Storage stations, or main distributing centers, have been established at seventy places in Europe alone. These central stations and a score of re fineries supply literally thousands of interior de pots and selling agencies, by means of tank barges, cars, and wagons. The same policy has been pur• sued elsewhere, East and West, North and South. American oil meets Burmese oil in Mandalay. Tin cases, made in the refinery at Bayonne or Phila delphia, find their way to the native huts of Bor neo and the Celebes; or, adorned with a dragon, make strong appeals to the Chinamen's fancy.
The Standard admits no limits to its field of op erations, except the limit beyond which man can not penetrate. No region is so remote, no route so long or hard, no mountain pass so high, that Stand ard oil may not find its way there in answer to a regular demand, until petroleum products have a wider sale than any other article of American com merce. Everywhere the Standard has won its way first by carefully studying conditions to be met and then adapting its methods to the requirements of the individual locality. A typical example comes from the Chinese trade, where the dense popula tion held out alluring prospects if the market could be developed. The great mass of natives, living most humbly, could afford to use oil only if a cheap lamp were available. Local tinsmiths made rude metal affairs which were almost worse than none, for the light was poor, and frequent explosions prejudiced the native minds against kerosene. The Standard quickly saw that successful trade devel opment depended on first supplying the general need for an efficient lamp. Experiments soon indi cated the most desirable "type to meet native con ditions, every care being taken to make the article as perfect as possible at a minimum cost. The Standard then added another to the long list of its activities and began the manufacture of both lamps and wicks on a large scale. As fast as they could be made, hundreds of thousands were shipped to the East where the Standard agents were di rected to sell them at a price equal to about half the cost of actual manufacture. Still this proceed ing was excellent business policy because every lamp sold at a small loss meant a demand for so many more gallons of kerosene to be sold at a good profit. This is the way the foreign trade has been extended in the battle to secure and retain mar kets for American oil.
For this country the Standard Oil Company has borne the brunt of this great commercial battle. Baku has been its leading opponent : America ver sus Russia in a conflict still unsettled and now more acute than ever before; a conflict in which success has not always crowned the efforts of the Standard, despite its enormous resources and al most unlimited power.
The first reversal suffered by the Americans was only to be expected ; being driven out of the Rus sian market was inevitable from the very moment that modern progress began at Baku. The Rus sians speedily accomplished this result by two means; first, improving the Baku refined product until it was a satisfactory substitute for the high grade American oils, and second, imposing a heavy tariff on all petroleum imports. The Nobels were largely instrumental in raising the standard of re fined products, and, with them to push the trade, this securely protected home industry soon com manded the entire Russian market. Imports of American products were reduced from thousands of barrels to a few hundred gallons or cases of spe cial brands, and then to almost nothing. No com pany, however powerful, could have contended suc cessfully against a great and growing industry in its own country, protected by an absolute tariff barrier of sixteen cents a gallon.
About the time the exclusion of American oil from Russia had become an accomplished fact, the opening of the Caucasus railroad and the advent of the Rothschild firm at Baku gave the signal for the Russians to reach out for foreign markets as well. American consuls at various Old World ports be gan, about 1885, to report the appearance of Rus sian oil in small quantities: fifty barrels here, a hundred barrels there, from England to Asia Minor. The Rothschild firm organized a distrib uting business in Great Britain, long one of the chief strongholds of the American foreign trade. The Nobels soon followed their example, and the imports of Russian oil into Western Europe began to appear threatening.
American exports of petroleum in 1890 had risen to nearly 20,000,000 barrels, at least one fifth of the total going to a half dozen leading European ports. Rusian exports at that time to these same ports equalled hardly a tenth of the American quantity. Following its usual custom, however, the Standard promptly cut prices to kill this rising competition. Cutthroat methods had sufficed to put the Standard in complete control of the indus try at home, but it was not so effective when ap plied several thousand miles away to a rival in dustry like that of Baku. Despite every possible effort to prevent it, the exports of Russian oil con tinued to increase from year to year. The element of distance and geographical position was a factor which no system of organization could entirely overcome.