The handling of the great output of oil from the Pithole eld was a serious question. There seemed not enough cars in the country to carry it and shippers resorted to every imag inable trick to get accommodations. When the agent of the Empire Transportation Company opened his office in June, 1865, and demonstrated his ability to furnish cars regularly and in large numbers, trade rapidly flowed to him. Now the Empire agency had hardly been established when the Van Syckel pipe-line began to carry oil from Pithole to the rail road. Lines began to multiply. The railroads saw at once that they were destined speedily to do all the gathering and hastened to secure control of them. Colonel Potts's first pipe line purchase was a line running from Pithole to Titusville, which as yet had not been wet.
When the Empire Transportation Company took over this nothing nrge relay five had been demonstrated n but that oil i ipe could The Empire's first effort was to get a longer run by fewer pumps. The agent in charge, C. P. Hatch, believed that oil could be brought the entire ten and one-half miles from Pit hole to Titusville by one pump. He met with ridicule, but he insisted on trying it in the new line his company had acquired. The experiment was entirely successful. Improvements fol lowed as rapidly as hands could carry out the suggestions of ingenuity and energy. One of the most important made the first year of the business was connecting wells by pipe directly with the tanks at the pumping stations, thus doing away with the expensive hauling in barrels to the "dump." A new device for accounting to the producer for his oil was made necessary by this change, and the practice of taking the gauge or meas ure of the oil in the producer's tank before and after the run and issuing duplicate "run tickets" was devised by Mr. Hatch. The producers, however, were not all "square"; it sometimes happened that they sold oil by a transfer order on the pipe-line, which they did not have in the line! To prevent these the Empire Transportation Company in 1868 began to issue certificates for credit balances of oil ; these soon became I the general mediums of trade in oil, and remain so to-day.
One of the cleverest of the pipe-line devices of the Empire Company was its assessment for waste and fire. In running oil through pipes there is more or less lost by leaking and evaporation. In September, 1868, Mr. Hatch announced that thereafter he would deduct two per cent. from oil runs for wastage. The assessment raised almost a riot in the region, meetings were held, the Empire Transportation Company was denounced as a highway robber, and threats of violence were made if the order was enforced. While this excitement was in
progress there came a big fire on the line. Now the company's officials had been studying the question of fire insurance from the start. Fires in the Oil Regions were as regular a feature of the business as explosions used to be on the Mississippi steam boats, and no regular fire insurance company would take the risk. It had been decided that at the first fire there should be announced what was called a "general average assessment," ) that is, a fire tax, and to be ready, blanks had been prepared. Now in the thick of the resistance to the wastage assessment came a fire and the line announced that the producers having oil in the line must pay the insurance. The controversy at once waxed hotter than ever, but was finally compromised by the withdrawal in this case of the fire insurance if the producers would consent to the tax for waste. They did consent, and later when fires occurred the general average assessment was applied without serious opposition. Both of these practices prevail to-day. Bythe_end of 1871 the Empire Transportation Company was one of the most efficient and respected.business organisations in the oil country.
Its chief rival was the Pennsylvania Transportation Com pany, an organisation which had its origin in the second pipe line laid in the Oil Regions. This line was built by Henry Harley, a man who for fully ten years was one_of_the most brilliant figures in the oil country. Harley was a-ciyilerT ineer by profession, a graduate of the Troy _Polytechnic „Institute, and had held a responsible position for some time as an assist ant of General Herman Haupt in the Hoosac Tunnel. He became interested in the oil business in 1862, first as a buyer of petroleum, then as an operator in West Virginia. In 1865 he laid a pipe-line from one of the rich oil farms of the creek to the railroad. It was a success, and from this venture Harley and his partner, W. H. Abbott, one of the wealthiest and most active men in the country, developed an important trans portation system. In 1868 Jay Gould, who_as president of the Erie road wasager to increase his freight _ bought a controlling-interest in the_Abbott_and Harley lines, and made Harley "General Oil Agent" of the Erie system. Harley now became closely associated with Fisk and Gould, and the three carried on a series of bold and piratical speculations in oil which greatly enraged the oil country. They built a refinery near Jersey City, extended their pipe-line system, and in 1871, when they reorganised under the name of the Pennsylvania Transportation Company, they controlled probably the great est number of miles of pipe of any company in the region, and then were fighting the Empire bitterly for freight.