THE GREATEST CORPORATION IN THE WORLD idea of monopoly has, of late years, come to be inseparably associated with the petroleum in dustry in this country as a result of the tremen dous operations carried on by the Standard Oil Company. But oil monopolies are apparently as old as the industry itself. During the Persian days of possession in the Apsheron Peninsula, the Khan of Baku controlled the entire output of the oil springs, reserving the revenues for his personal use. This monopoly was continued, in one form or another, by the Russian Government until 1872, because the industry was profitable and the reve nue was good.
A more interesting and probably much more an cient monoply than the one at Baku is said to have existed in Burma for unknown ages. There the privilege of digging for oil in the Yenangyoung field, in the Irrawaddy valley, was a hereditary right possessed by twenty-four families and handed down like a title of nobility from father to son for generations. The monopoly was perfect ; no out sider could become a well owner even by purchase ; the owner must be a member of one of the Yoya, or hereditary families. The head of each family alone had the power to grant permission to dig ; he indi cated the site for the well; and he received a roy alty on the amount of oil secured. Only in cases of no direct descendants to inherit the right could the privilege be sold, with the consent of all the other joint holders, and then solely to some distant member of the same family.
Modern times present no parallel to this close corporation, but the tendency toward powerful concerns and the elimination of small enterprises has been evident everywhere that the industry has risen to important proportions. In a way, the very nature of the industry demands a certain amount of centralization of interests for its own protec tion. No other industry offers greater opportunity for self-destruction through cutthroat competi tion and consequent lowering of standards. Con centration of control, or a combination of interests to some extent, is the only means of protection against the constant recurrence of such conditions. Nowhere else has this natural concentration gone so far as in the United States, where it has re sulted in the development of the greatest corpo ration in the world. Nowhere else has the in
dustry reached such a high degree of efficiency and perfection as it has under the guidance of this corporation. Baku, Burma, the Dutch Indies, and Japan, it is true, have powerful corporations backed by large capitals, but none of them can stand as a peer of the Standard Oil Company. Standard Oil has come to be a familiar name from one end of the world to the other, from the islands of the ocean to the wildest parts of the African desert, from the heights of the Andek to the barren wastes of Chinese Turkestan ; because it has stood firmly for high quality of products and has per fected the organization necessary for seeking mar kets wherever human endeavor can transport a case of kerosene.
Technically, this mighty combination is the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, a corpo ration with a capital of $100,000,000, chartered simply to hold the stock of a whole series of sub sidiary companies, but endowed in its "omni bus " charter with the right to engage in almost every conceivable line of industrial activity. Prac tically, the Standard Oil Company, as the dominant power in the petroleum business, is a multitude of different interests, brought under the control of a small group of men. Oil wells, refineries, pipe lines, distributing and selling companies, and manufacturing concerns of a dozen different sorts, in half the states of the United States and in every important foreign country make up the framework of this all-comprehensive organization.
This greatest of all petroleum concerns is with out any kind of serious rival in this country. The various affiliated companies comprising the Stand ard interests handle over eighty per cent of the crude oil put through the refining process; they produce over eighty per cent. of the refined prod ucts, gasoline, kerosene, and lubricating oils ; and they control about the same proportion of the for eign trade. Standard pipe lines transport nearly all the crude oil in the eastern and mid-continent fields, as well as increasing quantities in Texas and California. In large sections of the country Standard products have absolutely no competitor in the market.