The pump at station one was started by B. D. Benson, the president of the company. There were present with him several members of the concern, and to-day these men speak with emotion of the moment when Mr. Benson opened the valve to admit the oil to the pump. Would the great venture, on which they had staked all, be a success? Without a hitch the oil flowed in a full stream into the pipe and began its long journey over the mountains. It travelled about as fast as a man could walk and, as the pipe lay on the ground, the head of the stream could be located by the sound. Patrolmen followed the pipe the entire length watching for leaks. There was now and then a delay from the stopping of the pumps; but the cause was trivial enough, never anything worse than chips under the valves or clogging in the pipe by stones and bits of wood which the workmen had carelessly left in when joining the pipe. When the oil reached the second station there was general rejoicing; nevertheless, the steepest incline, the summit of the Alleghanies, had yet to be overcome. The oil went up to the top of the mountain without difficulty, and on June 4, the seventh day after Mr. Benson opened the valve at Station One, oil flowed into the big receiving tank beyond Williamsport. A new era had come in the oil business. Oil could be pumped over the mountains. It was only a matter of time when the.Tidewater would pump to New York.
Once at the seaboard, the Tidewater had a large and sure outlet for its oil in the group of independent refiners left at the mercy of the Standard in the fall of 1877 by the downfall of the Empire Line. These refiners had most of them run the entire gamut of experiences forced on the trade by the railroads and the Standard. Take, for instance, the experience of Ayres, Lombard and Company, related by Josiah Lombard in 1879 in the Pennsylvania suits. They had gone into the business in 1869 in West Sixty-sixth street. At the beginning they had shipped principally over the Erie, sometimes as high as 50,000 barrels a month; but when that road came into the hands of Fisk and Gould those gentlemen began to try to build up a refining business in New York for their own friends. Edward Stokes was at that time hand in glove with Fisk; he had in the Oil Regions an able friend, Henry Harley. Harley bought and shipped the oil over the Erie; special rates were given him, and the Stokes refinery soon began to flourish at the ex pense of the former shippers of the Erie. Mr. Lombard find ing, as he says, that there was no possibility of doing business with that road under the Fisk and Gould management, went over to the New York Central. Here he furnished his own cars. Ayres, Lombard and Company owned too cars on the Central in 1872, worth about $35,000, and in these they shipped the bulk of their oil. The South Improvement Company manceu vres in the spring of 1872 completely stopped their shipping over that road and in 1872 they sold their cars. Mr. Lombard said in his testimony: "We sold them (the cars) because the Standard Oil Company were getting the ascendency so much over the New York roads that we could not get a rate of freight from the lower districts and the Parker district, where the bulk of the oil was produced at that time, that would enable us to compete with them in the New York market, so there was no use in owning the cars." Driven off the Erie and Central, the firm made a running arrangement with Mr. Rockefeller for a year; the Standard bought the cars and agreed to furnish Ayres, Lombard and Company crude oil for a certain price at a certain time, and take the refined oil from them at a fixed price. This contract was made probably under the Refiners' Association which Mr. Rockefeller succeeded in effecting in August, 1872, after the failure of the South Improvement Company, which associa tion, as we have already seen, took in fully four-fifths of the refining interests of the country. The contract continued, Mr. Lombard said in testimony, for a year or more, and was then terminated by notice from the Standard Oil Company. Soon after the termination of the contract with the Standard, which was either late in 1873 or early in 1874 (Mr. Lombard was
not able to decide this when he was under examination), the firm began shipping over the Pennsylvania road. They bought part of their oil at this time from Adnah Neyhart. Nov, some time in 1875, as we have seen, Mr. Neyhart began to feel the Standard pressure and his business was sold to the Standard. Again Ayres, Lombard and Company found a large part of their supply of oil cut off. For about a year they shipped over the Pennsylvania. It was not long, however, before the concern found that even on the Pennsylvania they were under a disadvantage, that road having made in 1875 dis criminating contracts with the Standard. Again the firm changed, buying its oil from J. A. Bostwick and Com pany of New York. Now Bostwick was the Standard Oil buyer, one of the original South Improvement Company, and a stockholder in the Standard Oil Company. Mr. Lombard swore that he had not been taking oil of Bostwick for more than a year before the Standard began to draw its lines around him, as he put it, and again the question arose how were they to get oil for their refinery. There seemed no way but to try to make a contract with the Pennsylvania Company. On the i8th of May, i877, he went to Philadelphia and saw Colonel Potts, who told him he would be glad to have his ship ments on the Pennsylvania. Accordingly a contract was made for a year, the company guaranteeing them as low a rate as anybody else had. But this contract of Mr. Lombard was destined to end as speedily and as disastrously as all of those he had been making for over five years, for in the fall of the year the Empire Line was sold to the Standard, and in the spring of 1878, when Mr. Lombard's contract ran out, the Pennsyl vania refused to renew it on the terms they gave the Standard. Mr. Lombard gave a very interesting account of the inter view he and his fellow refiners of New York had with Mr. Cassatt in reference to this matter: was held in Mr. Bush's office, 123 Pearl street, New York. We sought that interview for the purpose of finding out what our position would be on the Pennsylvania Rail road after the termination of our contract with the Empire Line, which they had assumed. We had quite a plain talk on the subject. We began by telling Mr. Cassatt something that he already knew—that we for the past year had been probably the largest shippers over the Pennsylvania Railroad that they had had; largest shippers of petroleum. He acknowledged it, and we asked him if we should, after the first of May, be on the same footing and have as low a rate of freight as anybody else, which was guaranteed by contract up to that time. He said no, we would not. We asked him why not. Well, he said, it would not be satisfactory to the Standard Oil Company. I then put the question to him what difference it made to the Penn sylvania Railroad Company whether it was satisfactory to the Standard Oil Company or not. He said that the Standard Oil Company was the only party which could keep peace between the trunk lines. I said, It seems to me you have the matter very much in your own hands; there are hut four of you; if you agree upon a certain rate of freight the oil is to come forward at, I see no use of the intervention of a third party or a fifth party in this case. He said, I cannot trust—or rather, he said, They are the only people that can keep harmony. Then we had a little discussion about the rates. He said that they had been bringing oil for the past year at a very low rate. I told him I under stood it was a little over seventy cents an average on crude petroleum. He denied it, and said it was not. Then when we were talking about the subject of rates, he said of course the rates on petroleum were very profitable, and said we could find out the rate at which they could bring petroleum, if they were compelled to, by looking up their annual report, and seeing the cost a ton per mile, which was something like five or six mills per ton per mile, and which if we figured that it would be a very profit able business. We told him we did not object to him making a good profit at any time; all we wished was to have as low a rate of freight as anybody else had, which we could not get.