own cars and terminal facilities, and collect money due. It did not make rates, however; it only harmonised those made by the various branches in the system. It was to receive a commission on the business secured, and a rental for the cars and other facilities it furnished.
It was a difficult task the new company undertook, but it had at its head a remarkable man to cope with difficulties. This man, Joseph D. Potts, was in 1865 thirty-six years old. He had come of a long and honourable line of iron-masters of the Schuylkill region of Pennsylvania, but had left the great forge towns with which his ancestors had been associated-Pottstown, Glasgow Forge, Valley Forge-to become a civil engineer. His profession had led him to the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he had held important positions in connection with which he now undertook the organisation of the Empire Transportation Company. Colonel Potts- the title came from his service in the Civil War-possessed a clear and vigorous mind; he was far-seeing, forceful in execution, fair in his dealings. To marked ability and integrity he joined a gentle and courteous nature.
The first freight which the Empire Transportation Company attacked after its organisation was oil. The year was a great one for the Oil Regions, the year of Pithole. In January there had suddenly been struck on Pithole Creek in a wilderness six miles from the Allegheny River a well, located with a witch-hazel twig, which produced 250 barrels a day-and oil was selling at eight dollars a barrel! Wells followed in
[ 24 ]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
rapid succession. In less than ten months the field was doing over 10,000 barrels a day. This sudden flood of oil caused a tremendous excitement. Crowds of speculators and investors rushed to Pithole from all over the country. The civil war had just closed, soldiers were disbanding, and hundreds of them found their way to the new oil field. In six weeks after the first well was struck Pithole was a town of 6,000 inhabitants. In less than a year it had fifty hotels and boarding houses; five of these hotels cost $50,000 or more each. In six months after the first well the post-office of Pithole was receiving upwards of 10,000 letters per day and was counted third in size in the state-Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and Pithole being the order of rank. It had a daily paper, churches, all the appliances of a town.
The handling of the great output of oil from the Pithole field was a serious question. There seemed not enough cars in the country to carry it and shippers resorted to every imaginable trick to get accommodations. When the agent of the Empire Transportation Company opened his office in June, 1865, and demonstrated his ability to furnish cars regularly and in large numbers, trade rapidly flowed to him. Now the Empire agency had hardly been established when the Van Syckel pipe-line began to carry oil from Pithole to the railroad. Lines began to multiply. The railroads saw at once that they were destined speedily to do all the gathering and hastened to secure control of them. Colonel Potts's first pipe-line purchase was a line running from Pithole to Titusville, which as yet had not been wet.
When the Empire Transportation Company took over this line nothing had been demonstrated but that oil could be driven, by relay pumps, five miles through a two-inch pipe. The Empire's first effort was to get a longer run by fewer pumps. The agent in charge, C.P. Hatch, believed that oil could be brought the entire ten and one-half miles from Pit-
[25]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
hole to Titusville by one pump. He met with ridicule, but he insisted on trying it in the new line his company had acquired. The experiment was entirely successful. Improvements followed as rapidly as hands could carry out the suggestions of ingenuity and energy. One of the most important made the first year of the business was connecting wells by pipe directly with the tanks at the pumping stations, thus doing away with the expensive hauling in barrels to the "dump." A new device for accounting to the producer for his oil was made necessary by this change, and the practice of taking the gauge or measure of the oil in the producer's tank before and after the run and issuing duplicate "run tickets" was devised by Mr. Hatch. The producers, however, were not all "square"; it sometimes happened that they sold oil by a transfer order on the pipe-line, which they did not have in the line! To prevent these the Empire Transportation Company in 1868 began to issue certificates for credit balances of oil; these soon became the general mediums of trade in oil, and remain so to-day.
One of the cleverest of the pipe-line devices of the Empire Company was its assessment for waste and fire. In running oil through pipes there is more or less lost by leaking and evaporation. In September, 1868, Mr. Hatch announced that thereafter he would deduct two per cent. from oil runs for wastage. The assessment raised almost a riot in the region, meetings were held, the Empire Transportation Company was denounced as a highway robber, and threats of violence were made if the order was enforced. While this excitement was in progress there came a big fire on the line. Now the company's officials had been studying the question of fire insurance from the start. Fires in the Oil Regions were as regular a feature of the business as explosions used to be on the Mississippi steamboats, and no regular fire insurance company would take the risk. It had been decided that at the first fire there should be announced what was called a "general average assessment,"
[26]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
that is, a fire tax, and to be ready, blanks had been prepared. Now in the thick of the resistance to the wastage assessment came a fire and the line announced that the producers having oil in the line must pay the insurance. The controversy at once waxed hotter than ever, but was finally compromised by the withdrawal in this case of the fire insurance if the producers would consent to the tax for waste. They did consent, and later when fires occurred the general average assessment was applied without serious opposition. Both of these practices prevail to-day. By the end of 1871 the Empire Transportation Company was one of the most efficient and respected business organisations in the oil country.
Its chief rival was the Pennsylvania Transportation Company, an organization which had its origin in the second pipeline laid in the Oil Regions. This line was built by Henry Harley, a man who for fully ten years was one of the most brilliant figures in the oil country. Harley was a civil engineer by profession, a graduate of the Troy Polytechnic Institute, and had held a responsible position for some time as an assistant of General Herman Haupt in the Hoosac Tunnel. He became interested in the oil business in 1862, first as a buyer of petroleum, then as an operator in West Virginia. In 1865 he laid a pipe-line from one of the rich oil farms of the creek to the railroad. It was a success, and from this venture Harley and his partner, W. H. Abbott, one of the wealthiest and most active men in the country, developed an important transportation system. In 1868 Jay Gould, who as president of the Erie road was eager to increase his oil freight, bought a controlling interest in the Abbott and Harley lines, and made Harley "General Oil Agent" of the Erie system. Harley now became closely associated with Fisk and Gould, and the three carried on a series of bold and piratical speculations in oil which greatly enraged the oil country. They built a refinery near Jersey City, extended their pipe-line system, and in 1871,
[27]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
when they reorganised under the name of the Pennsylvania Transportation Company, they controlled probably the greatest number of miles of pipe of any company in the region, and then were fighting the Empire bitterly for freight.
There is no part of this rapid development of the business more interesting than the commercial machine the oil men had devised by 1872 for marketing oil. A man with a thousand-barrel well on his hands in l862 was in a plight. He had got to sell his oil at once for lack of storage room or let it run on the ground, and there was no exchange, no market, no telegraph, not even a post-office within his reach where he could arrange a sale. He had to depend on buyers who came to him. These buyers were the agents of the refineries in different cities, or of the exporters of crude in New York. They went from well to well on horseback, if the roads were not too bad, on foot if they were, and at each place made a special bargain varying with the quantity bought and the difficulty in getting it away, for the buyer was the transporter, and, as a rule, furnished the barrels or boats in which he carried off his oil. It was not long before the speculative character of the oil trade due to the great fluctuations in quantity added a crowd of brokers to the regular buyers who tramped up and down the creek. When the railroads came in the trains became the headquarters for both buyers and sellers. This was the more easily managed as the trains on the creek stopped at almost every oil farm. These trains became, in fact, a sort of travelling oil exchange, and on them a large percentage of all the bargaining of the business was done.
The brokers and buyers first organised and established headquarters in Oil City in 1869, but there was an oil exchange in New York City as early as 1866. Titusville did not have an exchange until 1871. By this time the pipe-lines had begun to issue certificates for the oil they received, and the trading
[28]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
was done to a degree in these. The method was simple, and much more convenient than the old one. The producer ran his oil into a pipe-line, and for it received a certificate showing that the line held so much to his credit; this certificate was transferred when the sale was made and presented when the oil was wanted.
One achievement of which the oil men were particularly proud was increasing the refining capacity of the region. At the start the difficulty of getting the apparatus for a refinery to the creek had been so enormous that the bulk of the crude had been driven to the nearest manufacturing cities-Erie, Pittsburg, Cleveland. Much had gone to the seaboard, too, and Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were all doing considerable refining. There was always a strong feeling in the Oil Regions that the refining should be done at home. Before the railroads came the most heroic efforts were made again and again to get in the necessary machinery. Brought from Pittsburg by water, as a rule, the apparatus had to be hauled from Oil City, where it had been dumped on the muddy bank of the river-there were no wharfs-over the indescribable roads to the site chosen. It took weeks- months sometimes-to get in the apparatus. The chemicals used in the making of the oil, the barrels in which to store it-all had to be brought from outside. The wonder is that under these conditions anybody tried to refine on the creek. But refineries persisted in coming, and after the railroads came, increased; by 1872 the daily capacity had grown to nearly 10,000 barrels, and there were no more complete or profitable plants in existence than two or three of those on the creek. The only points having larger daily capacity were Cleveland and New York City. Several of the refineries had added barrel works. Acids were made on the ground. Iron works at Oil City and Titusville promised soon to supply the needs of both drillers and refiners. The exultation was
[29]
great, and the press and people boasted that the day would soon come when they would refine for the world. There in their own narrow valleys should be made everything which petroleum would yield. Cleveland, Pittsburg-the seaboard -must give up refining. The business belonged to the Oil Regions, and the oil men meant to take it.
A significant development in the region was the tendency ; among many of the oil men to combine different branches of the business. Several large producers conducted shipping agencies for handling their own and other people's oil. The firm of Pierce and Neyhart was a prominent one carrying on this double business in the sixties and early seventies. J. J. Vandergrift, who has been mentioned already as one of the first men to take hold of the transportation problem, early became interested in production. As soon as the pipe-line was demonstrated to be a success he began building lines. He also added to his interests a large refinery, the Imperial of Oil City. Captain Vandergrift by 1870 produced, transported and refined his own oil as well as transported and refined much of other people's. It was a common practice for a refinery in the Oil Regions to pipe oil directly to its works by its own line, and in 1872 one refinery in Titusville, the Octave, carried its refined oil a mile or more by pipe to the railroad. Although most of the refineries at this period sold their products to dealers and exporters, the building up of markets by direct contact with new territory was beginning to be a consideration with all large manufacturers. The Octave of Titusville, for instance, chartered a ship in 1872 to load with oil and send in charge of its own agent into South American ports.
The odds against the oil men in developing the business had not been merely physical ones. There had been more than the wilderness to conquer, more than the possibilities of a new product to learn. Over all the early years of their struggle and hardships hovered the dark cloud of the Civil
[30]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
War. They were so cut off from men that they did not hear of the fall of Sumter for four days after it happened, and the news for the time blotted out interest even in flowing wells. Twice at least when Lee invaded Pennsylvania the whole business came to a stand-still, men abandoning the drill, the pump, the refinery to make ready to repel the invader. They were taxed for the war-taxes rising to ten dollars per barrel in 1865-one dollar on crude and twenty cents a gallon on refined ( the oil barrel is usually estimated at forty-two gallons). They gave up their quota of men again and again at the call for recruits, and when the end came and a million men were cast on the country, this little corner of Pennsylvania absorbed a larger portion of men probably than any other spot in the United States. The soldier was given the first chance everywhere at work, he was welcomed into oil companies, stock being given him for the value of his war record. There were lieutenants and captains and majors- even generals-scattered all over the field, and the field felt itself honoured, and bragged, as it did of all things, of the number of privates and officers who immediately on disbandment had turned to it for employment.
It was not only the Civil War from which the Oil Regions had suffered; in 1870 the Franco-Prussian War broke the foreign market to pieces and caused great loss to the whole industry. And there had been other troubles. From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil. In 1859 it was twenty dollars a barrel, and in 1861 it had averaged fifty-two cents. Two years later, in 1863, it averaged $8.15, and in 1867 but $2.40. In all these first twelve years nothing like a steady price could be depended on, for just as the supply seemed to have approached a fixed amount, a "wildcat" well would come in and "knock the bottom out of the market." Such fluctuations were the natural element of the speculator, and he came early, buying in quantities and
[31]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
holding in storage tanks for higher prices. If enough oil was held, or if the production fell off, up went the price, only to be knocked down by the throwing of great quantities of stocks on the market. The producers themselves often held their oil, though not always to their own profit. A historic case of obstinate holding occurred in 1871 on the "McCray farm," the most productive field in the region at that time. Prices were hovering around three dollars, and McCray swore he would not sell under five dollars. He bought, hired
and built iron tankage until he had upward of 200,000 barrels. There was great loss from leakage and from evaporation and there were taxes, but McCray held on, refusing four dollars, $4.50, and even five dollars. Evil times came in the Oil Regions soon after and with them "dollar oil." McCray finally was obliged to sell his stocks at about $1.20 per barrel. To develop a business in face of such fluctuations and speculation in the raw product took not only courage-it took a dash of the gambler. It never could have been done, of course, had it not been for the streams of money which flowed unceasingly and apparently from choice into the regions. In 1865 Mr. Wright calculated that the oil country was using a capital of $100,000,000. In 1872 the oil men claimed the capital in operation was $200,000,000. It has been estimated that in the first decade of the industry nearly $350,000,000 was put into it.
Speculation in oil stock companies was another great evil.
It reached its height in 1864 and 1865-the "flush times" of the business. Stocks in companies whose holdings were hardly worth the stamps on the certificates were sold all over the land. In March, 1865, the aggregate capital of the oil companies whose charters were on file in Albany, New York, was $350,000,000, and in Philadelphia alone in 1864 and 1865 1,000 oil companies mostly bogus, are said to have been formed. These swindles were dignified by the names of officers of distinction in the United States army, for the war was coming
[32]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
to an end and the name of a general was the most popular and persuasive argument in the country. Of course there came a collapse. The "oil bubble" burst in 1866, and it was nothing but the irrepressible energy of the region which kept the business going in the panic which followed.
Then there was the disturbing effect of foreign competition. What would become of them if oil was found in quantities in other countries? A decided depression of the market occurred in 1866 when the government sent out reports of developments of foreign oil fields. If there was oil in Japan, Chinas Burmah, Persia, Russia, Bavaria, in the quantities the government reports said, why, there was trouble in store for Pennsylvania, the oil men argued, and for a day the market fell-it was only for a day. Men forgot easily in the Oil Regions in the sixties.
An evil in their business which they were only beginning to grasp fully in 1871 was the unholy system of freight discrimination which the railroads were practising. Three trunk lines competed for the business by 1872-the Pennsylvania, which had leased the Philadelphia and Erie, the Erie and the Central. (The latter road reached the Oil Regions by a branch from Ashtabula on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern division to Oil City; this branch was completed in 1868.) The Pennsylvania claimed the oil traffic as a natural right; for the Oil Regions were in Pennsylvania, and did not Tom Scott own that state? The Erie road for about five years had been in the hands of those splendid pirates, Jay Gould and "Jim" Fisk. Naturally they took all they could get of the oil traffic and took it by freebooting methods. "corners' and "rings" were their favourite devices for securing trade, and more than once their aid had carried through daring and unscrupulous speculations in oil. The Central in this period was waging its famous desperate war on the Erie, Commodore Vanderbilt having marked that highway for his own along with most other things in New York State. All three of the
[33]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
roads began as early as 1868 to use secret rebates on the published freight rates in oil as a means of securing traffic. This practice had gone on until in 1871 any big producer, refiner, or buyer could bully a freight agent into a special rate. Those "on the inside," those who had "pulls," also secured special rates. The result was that the open rate was enforced only on the innocent and the weak.
Serious as all these problems were, there was no discouragement or shrinking from them. The oil men had rid themselves of bunco men and burst the "oil bubbles." They had harnessed the brokers in exchanges and made strict rules to govern them. They had learned not to fear the foreigners, and to take with equal sang froid the "dry-hole" which made them poor, or the "gusher" which made them rich. For every evil they had a remedy. They were not afraid even of the railroads, and loudly declared that if the discriminations were not stopped they would build a railroad of their own. Indeed, the evils in the oil business in 1871, far from being a discouragement, rather added to the interest. They had never known anything but struggle-with conquest-and twelve years of it was far from cooling their ardour for a fair fight.
More had been done in the oil Regions in the first dozen years than the development of a new industry. From the first there had gone with the oil men's ambition to make oil to light the whole earth a desire to bring civilisation to the wilderness from which they were drawing wealth, to create an orderly society from the mass of humanity which poured pell-mell into the region. A hatred of indecency first drew together the better element of each of the rough communities which sprang up. Whiskey-sellers and women flocked to the region at the breaking out of the excitement. Their first shelters were shanties built on flatboats which were towed from-place to place. They came to Rouseville-a collection of pine shanties and oil derricks, built on a muddy flat-as for
[34]
Follow the links for a picture of a Rock-Oil label and a typical oil town.
A ROCK-OIL LABEL
FAGUNDUS-A TYPIVAL OIL TOWN
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
lorn and disreputable a town in appearance as the earth ever saw. They tied up for trade, and the next morning woke up from their brawl to find themselves twenty miles away, floating down the Allegheny River. Rouseville meant to be decent. She had cut them loose, and by such summary vigilance she kept herself decent. Other towns adopted the same policy. By common consent vice was corralled largely in one town. Here a whole street was given up to dance-houses and saloons, and those who must have a "spree" were expected to go to Petroleum Centre to take it.
Decency and schools! Vice cut adrift, they looked for a school teacher. Children were sadly out of place, but there they were, and these men, fighting for a chance, saw to it that a shanty, with a school teacher in it, was in every settlement. It was not long, too, before there was a church, a union church. To worship God was their primal instinct; to defend a creed a later development. In the beginning every social contrivance was wanting. There were no policemen, and each individual looked after evil-doers. There were no firemen, and every man turned out with a bucket at a fire. There were no bankers, and each man had to put his wealth away as best he could until a peripatetic banker from Pittsburg relieved him. At one time Dr. Egbert, a rich operator, is said to have had $1,800,000 in currency in his house. There were no hospitals, and in 1861, when the horrible possibilities of the oil fire were first demonstrated by the burning of the Rouse well, a fire at which nineteen persons lost their lives, the many injured found welcome and care for long weeks in the little shanties of women already overburdened by the difficulties of caring for families in the rough community.
Out of this poverty and disorder they had developed in ten years a social organisation as good as their commercial .Titusville, the hamlet on whose outskirts Drake had drilled his well, was now a city of 10,000 inhabitants. It had an opera
[35 ]
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
house, where in 1871 Clara Louise Kellogg and Christine Nilsson sang, Joe Jefferson and Janauschek played, and Wendell Phillips and Bishop Simpson spoke. It had two prosperous and fearless newspapers. Its schools prepared for college. Oil City was not behind, and between them was a string of lively towns. Many of the oil farms had a decent community life. The Columbia farm kept up a library and reading-room for its employees; there was a good schoolhouse used on Sunday for services, and there was a Columbia farm band of no mean reputation in the Oil Regions.
Indeed, by the opening of 1872, life in the Oil Regions had ceased to be a mere make-shift. Comforts and orderliness and decency, even opportunities for education and for social life, were within reach. It was a conquest to be proud of, quite as proud of as they were of the fact that their business had been developed until it had never before, on the whole, been in so satisfactory a condition.
Nobody realised more fully what had been accomplished in the Oil Regions than the oil men themselves. Nobody rehearsed their achievements so loudly. "In ten years," they were fond of saying, "we have built this business up from nothing to a net product of six millions of barrels per annum. We have invented and devised all the apparatus, the appliances, the forms needed for a new industry. We use a capital of $200,000,000, and support a population of 60,000 people. To keep up our supply we drill 100 new wells per Month, at an average cost of $6,000 each. We are fourth in the exports of the United States. We have developed a foreign market, including every civilised country on the globe.
But what had been done was, in their judgment, only a beginning. Life ran swift and ruddy and joyous in these men. They were still young, most of them under forty, and they looked forward with all the eagerness of the young who have just learned their powers, to years of struggle and develop
.
[36]
THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY
ment. They would solve all these perplexing problems of overproduction, of railroad discrimination, of speculation. They would meet their own needs. They would bring the oil refining to the region where it belonged. They would make their towns the most beautiful in the world. There was nothing too good for them, nothing they did not hope and dare. But suddenly, at the very heyday of this confidence, a big hand reached out from nobody knew where, to steal their conquest and throttle their future. The suddenness and the blackness of the assault on their business stirred to the bottom their manhood and their sense of fair play, and the whole region arose in a revolt which is scarcely paralleled in the commercial history of the United States.
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