went on for nearly three years, until there was a margin of only three cents between crude and refined oil. The barrel, which is always reckoned in the official quotations of export refined oil, costs two and a half cents per gallon, and the price of manufacturing is usually put at one-half a cent. The cost of transporting the oil was not covered by the margin the
1890 TO 1904.
Fragment of chart, showing relation between crude and refined oil in the last fourteen years. Notice effect on margin from 1890 to 1894 of rise of strong competitive forces. Notice also how margin between price of crude and of domestic oil increased in the winter of 1903-1904, during the coal famine.
greater part of the year 1894. Now, the Standard Oil Company were not selling oil at a loss at this time out of love for the consumers, although they made enough money in 1894 on by-products and domestic oil to have done so—their net earnings were over $15,000,000 in 1894, and they reckoned an increase in net value of property of over $4,000,000—they were fighting Russian oil and the independent combination started in 1889. By 1892 this combination was in active operation. The extent of this movement was described in the last chapter of this narrative. At the same time certain large pro-
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