Railway Problems

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n STANDARD OIL REBATES1 THE apathy and inaction which naturally flow from a great defeat lay over the Oil Regions of Northwestern Pennsylvania long after the compromise with John D. Rockefeller in 1880, followed, as it was, by the combination with the Standard of the great independent seaboard pipe line...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n STANDARD OIL REBATES1 THE apathy and inaction which naturally flow from a great defeat lay over the Oil Regions of Northwestern Pennsylvania long after the compromise with John D. Rockefeller in 1880, followed, as it was, by the combination with the Standard of the great independent seaboard pipe line which had grown up under the oil men's encouragement and patronage. Years of war with a humiliating outcome had inspired the producers with the conviction that fighting was useless, that they were dealing with a power verging on the superhuman, ? a power carrying concealed weapons, fighting in the dark, and endowed with an altogether diabolic cleverness. Strange as the statement may appear, there is no disputing that by 1884 the Oil Regions as a whole looked on Mr. Rockefeller with superstitious awe. The effect of this dread was deplorable, for it intensified the feeling, now widespread in the Oil Regions, that it was useless to make further effort at a combined resistance. And yet these men, who were now lying too supine in Mr. Rockefeller's steel glove even to squirm, had laid the foundation of freedom in the oil business. It has taken thirty years to demonstrate the inestimable value of the efforts which in 1884 they regarded as futile ? thirty years to build even a small structure on the foundation they had laid, though that much has been done. The situation was saved at this critical time by individuals scattered through the oil world who were resolved to test the validity of Mr. Rockefeller's claim that the coal-oil business belonged to him. We have a right to do an independent business, they said, and we propose to do it. They beganthis effort by an attack on the weak spot in Mr. Rockefeller's armor. The twelve years just passed had taught them that the re...