The sections of the contract of the 25th of March referred to agreed that no rebates or contracts or other arrangements should be made which would give any party the slightest difference in rates, and that the rates should not be changed either for increase or decrease without first giving Mr. Hasson, the president of the Producers’ Union, at least ninety days’ notice in writing. As we now know, Mr. Rockefeller himself was receiving rebates when he signed this agreement.

And now, at last, after five months of incessant work, the agency was ready to begin disposing of oil. They set to work diligently at once to apportion the 200,000 barrels the refiners had bought among the different districts. It was a slow and irritating task, for a method of apportionment and of gathering had to be devised, and, as was to be expected, it aroused more or less dissatisfaction and many charges of favouritism. The agency had the work well under way, however, and had shipped about 50,000 barrels when, on January 14, it was suddenly announced that the refiners had refused to take any more of the contract oil!

There was a hurried call of the Producers’ Council and a demand for an explanation. A plausible one was ready from Mr. Rockefeller. “You have not kept your part of the contract—you have not limited the supply of oil[[32]]—there is more being pumped to-day than ever before in the history of the region. We can buy all we want at $2.50, and oil has sold within the week at two dollars. If you will not, or cannot, stop over-production, can you expect us to pay your price? We keep down the output of refined, and so keep up the price. If you will not do the same, you must not expect high prices.”

What could the producers reply? In spite of their heroic measures, they had not been able to curtail their output. It seemed as if Nature, outraged that her generosity should be so manipulated as to benefit only the few, had opened her veins to flood the earth with oil, so that all men might know that here was a light cheap enough for the poorest of them. Her lavish outpouring now swept away all of the artificial restraints the producers and refiners had been trying to build. The Producers’ Association seemed suddenly to comprehend their folly in supposing that when 5,000 barrels more of oil was produced each day than the market demanded any combination could long keep the contract the refiners had made with them; and their unhappy session, made more unhappy by the reading of bitter and accusing letters from all over the discontented region, ended in a complete stampede from the refiners, the vote for dissolving the alliance having but one dissenting voice.

There were few tears shed in the Oil Regions over the rupture of the contract. The greater part of the oil men had called it from the beginning an “unholy alliance,” and rejoiced that it was a fiasco. If the alliance had been all that came to an end, the case would not have been so serious, but it was not. The breaking of the alliance proved the death of the agency and the association. The leaders who had disapproved of the treaty withdrew from active work; the supporters of the alliance, demoralised by its failure, were glad to keep quiet. A few spasmodic efforts to stop the drill, to inaugurate another shut-down, were made, but failed. Most of the producers felt that, as oil was so low, their only safety was in getting as large a production as they could, and a perfect fever of development followed. The Producers’ Association, after ten months of as exciting and strenuous effort as an organisation has ever put in, was snuffed out almost in a day. It was to be five years before the oil men recovered sufficiently from the shock of this collapse to make another united effort. If Mr. Rockefeller felt in the fall of 1872 that the “good of the oil business” required the dissolution of the Producers’ Agency, he could not have acted with more acumen than he did in leading them into an alliance, and at the psychological moment throwing up his contract.

Humiliated as the producers were by their failure, they soon found consolation in the knowledge that the Refiners’ Association was in trouble. A serious thing, in fact, had happened. When the official report of the year’s exports and imports came out, it was shown that the exports of refined oil had fallen off for the first time in the history of the business. In 1871, 132,178,843 gallons had been exported. In 1872, only 118,259,832 were exported. Just as alarming was the proof that the shale and coal-oil refineries of Europe had taken a fresh start—that they were selling their products more cheaply than kerosene could be imported and sold. There was a general outcry from all over the country that Mr. Rockefeller and his associates were running the oil business by keeping up the price of refined oil beyond what the price of crude justified. The producers, eager for a scapegoat, argued that the low price of crude was due to decreased consumption as well as over-production, and their ill-will against Mr. Rockefeller flared up anew. In the meantime the Refiners’ Association was having troubles of its own. The members were not limiting their output as they had agreed—that is, it was discovered every now and then that a refinery was making more oil than Mr. Rockefeller had directed. Again, what was more fatal to the success of the association, members sometimes sold at a lower price than that set by Mr. Rockefeller. These restrictions were fundamental to the success of the combination, and the members were called together at Saratoga in June, 1873, and after a long session the association was dissolved.

There was loud exultation in the unthinking part of the Oil Regions over the dissolution of the refiners. The “Junior Anaconda” was dead. The wiser part of the region did not exult. They knew that though the combination might dissolve, the Standard Oil Company of Cleveland still controlled its one-fifth of the capacity of the country; that not only had Mr. Rockefeller been able to hold the twenty refineries he had bolted so summarily at the opening of 1872, but he had assimilated them so thoroughly that he was making enormous profits. Mr. Rockefeller’s contracts with the Central Railroad alone in 1873 and 1874 obliged him for seven months of the year to ship at least 100,000 barrels of refined oil a month to the seaboard. As a matter of fact he never shipped less than 108,000 barrels, and in one month of the period it rose to 180,000.[[33]] Now in 1873 he made, at the very lowest figure, three cents a gallon on his oil. Estimating his shipments simply at 700,000 barrels a year—and they were much more—his profits for that year were $1,050,000, and this accounts for no profits on about thirty-five per cent. of the Standard output, which was sold locally or shipped Westward. Little wonder that the Cleveland refiners who had been snuffed out the year before, and who saw their plants run at such advantage, grew bitter, or that gossip said the daily mail of the president of the Standard Oil Company was enlivened by so many threats of revenge that he took extraordinary precautions about appearing unguarded in public.

It is worth noticing that these great profits were not being used for private purposes. In 1872 the Standard Oil Company paid a dividend of thirty-seven per cent., but in 1873 they cut it to fifteen per cent. The profits were going almost solidly into the extension and solidification of the business. Mr. Rockefeller was building great barrel factories, thus cutting down to the minimum one of a refiner’s heaviest expenses. He was buying tank cars that he might be independent of the vagaries of the railroads in allotting cars. He was gaining control of terminal facilities in New York. He was putting his plants into the most perfect condition, introducing every improved process which would cheapen his manufacturing by the smallest fraction of a cent. He was diligently hunting methods to get a larger percentage of profit from crude oil. There was, perhaps, ten per cent. of waste at that period in crude oil. It hurt him to see it unused, and no man had a heartier welcome from the president of the Standard Oil Company than he who would show him how to utilise any proportion of his residuum. In short, Mr. Rockefeller was strengthening his line at every point, and to no part of it was he giving closer attention than to transportation.

CHAPTER FIVE
LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF A TRUST

EVIDENCE OF REAPPEARANCE OF REBATES SOON AFTER AGREEMENT OF MARCH 25 IS SIGNED—PRINCIPLE THOROUGHLY ESTABLISHED THAT LARGE SHIPPERS SHALL HAVE ADVANTAGES OVER SMALL SHIPPERS IN SPITE OF RAILROADS’ DUTY AS COMMON CARRIERS—AGREEMENT WORKED OUT BY WHICH THREE ROADS ARE TO HAVE FIXED PERCENTAGE OF EASTERN SHIPMENTS—OIL REGIONS ROBBED OF THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL ADVANTAGE—THE RUTTER CIRCULAR—ROCKEFELLER NOW SECRETLY PLANS REALISATION OF HIS DREAM OF PERSONAL CONTROL OF THE REFINING OF OIL—ORGANISATION OF THE CENTRAL ASSOCIATION—H. H. ROGERS’ DEFENCE OF THE PLAN—ROCKEFELLER’S QUIET AND SUCCESSFUL CANVASS FOR ALLIANCES WITH REFINERS—THE REBATE HIS WEAPON—CONSOLIDATION BY PERSUASION OR FORCE—MORE TALK OF A UNITED EFFORT TO COUNTERACT THE MOVEMENT.