Committee which, in 1872, looked into Mr. Rockefeller's scheme for making oil dearer, said that his concern was making money on this margin. "We could ship oil and do very well." A. H. Tack told the Congressional Committee of 1888, which was trying to find out why he had been obliged to go out of the refining business in 1873, that he could have made twelve per cent. on his capital with a profit of ten cents a barrel. Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle, of Cleveland, made a profit of thirty-four cents a barrel in 1875, and cleared $40,000 on an investment of $65,000. Fifty-two cents a barrel profit then was certainly not to be despised. The South Improvement Company gentlemen were not modest in the matter of profits, however, and they launched the scheme whose basic principles have figured so largely in the development of the Standard Oil Trust.
The success which Mr. Rockefeller had in getting the refiners of the country under his control, and the methods he took to do it, we have traced. It will be remembered that for a brief period in 1872 and 1873 he held together an association pledged to curtail the output of oil, but that in July, 1873, it went to pieces.[1] It will be recalled that three years after, in 1875, he put a second association into operation, which in a year claimed a control of ninety per cent. of the refining power of the country, and in less than four years controlled ninety-five per cent.[2] This large percentage Mr. Rockefeller has not been able to keep, but from 1879 to the present day there has not been a time when he has not controlled over eighty per cent, of the oil manufacturing of the country. To-day he controls about eighty-three per cent.
Now it is generally conceded that the man or men who control over seventy per cent. of a commodity control its price—within limits, very strict limits, too, such is the force of economic laws. In the case of the Standard Oil Company
- ↑ See Chapter IV
- ↑ See Chapter V
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