There were other features of this revolutionary management which caused deep resentment in the oil world. Chief among them was the dismantling or abandoning of plants which the Standard had "acquired," and which it claimed were so badly placed or so equipped that it did not pay to run them. There was reason enough in many cases for dissatisfaction with the process of acquisition, but having acquired the refineries, the Standard showed its wisdom in abandoning many of them. Take Pittsburg, for instance. When Mr. Lockhart began to absorb his neighbours, in 1874, there were some twenty-five plants in and around the town. They were of varying capacity, from little ten-barrel stills of antiquated design and out-of-the-way location, to complete plants like the Citizens', which Mr. Tack described in Chapter V. But how could Mr. Lockhart manage these as they stood to good advantage? It might pay the owner of the little refinery to run it, for he was his own stillman, his own pipe-fitter, his own foreman, and did not expect large returns; but it would have been absurd for Mr. Lockhart to try to run it. He simply carted away any available machinery, sold what he could for junk, and left the débris. Now, one of the most melancholy sights on earth is an abandoned oil refinery; and it was the desolation of the picture, combined, as it always was in the Oil Regions, with the history of the former owners, that caused much of the outcry. It was a thing that the oil men could not get over, largely because it was a sight always before their eyes.

Bitter as this policy was for those who had suffered by the Standard's campaigns, it was, of course, the only thing for the trust to do — indeed, that was what it had been waging war on the independents for: that it might shut them down and dismantle them, that there might be less oil made and higher prices for what it made. This wisdom in locating factories has continued to characterise the Standard operations. It works only plants which pay, and it places its plants where they can be operated to the best advantage. Many fine examples of the relation of location in manufacturing to crude supply and to markets are to be seen in the Standard Oil Company plants to-day. For example, refined for foreign shipments is made at the seaboard, and the vessels which carry it are loaded at docks, as at the works at Bayonne, New Jersey. The cost of transportation from factory to ship, a large item in the old days, is eliminated entirely. The Middle West market is now supplied almost entirely from the Standard factories at Whiting, Indiana, a town built by the Standard Oil Company for refining Ohio oil. Here 25,000 barrels of oil are refined daily, and from this central point distributed to the Mississippi Valley.

All of the industries which have been grafted on to the refineries have always been run with the same exact regard to minute economies. These industries were numerous because of Mr. Rockefeller's great principle, "pay a profit to nobody." From his earliest ventures in combination he had applied this principle. Mr. Blanchard's explanation to the Hepburn Commission in 1879 of why the Standard had controlled the Erie's yards at Weehawken since 1874, shows exactly Mr. Rockefeller's point of view. [157] This policy of paying nobody a profit took Mr. Rockefeller into the barrel business. In 1872, when Mr. Rockefeller became master of the Cleveland oil business, the purchase of barrels was one of a refiner's heaviest expenses. In an estimate of the cost of producing a gallon of refined oil in 1873, made in the Oil City Derrick and accepted as correct by that paper, the cost of the barrel is put at four cents a gallon, which was more than the crude oil cost at that date. Even at four cents a gallon barrels were hard to get, so great was the demand. If a refiner could get his barrels back, of course there was a saving (a returned barrel was estimated to be worth 2-3/4 cents), but the return could not be counted on; empty barrels coming from Europe particularly, and consigned to Western shippers, were frequently seized in New York by Eastern refiners. The need was held to justify the deed, like thieving in famine time. Fortunes were made in barrels, and dealers hearing of a big supply in Europe have been known to charter a vessel and go for them, and reap rich profits. In fact, a whole volume of commercial tragedy and comedy hangs around the oil barrel. Now it was to the barrel — the "holy blue barrel" — that Mr. Rockefeller gave early attention. He determined to make it himself. One of the earliest outside ventures of the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland was barrel works, and Mr. Rockefeller was soon getting for two and a half cents what his rivals paid four for, though he was by no means the only refiner who manufactured barrels in the early days — each factory aimed to add barrel works as soon as able. The amount the Standard Oil Company saved on this one item is evident when the extent of its business is considered. The year before the trust was formed (1881) they manufactured 4,500,000 barrels, an average of about 15,000 a day. Since that time the barrel has been gradually going out of the oil business, bulk transportation taking its place very largely. Nevertheless, in 1901 the Standard Oil Company manufactured about 3,000,000 new barrels. In the period since they began the manufacture of barrels their factories have introduced some small savings which in the aggregate amount to large sums. For instance, they have improved the lap of the hoop — a small thing, but one which amounted in 1901 to something like $15,000. Some $50,000 a year was saved by a slight increase in the size of the tankage. The Standard claims that these economies are so small in themselves that it only pays to practise them where there is a large aggregate business.

More important than the barrel to-day, however, is the tin can — for it is in tin cans that all the enormous quantities of refined sent to tropical and Oriental countries must go to prevent deterioration — and nowhere does the policy of economy which Mr. Rockefeller has worked out show better than in one of the Standard canning works. In 1902 the writer visited the largest of the Standard can factories, the Devoe, on the East River, Long Island City. It has a capacity of 70,000 five-gallon cans a day, and is probably the largest can factory in the world. At the entrance of the place a man was sweeping up carefully the dirt on the floor and wheeling it away — not to be dumped in the river, however. The dirt was to be sifted for tin filings and solder dust. At every step something was saved. The Standard buys the tin for its cans in Wales, because it is cheaper. It would not be cheaper if it were not for a vagary in administering the tariff by which the duty on tin plate is refunded if the tin is made into receptacles to be exported. This clause was probably made for the benefit of the Standard, it being the largest single consumer of tin plate in the United States. In 1901 the Standard Oil Company imported over 60,000 tons of tin with a value of over $1,000,000. This tin comes in sheets packed in flat boxes, which are opened by throwing — it is quicker than opening by a hammer, and time is considered as valuable as tin filings. The empty boxes are sold by the hundred to the Long Island gardens for growing plants in, and the broken covers are sold for kindling. The trimmings which result from shaping the tin sheets for a can are gathered into bundles and sold to chemical works or foundries. There is the same care taken with solder as with tin, the amount each workman uses being carefully gauged. The canning plants, like the refineries, compare their results monthly, and the laurels go to the manager who has saved the most ounces of solder, the most hours, the most footsteps.

The five-gallon can turned out at the Devoe is a marvel of evolution. The present methods of manufacture are almost entirely the work of Herman Miller, known in Standard circles as the "father of the five-gallon can"; and a fine type of the German inventor he is. The machinery for making the can has been so developed that while, in 1865, when Mr. Miller began his work under Charles Pratt, one man and a boy soldered 850 cans in a day, in 1880 three men made 8,000, and since 1893 three men have made 24,000. It is an actual fact that a tin can is made by Miller in just about the time it takes to walk from the point in the factory where the sheets of tin are unloaded to the point where the finished article is filled with oil.

And here is a nice point in combination. Not far away from the canning works, on Newtown Creek, is an oil refinery. This oil runs to the canning works, and, as the new-made cans come down by a chute from the works above, where they have just been finished, they are filled, twelve at a time, with the oil made a few miles away. The filling apparatus is admirable. As the new-made cans come down the chute they are distributed, twelve in a row, along one side of a turn-table. The turn-table is revolved, and the cans come directly under twelve measures, each holding five gallons of oil — a turn of a valve, and the cans are full. The table is turned a quarter, and while twelve more cans are filled and twelve fresh ones are distributed, four men with soldering coppers put the caps on the first set. Another quarter turn, and men stand ready to take the cans from the filler, and while they do this, twelve more are having caps put on, twelve are filling, and twelve are coming to their place from the chute. The cans are placed at once in wooden boxes standing ready, and, after a twenty-four-hour wait for discovering leaks, are nailed up and carted to a near-by door. This door opens on the river, and there at anchor by the side of the factory is a vessel chartered for South America or China or where not — waiting to receive the cans which a little more than twenty-four hours before were tin sheets lying in flat boxes. It is a marvellous example of economy not only in materials, but in time and in footsteps.

With Mr. Rockefeller's genius for detail, there went a sense of the big and vital factors in the oil business, and a daring in laying hold of them which was very like military genius. He saw strategic points like a Napoleon, and he swooped on them with the suddenness of a Napoleon. This master ability has been fully illustrated already in this work. Mr. Rockefeller's capture of the Cleveland refineries in 1872 was as dazzling an achievement as it was a hateful one. The campaign by which the Empire Transportation Company was wrested from the Pennsylvania Railroad, viewed simply as a piece of brigandage, was admirable. The man saw what was necessary to his purpose, and he never hesitated before it. His courage was steady — and his faith in his ideas unwavering. He simply knew that was the thing to do, and he went ahead with the serenity of the man who knows.

After the formation of the trust the demand for these qualities was constant. For instance, the contract which the Standard signed with the producers in February, 1880, pledged them to take care of a production of 65,000 barrels a day. When they signed this agreement there was above ground nearly nine and one-half million barrels of oil. The production increased at a frightful rate for four years. At the end of 1880 there were stocks of over 17,000,000 above ground; in 1881, over 25,000,000; 1882, over 34,000,000; 1883, over 35,000,000; and 1884, over 36,000,000, and the United Pipe Lines took care of this production with the aid of the producers, who built tanks neck and neck with them. In 1880 the Standard people averaged over one iron tank a day, the tanks holding from 25,000 to 35,000 barrels. There were not tank-builders enough in the United States to do the work, and crews were brought from Canada and England. This, of course, called for an enormous expenditure of money, for tanks cost from $7,000 to $10,000 apiece. Rich as the United Pipe Lines were they were forced to borrow money in these years of excessive production, for they had to lay lines as well as build tanks. There were nearly 4,000 miles of pipe-line laid in the Bradford region alone from 1878 to 1884, and these lines connected with upward of 20,000 wells.

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