APPENDIX, NUMBER XII
To F. W. Mitchell:Yesterday I received by mail from you or some other friend in Franklin several newspaper slips, one of which threatened the destruction of my oil at Franklin. At the same time I received an anonymous letter threatening injury to the Jamestown and Franklin Railroad. Disapproval of my connection with the South Improvement Company is alleged as the reason of both threats. This morning the telegraph informs me that the threat to destroy my oil has been executed by tapping the tank and letting it run to waste. While there may be some excuse for working up the present excitement to induce people to subscribe their money to new railroad schemes, there can be nothing but reprobation for the lawless destruction of property. You have sufficient character and influence, and sufficient information of the purposes of the company, to quell this excitement by a word, and I think it your duty to say that word. It seems to me that a great responsibility rests with somebody among you for stimulating the present causeless excitement, and the lawless destruction of property. On meeting you here on your return from the South, I explained to you, very briefly, that the whole plan of the South Improvement Company was founded upon the expectation of co-operation with the oil producers to maintain a good price for crude oil, as the only means of securing a fair remuneration to either the transporter, the refiner, or the merchant.
Unless the producers will co-operate with us, first, by limiting the production or the capacity of the markets of the world to absorb petroleum at a good price; and, secondly, by tanking a large part of the production for the next two or three months, that it may be withheld from the market until the present glut is exhausted and production reduced, it will be impossible, I am convinced from recent advices of the state of supply and demand in the principal markets of the world, to keep the price of crude oil up to $3.50, and of refined oil up to twenty-two cents, during the coming summer.
I stated to you in the strongest terms the desire of the South Improvement Company to enter into an arrangement for a series of years with the producers, whereby good prices for crude oil at the wells and fair and reasonable rates of transportation would at all times be assured. The desire still exists. You expressed to me your concurrence in these views, as others among the leading producers whom I have more recently seen have also done.
I then explained to you certain important business which I had postponed to await the organisation of the South Improvement Company. That business I have been engaged upon for the last ten days. As soon as I get through with it, which I hope will be in a few days, I should like to meet a committee of the principal producers to arrange the details of the plan of co-operation of which we spoke. I therefore request you to have such a committee appointed by the meeting noticed for to-morrow on the newspaper slip sent to me, and if possible have a plan prepared by which, among
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