perhaps 10,000 barrels of the 150,000 barrels' daily production of Eastern oil, the service for which the outsider pays sixty cents, costs it from ten to twelve cents at the most liberal estimate. Here is over a cent saved on a gallon, and a cent saved, where millions of gallons are in question, makes not only great profits, but keeps down competition. The refiner who to-day must pay the Standard rates for transportation cannot compete in export oil with them. In January of 1904, when the chart shows the margin to have been about four and three-quarter cents, an independent refiner in the state of Ohio, dependent on the Standard for oil, gave the writer a detailed statement of costs and selling prices of products in his refinery. According to his statement he lost one and three-fifth cents on his export oil. He was forced, of course, to pay Standard transportation prices for crude and railroad charges for refined from Ohio to New York harbour.[1]
That there would have been such a transportation situation to-day had it not been for the discrimination by the railways, which threw the pipes into the Standard's hands in the first place, and the long story of aggression by which the Standard has kept out rival pipes, and so been able for twenty-five years to sustain the price for transportation, is of course evident. To-day, as thirty years ago, it is transportation advantages, unfairly won, which give the Standard Oil Company its hold. It is not only on transportation that the Standard to-day has great advantages over the independent refiner in the export market. As said at the beginning of this chapter, the Standard Oil Company "makes the price of refined oil"—within strict limits. Of course, making the market, it has all the advantages of the "inside track." Its transactions can
- ↑ It costs the Cleveland refiner .64 of a cent a gallon to bring oil in bulk from the Oil Regions to his refinery, and 1.44 cents per gallon to send it refined in bulk to New York.
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