THE STRUGGLE FOR THE WORLD'S, TRADE years ago an Englishman described the striking of the famous Droojba gusher at Baku, concluding his description with this highly amus ing statement: "After that, America, the country of 'big' things, may well hide her diminished head. There is really no comparison between the two oil regions. The yield of Baku licks America as com pletely as the yield of America licked the shale oil yield of Scotland. The Americans are no longer in it." The American industry, however, has per sistently refused to stay "licked" either in the ex tent of its production or in the expansion of its ac tivities. An unceasing campaign, waged in all quarters of the globe to secure and maintain im portant markets for the products of American pe troleum, has given this country a greater industry than all the rest of the world combined.
This struggle for the world's trade has been one of the chief features of the industry in recent years, the American domination of foreign markets having been entirely undisputed until after the completion of the Caucasus railroad and the rise of Baku about 1883. The American export trade in petroleum products had then been established more than twenty years and included practically every important country in the world. The for eign trade from this country really dates from the latter part of the year 1861, when the shipping firm of Peter Wright & Sons, of Philadelphia, cre ated a sensation by announcing the chartering of a brig, the Elizabeth Watts, to carry a cargo of oil in barrels to London. Some odd shipments of a few barrels or cases had been sent abroad prev iously, largely through the efforts of the American consul at Antwerp, but this was the first full cargo to leave an American port.
The sudden arrival of such a quantity of petro leum in the British market caused a slump in prices so severe that the shippers lost money• on the venture. The experiment ultimately proved a good investment, however, since it sufficed to intro duce the oil and create a demand for it. Other cargoes followed this lead ; shipments increased rapidly; and new regions were tried one after another with such universal success that within two years oil was being sent to practically every port in Europe, to Egypt, the Orient, East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and all the countries of the Western hemisphere. From the first small
cargo carried by the Watts, the exports had grown to nearly 800,000 barrels in 1864. This growth is all the more remarkable in view of the facts that the total production of crude oil then barely exceeded 2,000,000 barrels annually, and not a rail road or a pipe line existed in the oil fields of western Pennsylvania, while all commerce from Northern ports was more or less hampered by the activities of Confederate cruisers.
Great Britain, France, Netherlands, and Ger many were the largest buyers, though fully half the total was distributed in smaller amounts among fifty or more other districts. The Americans were wisely laying a broad foundation for an immensely profitable trade, and gaining firm footholds which were to prove invaluable in subsequent competi tion. But no ripple of the coming struggle was yet visible. The world, quickly alive to the ad vantages of the new means of artificial light, con tinued to demand constantly increasing quantities of oil. Increased production in this country stead ily rose to meet the new requirements. Tank cars, then pipe lines and tank steamers lent their aid in facilitating foreign-trade development. The sea port refineries sprang into foreMost prominence and the American shippers prospered exceedingly. By 1870 the shipments had risen to over 2,500,000 barrels and ten years later they had again in creased fully fivefold. Half the output of the American wells was finding its way far and near to foreign consumers of every nationality.
The flourishing Scotch and French shale-oil in dustries had been practically killed by the cheap ness and superior qualities of the American kero sene. But the best idea of the complete control of the illuminating-oil market enjoyed by the American shippers appears in the trade to Russia and Asia Minor. Almost to the very time when the Caucasus railway was opened, Tiflis, less than 350 miles from Baku, was using American kero sene which had to be carried over 8,000 miles.