Little wonder that the Cleveland refiners who had been snuffed out the year before, and who saw their plants run at such advantage, grew bitter, or that gossip said the daily mail of the president of the Standard Oil Company was enlivened by so many threats of revenge that he took extraordinary precautions about appearing unguarded in public.
It is worth noticing that these great profits were not being used for private purposes. In 1872 the Standard Oil Company paid a dividend of thirty-seven per cent., but in 1873 they cut it to fifteen per cent. The profits were going almost solidly into the extension and solidification of the business. Mr. Rockefeller was building great barrel factories, thus cutting down to the minimum one of a refiner's heaviest expenses. He was buying tank cars that he might be independent of the vagaries of the railroads in allotting cars. He was gaining control of terminal facilities in New York. He was putting his plants into the most perfect condition, introducing every improved process which would cheapen his manufacturing by the smallest fraction of a cent. He was diligently hunting methods to get a larger percentage of profit from crude oil. There was, perhaps, ten per cent. of waste at that period in crude oil. It hurt him to see it unused, and no man had a heartier welcome from the president of the Standard Oil Company than he who would show him how to utilise any proportion of his residuum. In short, Mr. Rockefeller was strengthening his line at every point, and to no part of it was he giving closer attention than to transportation.
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