Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

In 1878 and 1879, when railway presidents were saying "No" to every application of the few remaining independents for passage along the road to market,[588] and the oil combination was supreme from the well to the lamp, a concerted protest was made against its oil by commercial bodies representing trade all over Europe. An international congress was held specially to consider means for the protection of the European consumer, by the interposition of the governments of Europe and America, or by commercial measures. In the archives of the State Department at Washington are the documents in which this episode can be read.[589] At this moment of triumph over all rivals, "even what was classed as superior brands was a poor article."[590] The English trade met in London, in January, 1879, and remonstrated. One of the delegates stated that a small dealer who bought of him had written, threatening to commit suicide on account of the trouble this poor oil was giving him.[591] The American consul at Antwerp, under date of February 19, 1879, called the attention of the State Department to the congress about to be held to consider the serious complaints which had been made of late against American refined petroleums. He gave the warning that unless there was an improvement the Belgian government would interfere for the protection of the people with regulations which would greatly embarrass the export trade from America. A bill was introduced into the German Reichstag to protect the people of Germany against the flood of bad oil from America. Against those dealing in oil dangerous to human safety it provided penalties from fines to loss of citizenship and penal servitude.

At the congress which met at Bremen in February were represented all the European nations of any importance except France, which imports only crude, and does all its refining at home. It was an indignation meeting. The consul at Bremen wrote the State Department, under date of February 27, 1879, an account of it. It was "very important," he said. "Delegates were present from the chambers of commerce of Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Breslau, Christiania, Copenhagen, Danzig, Frankfort-on-Main, Hamburg, Königsberg, Lubeck, Mannheim, Nürnberg, Rostock, Rotterdam, Stettin, Trieste, Moscow, and Vienna."

The "united refiners," to explain away the faults of their oil, sent a representative to the congress who was one of the inspectors of the State of New York, in the pay of the people, but using his official prestige in behalf of a private interest. The consul at Bremen names the two chief points made in the defence: First, that the refined oil was bad because half the crude then produced in America was from the Bradford field, "and is so different in quality from the so-called Parker oil that the same quality of refined oil cannot be made—at any rate, by the ordinary processes hitherto in use." Second, that the wicks in common use were poor. That the inferior quality of the Bradford oil was not the real reason was proved by the fact that the refined oil manufactured and exported by the refineries of the combination from the crude of the other fields deteriorated at the same time and as much.[592] The Bremen congress knew this. It was at this precise moment—though this the Bremen congress did not know—that the combination was tying up a great inventor and hauling his apparatus to the junk-yard to prevent the test of a new method for making better and cheaper oil.[593] Its members would have had the benefit of it if successful, but with the spirit which men who seek exclusive control always exhibit, they did not want to change.

The congress declined to treat with any respect the excuses that were offered. It declared "that the complaints regarding the inferior quality of much of the petroleum recently received from America, and especially of the different brands of the" oil combination, were "fully justified." It consequently demanded from the American refiners, and especially from the oil combination, "First, that they give greater care to the refining of crude oil than they have recently done, in order that the petroleum may in the future be again as free as it formerly was from acids and heavy oils, that inferior qualities may no longer be shipped to Europe, and that the consumer may again receive the former customary good quality."

The superiority of its barrels was specially mentioned by the head of the oil combination to explain why all competitors failed. "All its advantages," he said in court in Cleveland, "are legitimate business advantages, due to the very large volume of supplies which it purchases, its long continuance in the business, the experience it has thereby acquired, the knowledge of all the avenues of trade, the skill of experienced employés, the possession and use of all the latest and most valuable mechanical improvements, appliances, and processes for the distillation of crude oil, and in the manufacture of its own barrels, glue, etc., by reason of which it is enabled to put the oil on the market at a cost of manufacture much less than by others not having equal advantages." But the Bremen congress made a special attack on the "barrels" and "glue." It complained that "the continental petroleum trade has suffered heavy losses on account of inferior barrels," and demanded that the oil combination should "only use barrels of well-seasoned, air-dried, split (not sawed) white oak staves and heads." It even particularized that the barrels should be "painted with blue linseed-oil paint, and supplied with double, strong head-hoops," and "more carefully glued, and not filled until the glue is thoroughly dry."

"They were substantially without competition," was said in explanation of the poor quality of the product sent to Europe, and also "to all parts of this country. The quality of the oil which they sent was not a matter of first-class importance for them to retain their business." It was "a negligence which came in a great measure from the absence of competition." This witness was asked by the lawyer of the combination if he meant the committee to understand that it "was committing suicide by furnishing a continuously deteriorating article of oil to the consumer."

"They were not committing suicide, because they had the business in their own hands almost exclusively at that time."[594]

This was in 1879, and the complaints of the quality of American oil sent abroad continue to this day. Export oil, the Interstate Commerce Commission say, in 1892, "is an inferior oil."[595]

One of the means by which a market was found for American oil in Scotland was the lowering of the British requirements in 1879 as to quality, from a flash-test of 100° to one of 73°, so that the more explosive American oil, until then debarred, could be legally sold to the people of Great Britain. The oil made in Scotland was "a very superior article—very good indeed."[596] There were two ways of getting the market: to meet the Scotch manufacturer with as good an oil, or to induce the government to permit the sale of something inferior. The latter policy was adopted. The government was induced to permit the sale to private consumers of oil that would give off an inflammable gas at a temperature of 73°—a lower temperature than often exists in living-rooms. Meanwhile the government continued to insist upon oil that would stand a test of 105° for its own use in the navy and 145° in its light-houses. The absurdity of this legal test was proved by Mr. T. Graham Young, son of Mr. James Young, founder of the Scotch oil industry, in a letter to the Glasgow Herald of May 12, 1894. He showed by the records that the year before there had been sixty days in London in which the temperature had gone above 73°. The government, that is, gave its sanction to the sale of oil which might explode at a heat below that ordinarily reached in an English summer! Commenting on the strange fact that the Scotch oil companies did not move against the change of test which had put them and the British consumer at the mercy of this explosive American oil, Mr. Young said: "It is generally understood that they are precluded from doing so by an agreement with the foreign producers. I hold a letter from one of the interested parties ... stating that for the above reason he could not discuss the matter." In discussing this matter, the Glasgow Herald notes that even patient and poverty-struck India complains of the "very poor quality" of the oil sent there.

The Scotch papers are continually printing indignant comments on this action of the British government, and wondering inquiries as to the influence by which so injurious a change in the regulations for public protection could have been effected. The Scotch manufacturers are continually agitating to have the coroners in England and Ireland, and the procurators-fiscal in Scotland, make particular inquiry in all cases of fatal lamp explosions into the flash-point of the oil and its origin—whether American or Scotch. At the December, 1892, meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry of Great Britain it was declared that about three hundred deaths a year occurred in England and Wales from lamp accidents, due to the explosiveness of the American oil sold under this reduction of the test.