The History of the Standard Oil Company/Volume 1/Appendix/Number 25
NUMBER 25 (See page 148)
HENRY M. FLAGLER'S TESTIMONY ON THE UNION OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY WITH OUTSIDE REFINERS IN 1874
[Proceedings in Relation to Trusts, House of Representatives, 1888. Report Number 3112, page 291 and page 770.]
A. . . . The original Standard Oil Company was organised in the early part of 1870. The increased capacity and the acquisition of the Cleveland refineries was, as I remember it, in 1872. It remained at that until 1875 or 1876,[1] according to the best of my recollection. Then was consummated a negotiation which had been pending for some two years, perhaps, with certain parties in Pittsburg, Philadelphia and New York, by which a value was agreed upon, and their refinery property was purchased and the capital of the company was increased a still further sum of a million, and they were paid for these properties, and money which they contributed, in the stock of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio.
By Mr. Gowen.
Q. When did the Standard Oil Company of Ohio first enter into an alliance with other refineries?
A. If you mean, (by) an alliance, Mr. Gowen, I should say never.
Q. I am only endeavouring to aid your friends in getting at what they want. Here, I notice, they propose to prove by you—I will give it in this way—that on account of the disastrous condition of the refining business, the Standard, on October 15, 1874, entered into an alliance with a number of Pittsburg refineries?
A. That is more correctly stated by saying that the Standard Oil Company purchased the refineries owned by the parties in Pittsburg.
Q. Who were they?
A. Lockhart, Frew and Company, I think was the company. Wait a moment. It was the Standard Oil Company of Pittsburg, it being a corporation, and Warden, Frew and Company, of Philadelphia, and, I should say, Charles Pratt and Company, of New York.
Q. Any others?
A. That is all. Q. All those gentlemen, Warden, Frew and Company, and the Standard Oil Company of Pittsburg, Charles Pratt and Company of New York, are now associated with you as parties interested in the present Oil Trust?
A. They are stockholders. The property formerly owned by them was at that time purchased by the Standard Oil Company.
Q. When you speak of purchasing their interest, you do not exclude them from their interest? They united with you and remained as your associates in the business?
A. If it was not from the fact that ours was a corporation, we might call it a co-partnership.
Q. They becoming interested in yours, and you in theirs?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you simply used your name to represent the joint ownership, as it was a corporation?
A. Yes, sir.
- ↑ It was 1874.