A further advance in Farrell's commercial education and moral edification took place six months after the Oneonta episode. The poor fellow, selected no doubt for his blind fidelity, was told by his employer at Albany, McMillan, that a man called Starks at Troy, who had formerly been buying oil from the Standard, was then buying from Dauchy, an independent wholesale dealer, and that he must buy oil from Dauchy too, and cart it round after Stark's wagon and sell it at the wholesale price of 8 cents. In this way Farrell got about half of Starks's trade away from him, when the latter repented of his ways and recommenced buying from the Standard. On the prodigal's return Farrell was called off. I select a peddling case of this sort to justify my assertion that no low trick is too dirty or mean for the Standard's agents ; to use a Transatlantic expression, they would take its candy from a two-year-old kid.
The idea of the " bogus independent " worked as a system is a most ingenious one, and could hardly have been invented by minds of any ordinary calibre. Here, however, the inventive genius of the Trust seems to end. It has been argued on behalf of the Trust that its com mercial success has been in part due to the various new technical processes and other im provements which it has introduced to the benefit alike of the trade and the consumer.
For this theory there is no visible foundation, though it constitutes the staple material of the ordinary Standard Oil apologist. Long articles have appeared in American and English maga zines, illustrated by pictures of the Standard's wonderful processes, and filled with majestic figures of the pipe lines, and tank steamers, and tank cars that it owns. The impression is adroitly left that the Rockefellers found a world of crude oil and made their millions by showing ignorant and backward competitors how to turn it into kerosene, lubricants, vaseline, and petroleum wax. The truth about this imaginative literature is gradually leaking out.
Pipe lines for oil transport are described as if they were a Standard invention. As a fact, as early as 1862 a company was incorporated in Pennsylvania for carrying oil in pipes or tubes from any point on Oil Creek to its mouth or to any station on the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad—the first record we have of the idea, which thus suggested itself within a reasonably short time after oil was first struck — namely, in 1859. Now, as we have seen, Mr. Rockefeller only went into the oil trade as his sole business in 1865, though he put money into it as early as 1862. Three short pipe lines were working
in 1863 (Tarbell, vol. i. p. 17), and they were first made an undoubted success by a man named Samuel van Syckel, who completely revolutionised the oil business in 1864, the year before Mr. Rockefeller definitely took to it, by first pumping oil from the wells to the railroad through a 2-inch pipe at the rate of eighty barrels an hour.
The tank car has also been claimed as a Standard invention. Wooden oil tanks were first built (Tarbell, vol. i. p. 12) by a young Iowa school teacher almost immediately after oil was first struck, and they continued to be built by him for about ten years, when, finding that iron tanks were bound to supersede him, he retired from that business. Wooden and iron tanks, whether stationary or set on cars, were consequently a very natural development to meet the necessities of the oil-carrying trade, and, as far as I can make out, were probably running in 1869. Tank ships were an English invention, and their adoption for the Suez Canal was strongly opposed by the Standard in 1891.
Lubricating oil, also claimed as a Standard invention, is due to Mr. Joshua Merrill, a chemist, of the Downer Works. In 1869 he discovered a process for deodorising petroleum, and thus rendering it fit for lubricating pur poses. He patented his process, and by it increased the sale of the Downer Works' lubri eating oil by several hundred per cent. in a single year (Tarbell, vol. i. p. 22).
A whole batch of these shadowy claims was disposed of once and for all by Mr. J. D. Archbold's admissions under cross-examination in the Missouri case. Here is the official record of evidence on these points : — Q. The Standard Oil Company did not discover the process at all, did it ? A. Oh, no.
Q. The process of making paraffin wax was in existence as early as thirty years ago, wasn't it ? A. Oh, it has been in existence a long time from the coal shales.
Q. Now, in the matter of a great many of these by-products, the independent refineries, so called, have done the same as you have, haven't they ? A. Oh, they have, undoubtedly.
Q. Take many of those that you testified to the other day — for instance, cylinder oil. The earliest manufacturers of cylinder oil were at Binghamton, N. Y., were they not—a Mr. Brill ? A. There was a very early concern there—a small concern. Q. And he is still in business, isn't he, in Philadelphia ? A. I don't know.