Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

The agitation against this dangerous oil has been increasing in Great Britain year by year. The subject has been investigated by the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, which found that many serious accidents to life and property had resulted from the use of this oil, and at its meeting of May 14, 1894, the chamber voted to petition the government to raise the test again to 100°. The Manchester and Edinburgh chambers of commerce took similar action. A number of other bodies have taken the subject up, and the government has had to promise to make an inquiry.

The statistics show that last year nearly one in five (19.3 per cent.) of the fires in London and more than one in eight (13.24 per cent.) of the fires in Liverpool came from kerosene. The oil used in those cities is principally the cheap American article sold under the lowered test of the English law. But in Glasgow, where most of the oil burned is that of the Scotch manufacturers, who, by agreement, sell no lower quality than 100° test, the number of fires from kerosene is less than two in a hundred (1.7 per cent.). At a meeting of representatives of the leading insurance companies of Edinburgh and Glasgow, June 20, 1894, experiments were made with the American, Russian, and Scotch oils. The American was found to be the most explosive, and some of it flashed at 69°. A lighted match thrown into this oil heated to 88° started an instantaneous blaze; thrown into Scotch oil it was extinguished. Experts testified that the cost of making the oil safe would be about a farthing a gallon, and that if the Americans, whose "self-interest" and "private enterprise" are not equal to a voluntary effort, were compelled by law to furnish a better illuminant, their profits would be greater, not less.

A rich field for investigation is concealed beneath the elaborate system of State inspection, by which the people have sought to protect themselves from being tempted by deceptive prices to buy a sure death. We have seen in several places how the State inspectors are in the employ, at the same time, of the State and the seller, whom it is their duty to watch for the State.[597] Evidence abounds at every turn of the use of inspectors and inspection laws to embarrass and even suppress the smaller refiners. One of the latest instances is a new law in Tennessee, which puts special difficulties in the way of oil reaching the State by river, the avenue to which independent refiners are forced by the discriminations of the railroad. We saw an inspector of the State of New York appear at the Bremen congress as the avowed representative of the "united refineries," complaints of whose bad oils occasioned the congress.

By one of those coincidences in which the world of cause and effect abounds, the Fire Marshal of Boston, in the same year in which Joshua Merrill described his fruitless efforts to continue the manufacture of a first-class oil,[598] found it necessary to warn the people against the dangerous stuff they were burning in their lamps. In his report in 1888 he called attention to the fact that one-tenth, nearly, of all the fires in Boston the preceding year had been caused by the explosion of kerosene or by its accidental combustion. He got samples of the oil used in a number of the places where fires had occurred from explosion, and had them analyzed by professors of the Institute of Technology in Boston and of the School of Mines of Columbia College in New York. They found them to be below the quality required by the State. Singularly enough, one of the State oil inspectors, examining similar samples, declared them to be above the standard of the State. The Boston Herald, discussing the matter, pointed out that the oil inspectors were paid by the owner of the oil. This, it said, placed inspectors practically under the oil combination, which has ways, it continued, of making things unpleasant for inspectors who make reports unsatisfactory to it. The fire marshal's conclusion in all the cases he investigated of these fires by explosion was: "I have felt warranted in every instance in attributing the blame to the inferior quality of kerosene used."[599]

The European protest of 1879 followed close upon the success of the comprehensive campaign of 1878[600] "to overcome competition." The warning from the Fire Marshal of Boston in 1888 and the success of the movement, begun in 1885,[601] to shut the independents of Oil City and Titusville out of Boston and New England came close together. These are not coincidences merely. They are cause and effect.

It is known that a practice has grown up among the oil inspectors of the States of allowing certain refiners to brand their own oil as they please, or letting it go to market unbranded. This permits the sale of unbranded and therefore illicit and presumably dangerous oil. Charges that inspectors in Iowa loaned their stencils to the oil combination to do its own branding were made formally in writing, in 1890, by one of the deputy inspectors, in the form required by law, to the governor of the State. The law provides that charges so made shall be investigated by the governor. No investigation was made, but the inspector was removed just as he was about to lay before a grand-jury documentary evidence of this and other violations of the law. This inspector declared publicly that inspectors were in the habit of leaving their official stencils with companies in the oil combination, and allowing them to put any brand they chose on any oil. He refused to continue this practice, nor would he brand barrels until they were filled. The representative of the combination in that State used every device except force, the inspector says, to induce him to conform to the practice. "Don't you know," this representative said, "that if you leave us your brand and get into trouble you will have the oil combination back of you? You will be taken care of." In his formal complaint to the governor, this inspector declared that this representative said in substance to him: "You are the only fool among the inspectors. We have the stencils of the inspectors at every other point where we want them."

The law put upon the governor the duty to investigate upon receiving written complaint. But when written complaint was formally made, and that not by an ordinary citizen, but by one of the sworn officials of the State, the governor demanded that the inspector back up his charges with the affidavits of witnesses—that is, the governor demanded that the inspector, who had no power, should make the investigation. This put an end to the whole matter. The inspector could not make the investigation, and the governor would not. The same governor refused to allow the written charges to be seen, although they are public documents, and they remained invisible as long as he held office. Only a few weeks after the removal of this inspector, the State oil inspector was sued for heavy damages by the owner of a barn which had been burned down through the explosion of bad oil. The ground of the suit was that the inspector, having failed to inspect and condemn this oil, as he should have done, was liable on his bond to the State. The press of Iowa commented freely on the probable connection between destructive fires, like this one, and the custom of allowing the oil ring to inspect itself, by which it was given the opportunity to put inferior and dangerous oils on the market with the brand of the State on them as good. As far as the case has been carried, up to date, the Iowa courts have sustained the claim and held the inspector in damages.

That which is an uninvestigated charge in Iowa is an officially ascertained fact in Minnesota. The demonstration in the latter case amounts practically to confirmation for the former, since the parties in interest, the motive, and the opportunity are identical. An investigation was made of the conduct of the State oil inspector by the Committee on Illuminating Oils of the Minnesota Senate, in 1891. The committee say in their report, which was adopted by the Senate:

"The testimony further shows that stencils were left with different oil companies by the State inspector or his deputy, by which the companies caused their barrels containing oil to be branded by their own employés, without the supervision of any State official. It appears that after the arrangement for the payment of the inspectors' and deputies' salaries by the oil companies was made, the attitude of the inspector towards his duties may be summed up in a few words of his testimony: 'I am under no obligation to the State of Minnesota. The Standard Oil Company paid me.'"[602]

The methods covered by the general phrases of the Minnesota Senate Committee were described in detail by a "commissioner" of the Omaha Daily Bee, which found the same things being done in Nebraska. The Bee in 1891 made an elaborate investigation of the manner in which the oil inspection of Nebraska was executed. Its reporter passed incognito by the guardians of the portals of the warehouse of companies belonging to the oil trust in Omaha, and stood by while barrels were filled with uninspected oil and loaded on the cars for shipment to various points. That the people who bought the oil might know their lives were safe, each barrel bore the brand of approval provided by law, as follows: