There is no part of this rapid development of the business more interesting than the commercial machine the oil men had devised by 1872 for marketing oil. A man with a thousand-barrel well on his hands in 1862 was in a plight. He had got to sell his oil at once for lack of storage room or let it run on the ground, and there was no exchange, no market, no telegraph, not even a post-office within his reach where he could arrange a sale. He had to depend on buyers who came to him. These buyers were the agents of the refin eries in different cities, or of the exporters of crude in New York. They went from well to well on horseback, if the roads were not too bad, on foot if they were, and at each place made a special bargain varying with the quantity bought and the difficulty in getting it away, for the buyer was the transporter, and, as a rule, furnished the barrels or boats in which he carried off his oil. It was not long before the specu lative character of the oil trade due to the great fluctuations in quantity added a crowd of brokers to the regular buyers who tramped up and down the creek. When the railroads came in the trains became the headquarters for both buyers and sellers. This was the more easily managed as the trains on the creek stopped at almost every oil farm. These trains became, in fact, a sort of travelling oil exchange, and on them a large percentage of all the bargaining of the business was done.
The brokers and buyers first organised and established headquarters in Oil City in 1869, but there was an oil exchange in New York City as early as 1866. Titusville did not have an exchange until 1871. By this time the pipe-lines had begun to issue certificates for the oil they received, and the trading was done to a degree in these. The method was simple, and much more convenient than the old one. The producer ran his oil into a pipe-line, and for it received a certificate show ing that the line held so much to his credit; this certificate was transferred when the sale was made and presented when the oil was wanted.
One achievement of which the oiLmen were_particularly proud was increasing the refining capacity of the region. At the start the difficulty of getting the apparatus for a refinery to the creek had been so enormous that the bulk of the crude had been driven to the nearest manufacturing cities—Erie, Pittsburg„Cleveland. Much had to_the seaboard, too, nd BostonNswlrork, Philadelphia and were 11 doing considerable refining. There was always a strong eeling in the Oil Regions that the refining should be done at ome. Before the railroads came the most heroic efforts were made again and again to get in the necessary machinery. Brought from Pittsburg by water, as a rule, the apparatus had to be hauled from Oil City, where it'had been dumped on the muddy bank of the river—there were no wharfs—over the indescribable roads to the site chosen. It took weeks—
months sometimes—to get in the apparatus. The chemicals used in the making of the oil, the barrels in which to store it—all had to be brought from outside. The wonder is that under these conditions anybody tried to refine on the creek. But refineries persisted in coming, and after the railroads came, increased; by 1872 the daily capacity had grown to nearly ro,000 barrels, and there were no more complete or profitable plants in existence than two or three of those on the creek. The only points having larger daily capacity were Cleveland and New York City. Several of the refineries had added barrel works. Acids were made on the ground. Iron works at Oil City and Titusville promised soon to supply the needs of both drillers and refiners. The exultation was great, and the press and people boasted that the day would soon come when they would refine for the world. There in their own narrow valleys should be made everything which petroleum would yield. Cleveland, Pittsburg—the seaboard —must give up refining. The business belonged to the Oil Regions, and the oil men meant to take it.
A significant development in the region was the tendency among many of the oil men to combine different branches of the business. Several large producers conducted shipping agencies for handling their own and other people's oil. The firm of Pierce and Neyhart was a prominent one carrying on this double business in the sixties and early seventies. J. J. Vandergrift, who has been mentioned already as one of the first men to take hold of the transportation problem, early became interested in production. As soon as the pipe-line was demonstrated to be a success he began building lines. He also added to his interests a large refinery, the Imperial of Oil City. Captain Vandergrift by 1870 produced, transported and refined his own oil as well as transported and refined much of other people's. It was a common practice for a refinery in the Oil Regions to pipe oil directly to its works by its own line, and in 1872 one refinery in Titusville, the Octave, carried its refined oil a mile or more by pipe to the railroad. Although most of the refineries at this period sold their products to dealers and exporters, the building up of markets by direct contact with new territory was beginning to be a consideration with all large manufacturers. The Octave of Titusville, for instance, chartered a ship in 1872 to load with oil and send in charge of its own agent into South American ports.