A few months after "immediate shipment" was begun a new cause for dissatisfaction arose. More or less private tankage leased to the lines had always been in existence. It enabled a producer to carry his oil without paying storage, and, of course, it was the business of the company to empty this storage within a reasonable time after the owner demanded it. But in the spring the lines, under the same plea of under capacity, refused to carry out this duty to the tank owner; that is, they refused to give him his tankage, although he had sold his oil. Thus A owns 5,000 barrels of tankage. It is full. He sells a portion of it to Mr. Bostwick and asks the United Pipe Lines to run the oil accumulated at his wells. But the United Pipe Lines refuses on the ground that the line is full. The loss to producers incident upon these orders was terrible. All over the Bradford field men saw their oil running on the ground, though they offered to sell it at ruinous prices, and though they might have thousands of barrels of tankage leased to the United Lines. Yet they did not riot; conscious that their own reckless drilling had brought on the trouble, they cursed the Standard, and put down more wells!
But in the spring of 1878 Mr. Rockefeller and his colleagues instituted a series of manœuvres which shattered the last remnant of confidence the oil men had in the sincerity of their claim that they were doing their utmost to relieve the distressed Oil Regions, and that their measures were necessary to hold the producers in check. The pipe-lines began to refuse to load cars for the shippers who supplied the few independent refiners with oil. The experiences of many of these independent oil men have been told before the courts. For instance, W. H. Nicholson, the representative of Mr. Ohlen, of New York, a shipper of petroleum, testified[1] that in May, 1878, he began to have difficulty in getting cars. At
- ↑ Investigation ordered by the secretary of internal affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1878.
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