If the richest person then in America—that artificial but very real person the Pennsylvania Railroad—could not keep its pipe lines, nobody could. The war for the union, which ended with its surrender in 1877, closed the pipe-line industry to the people. The unanimous "no" of all the railroads which followed completed the corral.
Oil, when it got to market, found that those who had become the owners of the pipe lines were also the owners of most of the refineries, and so the only large buyers.[175] "Practically to-day there is but one buyer of crude oil for us.... We take our commodity to one buyer; we take the price he chooses to give us without redress, with no right of appeal."[176]
Then the sole carrier—the pipe-line company—refused to take the oil into its pipes—the oil as it came out of the wells—unless first sold to its other self, the oil combination. This was called "immediate shipment." Forced to waste or sell his oil, the producer, under this compulsion, had to take what he could get.[177] The Hon. Lewis Emery, Jr., a member of the State Senate of Pennsylvania, gave the authorities of the State an account of the "immediate shipment" evolution of American market liberty. "We go down," he said, "to the office and stand in a line, sometimes half a day—people in a line reaching out into the street—sixty and seventy of us. When our turn comes we go in and ask them to buy, and they graciously will take it. I am an owner in six different companies, and we all suffer the same."
To educate the producer to sell "always below the market," the Pipe Line let his oil spill itself on the ground for a few days. "We lost a considerable amount of oil, probably several thousand barrels," another producer said.
"Will you state at what price as compared with the market price, whether above or below, you sold that oil?"
"It was always below."
Asked why he sold it below the market, he said:
"Because the line would not run it until it was sold."[178]
The hills of Pennsylvania began to growl and redden as in 1872.
The Secretary of Internal Affairs was hung in effigy. Mass meetings were held—some tumultuous, others quiet; processions of masked men marched the streets, and groaned and hooted in front of the newspaper offices and the business places of the combination. In the morning the streets and sidewalks were frequently found placarded with cabalistic signs and letters, and occasionally printed proclamations and warnings. Most of the lending newspapers of the region had been either absolutely purchased by the oil combination or paid to keep silence. Others occasionally broke forth in violent articles advising the use of force.[179]