It is estimated that no less than 1,000 boats of all kinds were used in the height of the river trans portation.— At first they carried oil either in bar rels or in bulk, but the use of barrels was always troublesome on account of the leakage. To rem edy this diffiCulty, the inside of the barrels was specially treated with a stiff solution of hot glue, forming a continuous lining unaffected by the oil. Even this device afforded only a partial remedy, since the small amount of water usually mixed with the oil quickly affected the glue and the leaking became as bad as before.
The steadily increasing dissatisfaction with bar rel shipments soon led to the idea of carrying the oil in bulk ; for a time it was done by running the oil into open barges, but this plan presented worse difficulties than the old way. Any slight rocking of the boat would set the oil in motion, and losses of whole cargoes from capsizing were frequent. When the boats did not capsize they were always leaking and the presence of water seriously im paired the quality of the oil. Because of these drawbacks to early bulk shipments, the producers usually reverted to the use of barrels when the price of oil was high, the probable loss from leak age being less risk than the chances of accident to the cargo in bulk.
The suggestion of using water-tight compart ments in barges that were decked over presented a possible solution of all the earlier troubles. Such barges were introduced and, proving immediately successful, they sealed the doom of the old-fash ioned barrel shipments as far as local handling of crude petroleum was concerned.
For five or six years the teamers on land and the bargemen on the river controlled absolutely the entire system of transportation and were able to make their rates irrespective of the price of oil or the profits of the producer. The railroads center ing toward the oil regions, however, had long been jealously watching and coveting the enormous freight traffic moving up and down the Allegheny River between Oil Creek and Pittsburg. The great boom of Pithole City increased the already strong desires to have a share in the profitable business, and by the early part of 1866 branch lines of the main railroad systems were entering Oil City, Pit hole, Titusville, and Franklin. Mile after mile was rapidly added, until within a year the oil region had railroad connections in every direction with all the leading cities of the country.
Rail shipments from the beginning adopted the idea of handling in bulk, being made at first in so-called "tank cars," which consisted of nothing more than two wooden tanks, of about forty bar rels each, securely fastened to an ordinary flat car. Only a few years later, however, the modern cylin der tank of boiler iron easily demonstrated its superiority and entirely replaced the older style. This entrance of the railroads in rapid succession, with the trains of tank cars, gave an entirely new complexion to the transporting end of the business.
The general interests of the operators were greatly advanced by the ease with which shipments could now be made throughout a much wider range of territory. Bulk cargoes could be sent to New York or Philadelphia for the export trade as readily as they could have been shipped to Pittsburg before. Important producers conveniently located were able to have their own spur tracks and load di rectly from their storage tanks. But for many operators not so favorably situated the old incon veniences were only slightly lessened.
The advent of the railroads, important as it was, could not rid many of the producers of the trouble some teamers on whom they still had to depend to carry the oil from the wells to the nearest station. According to the length of the haul, the cost of teaming ordinarily ranged as high as three or four dollars for a load of a half dozen barrels, and not infrequently the prices were shaped to take unfair advantages of a shipper's necessities. The whole system was no longer suited to the magnitude of the petroleum interests. The new conditions of heavy production made it imperative to find some way of handling large quantities cheaply, more cheaply, in fact, than even the railroads could do it.
Ingenious minds were beginning to wonder why the oil could not be pumped through pipes extend ing from the wells to the shipping points just as easily as it was pumped through pipes from the wells into storage tanks. As early as 1860, General Karns, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, had pro posed laying a line of six-inch pipe from Burning Springs to the Ohio River, a distance of about thirty-six miles, and letting the oil flow by gravity, but for some unknown reason the pipe was never laid and the idea was dropped. Two years later a bill to authorize the construction of a pipe line from Oil Creek to Kittanning was defeated in the Pennsylvania legislature through the vigorous lob bying of the important teaming interests in the oil regions. The same year, 1862, a man named Hutchinson constructed a small private line on the siphon principle to carry oil over a hill from his well to a local refinery, but the excessive loss by leakage at the joints of the pipe made it neces sary to abandon the attempt. In 1865, however, Samuel Van Syckle built a successful line from the United States well at Pithole to Miller's Farm, on the Oil Creek railroad. He overcame the old trouble from leakage by using carefully fitted screw sockets at the joints of the different sections of pipe. This first line was made of two-inch pipe laid on top of the ground, with three pumping engines stationed along its course of about five miles. Its capacity was limited to about eighty barrels an hour, but even that comparatively small quantity was equal to the work of about 300 teams working ten hours a day.