But from the beginning of its power over the market the Standard Oil Company has sold domestic oil at prices varying from less than the cost of the crude oil it took to make it up to a profit of 100 per cent, or more. Wherever there has been a loss, or merely what is called a reasonable profit of, say, ten per cent., an examination of the tables quoted above shows conclusively it has been due to competition. The competition is not, and has not been since 1879, very great. In that year the Standard Oil Company claimed ninety-five per cent. of the refining interests of the country. In 1888 they claimed about eighty per cent.; in 1898, eighty-three per cent. This five to seventeen per cent. of independent interest is too small to come into active competition, of course, at all points. So long as one interest handles eighty-three per cent. of a product it is clear that it has the trade as a whole in its hands. The competition it encounters will be local only. But it is this local competition, unquestionably, that has brought down the price of oil at various points and caused the striking variation in prices recorded in the charts of the Industrial Commission and other investigations. The writer has before her a pile of a hundred or more letters written in the eighties by dealers in twelve different states. These letters tell the effect on the prices of the introduction of an independent oil into a territory formerly occupied exclusively by the Standard:
Calvert, Tenn.—The Waters-Pierce Oil Company (Standard) so reduced the price of their oil here when mine arrived that I will have some trouble to dispose of mine.
Chattanooga, Tenn.—… Cut the price of oil that had been selling at 21 cents to 17 cents.
Pine Bluff, Ark.—While the merchants here would like to buy from some other than the Standard they cannot afford to take the risks of loss. We have just had an example of one hundred barrels opposition oil which was brought here, which had the effect of bringing Waters-Pierce Oil Company's oil down from 18 to 13 cents—one cent less than cost of opposition, with refusal on their part to sell to anyone that bought from other than their company.
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