then, I believe, vice-president of the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company, David A. Stewart, one of the directors of the road, and Thomas M. King, assistant superintendent. I spoke very plainly to Mr. Shinn, telling him that the idea of a scarcity of cars on daily shipments of less than 30,000 barrels a day was such an absurd, barefaced pretence that he could not expect men of ordinary intelligence to accept it, as the preceding fall, when business required, the railroads could carry day after day from 50,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil. Mr. Shinn stated clearly that I knew that the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company did not control the oil business over its line, but was governed entirely and exclusively by orders received from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. I then requested him to be the vehicle of communicating to the Pennsylvania Railroad officials my views on the subject, telling him that I was convinced that unless immediate relief was furnished and cars afforded there would be an outbreak in the Oil Regions. After further conversation we parted. My interview with them was not as officials of the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company, but as representatives of the oil traffic carried and controlled by the Pennsylvania road. On the next Monday I returned to Parker. After passing Redbank, where the low grade road, the connecting link between the Valley Road and the Philadelphia and Erie Road, meets the Valley Road—between that point and Parker—the express train was delayed for over half an hour in passing through hundreds of empty oil cars."[1]
In June another exasperating episode occurred, growing out of the attempts of the oil men to secure independent routes to the seaboard. As we have seen, two enterprises had been launched late in 1877 under the patronage of the Petroleum Producers' Union. As soon as the Equitable had acquired its right of way to Buffalo, Mr. Emery, the head of the company, his papers in hand, sought an interview with representatives of the Buffalo and McKean road, and told them if they did not consent that the Equitable lay a pipe-line to their road, and did not contract to carry the oil from that connection to Buffalo, the pipe-line to Buffalo would be laid. After considerable negotiation a contract was made with the railroad, and by June the new company was ready with pipe-line, cars and barges to carry oil to New York. But no sooner did they attempt to begin operations than the railroad, under pressure from the Pennsylvania Railroad it was claimed, re-
- ↑ Abridged from Mr. Campbell's testimony.
[ 222 ]
