were due to the rise and fall in the crude market, and that depended on the amount of crude coming from the ground. The South Improvement Company might assert that they meant to bring the producers into their scheme and persuade them to keep down the amount of production in the same way they meant to keep down refined, so that the price could be kept steadily high, but they had nothing to prove that they were sincere in the intention, nothing to prove that they had thought of the producer seriously until the trouble in the Oil Regions began. It looked very much to the committee as if the real intention of the company was to keep up the price of refined to a certain figure by limiting the output, and that there was nothing to show that it would not go up with crude though it might not go down with it! Under these circumstances it seemed as if a fluctuating market which gave a moderate average was better for the consumer than the steady high price which Mr. Watson thought so good for the public. Thirty-two cents a gallon was the ideal price they had in view, though refined had not sold for that since 1869, the average price in 1870 being 26⅜ and in 1871 24¼. The refiner who in 1871 sold his oil at 24¼ cents a gallon cleared easily fifty-two cents a barrel—a large profit on his investment,—but the refiners in the early stages of this new industry had made much larger profits. It was to perpetuate these early profits that they had gone into the South Improvement Company.
It did not take the full exposition of the objects of the South Improvement Company, brought out by the Congressional Investigating Committee, with the publication of charters and contracts, to convince the country at large that the Oil Regions were right in their opposition. From the first the sympathy of the press and the people were with the oil men. It was evident to everybody that if the railroads had made the contracts as charged (and it daily became more
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