The method which prevailed at the time in handling and buying and selling oil was this : At the request of the well owner connected with a pipe-line his oil was run and credited to him in the pipe-line office. Here he could hold it as long as he wished by paying a storage charge. If he wished to sell his "credit balance," as oil to his account was called, he sim ply gave the buyer an order on the line for the oil, and it was tranferred to the account of the new buyer. The pipe-lines frequently had hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in hand, and they traded with this oil as banks do with their deposits—that is, they issued certificates for each i,000 barrels of oil on hand, and these certificates were negotiable like any other paper. Now the United Pipe Lines acknowledged itself a common carrier, and so was obliged to discharge the duty of collecting oil on demand, or at least within a reasonable time after the demand of its patrons.
But in December, 1877, after the monopoly was completed, they refused to discharge their obligations in the customary way. On the plea that they had not sufficient tankage to carry oil in the Bradford field, they issued an order that no oil would be run in that district for any one unless it was sold for "immediate shipment"—that is, no oil would be taken to hold for storage; it would be taken for shipping only. At the same time the Standard buyer, J. A. Bostwick, decreed that henceforth no Bradford oil would be bought for immediate shipment unless it was offered at less than the market price. No fixed discount was set. The seller was asked what he would take; his offer was, of course, according to his necessities. Even then an answer was not always immediately given. The seller was told to come back in five or ten days and he would be told if his oil would be taken. A feature of the new order, particularly galling to the oil men, was the manner in which it was enforced. Formerly the buyer and seller had met freely in the oil exchanges and their business offices, and transactions had been carried on as among equals. Now the producers were obliged to form in line before the United Pipe Lines' offices and to enter one at a time to consult the buyer. A line of a hundred men or more often stood during the hours set before the office, waiting their turn to dispose of their oil. It should be said in justice to Mr. Bostwick that he was not the first buyer to take oil at a discount. The pro
ducers themselves frequently offered oil at less than the mar ket price when in need of money, but Mr. Bostwick was the first buyer in a situation to force them to make the discount regularly. When these orders came, few of the producers had sufficient private tankage to take care of any amount of oil. Here was the situation then: to keep oil from running on the ground the producer must sell it; but if he sold it he must take a price from two to twenty-five cents or more below the market.
The immediate shipment order was not an invention of the United Pipe Lines. It had been enforced more than once for brief periods by various lines when they found their capacity overcrowded by some unexpected situation. In 1872 epizootic among the horses so upset things in the Oil Regions that for a short time an immediate shipment order was enforced. In r874, when the pipe-lines were overtaxed by a great outpour ing of oil in the Lower Field, immediate shipment had been attempted, but at that time there were still so many inde pendent pipes struggling for business that the movement met no success. Now, however, the United Pipe Lines had things its own way. That they were not ready to meet the growing Bradford production is plain from a study of the figures. There were in the Oil Regions at the close of 1877, according to the Oil City Derrick, 4,000,000 barrels of tankage. There was on hand at this time 3,127,837 barrels of oil, but the empty tankage was in the wrong place. In the Bradford field, where the daily production had suddenly increased from 2,000 barrels in January to 8,451 barrels in December, there was only a little over 200000 barrels of tankage.* In order to take care of the oil the pipe-lines began to make nearly all their shipments from that field, and oil piled up in the Lower Region to the great dissatisfaction of the producers there.
As soon as the situation of the Bradford field was realised both the United Pipes and the producers began a furious cam paign of tank building. By the beginning of April, 1878, the tankage there had been increased to 1,152,028 barrels.1- Be tween April r and November 1 seventy tanks of from 1o,000 to 25,000 barrels capacity were built in McKean County. The greater number of these belonged to the producers. According to the United Pipe Lines' statement, there was under their con