Fertig, Burwald and Ramage, who had seen the Standard, decided to make another effort if the producers would help them out. In the next few days the leading men of the independent alliance worked with fury to call the Oil Regions into a mass-meeting. They travelled from assembly to assembly exhorting to action; they circulated dodgers announcing the gathering, and finally, in January, 1895, ran special trains to Butler, the rallying place. There was no lack of enthusiasm and blunt talk at the Butler mass-meeting. All the bitterness and determination of the region poured forth against the Standard, and when a resolution was offered by David Kirk, one of the most active and forceful of the independents, to raise money to form a new company, to be called the Pure Oil Company, its immediate object being to take care of the refiners in the tight place where they were, it went through with a whoop, and in a few moments $75,000 had been subscribed. A few days later this sum was raised to $200,000.
The objects of the company, as set forth in its prospectus issued at this time, were:
To maintain and uphold the inherent right to do business, the right to transport and market the producer's own product, and his right to the just reward of his labour and capital invested.
Another clause of the prospectus is interesting:
To prevent any interference of that monopoly which has obtained control of the oil business, the voting power of one-half of the stock of the Pure Oil Company is placed by the owners in the hands of five champions of this right of independence, who are bound by the terms of a permanent trust bond to vote only for such men and measures as shall forever make this company INDEPENDENT, so that no sales of interest will carry with them any power to jeopardise the policy or existence of the company, or the investments of its remaining members.
The Pure Oil Company had been organised none too soon. It was but a few months after it was well under way before
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