EPUB paragraph 7 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In the end, frustrated by rampant cheating and freeloaders, Rockefeller gathered refiners in Saratoga Springs, New York, on June 24, 1873, and dissolved the short-lived Pittsburgh Plan. He was momentarily disheartened by this failure, which again confirmed his preference for outright fusion rather than an unwieldy federation of firms. “There are some people whom the Lord Almighty cannot save,” he later said wearily of the Oil Creek refiners. “They don’t want to be saved. They want to go on and serve the devil and keep on in their wicked ways.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · New York · Oil Creek · Saratoga Springs · Pittsburgh Plan
EPUB paragraph 8 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In her influential polemic, Ida Tarbell evoked a paradise of free, independent producers in western Pennsylvania, “ruddy and joyous” men, enamored of competition, who were snuffed out by the sinister Standard Oil. In her morality play, Rockefeller was the venomous toad in this garden of earthly delights. In fact, the producers didn’t respond to Rockefeller by advocating freer competition but by forming their own counterconspiracy. In the summer of 1872, under the aegis of the Petroleum Producers’ Association, they approved a moratorium on new drilling to steady prices and briefly called for a complete halt to production. The producers terrorized each other, meting out nocturnal punishment to noncooperators by setting their wells ablaze or smashing their pumping engines with sledgehammers. The producing end of the industry was populated by thousands of freebooting, high-spirited speculators who were far harder to organize than the more sober refiners, concentrated in a few urban centers—something that gave Rockefeller a decided edge.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil · Pennsylvania · Petroleum Producers’ Association
EPUB paragraph 9 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
So long as he could maintain ample spreads between crude and refined prices, Rockefeller blessed the producers’ efforts to impose higher prices and control output. It was a common misconception along Oil Creek—and one that fed anti-Rockefeller demonology—that he was trying to drive drillers to the wall to keep prices low. In reality, he was fully prepared to deal with a strong producers’ cartel so long as they capped production. On December 19, 1872, Rockefeller met with producers at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York and signed the so-called Treaty of Titusville. Under this agreement, the refiners’ association pledged to buy oil from the producers’ association at five dollars a barrel—nearly twice the spot market rate—in exchange for tightly enforced production limits. The agreement crumbled not because of Rockefeller but because producers couldn’t enforce discipline in their ranks. Instead of throttling the oil flow, they scrambled to pump more, with wholesale cheating driving the price as low as two dollars a barrel on the crude-oil market. Many small drillers outside the producers’ association took advantage of the pact to undersell their bigger competitors.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · New York · Titusville · Oil Creek · Fed · Fifth Avenue Hotel
EPUB paragraph 10 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
This behavior ratified Rockefeller’s low opinion of the producers as dissolute, unreliable men who couldn’t contain a “wild and uncontrollable element” that “would sneak out at midnight and start the pumps going so that the oil might flow before the songs of the birds were heard.” With the oil industry drowning in another glut, Rockefeller terminated the agreement in January 1873, chiding the recalcitrant producers: “You have not kept your part of the contract—you have not limited the supply of oil—there is more being pumped today then ever before in the history of the region.” While uncontrollable drilling was to blame, the producers found it easier to scapegoat Standard Oil. After the agreement fell apart, the disorganized producers lost all incentive to curtail production, feeding another downward spiral in oil prices.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 11 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
By 1873, Standard Oil was shipping about a million barrels of refined oil per year and earning about a dollar a barrel, yet the business remained on an unsure footing. Rockefeller had clarified one thing in his own mind, however: Voluntary associations couldn’t move with the speed, unity, and efficiency he wanted. “We proved that the producers’ and refiners’ associations were ropes of sand,” he said. He was now through with ineffectual alliances and ready to bring the industry to heel under Standard Oil control. “The idea was mine. The idea was persisted in, too, in spite of the opposition of some who became fainthearted at the magnitude of the undertaking, as it constantly assumed larger proportions.” By early 1873, he had crossed his own Rubicon and never looked back. Once embarked on a course of action, he wasn’t a man to be hobbled by doubts.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Rubicon
EPUB paragraph 12 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In 1873, the mad dash for riches that followed the Civil War ended in a prolonged slump that ground on for six interminable years. On Black Thursday—September 18, 1873—the august banking house of Jay Cooke and Company failed because of problems in financing the Northern Pacific Railway. This event ignited a panic, leading to a stock-exchange shutdown, a string of bank failures, and widespread railroad bankruptcies. During the next few years, deflated by massive unemployment, daily wages plunged 25 percent, exposing many Americans to the horror of downward mobility. The six lean years accelerated the process of consolidation that had gathered force in many economic sectors.
Names: Jay Cooke · Civil War · Northern Pacific Railway
EPUB paragraph 13 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
This depression especially exacerbated the problems of the oil industry. Soon after Black Thursday, crude prices touched a shocking low of eighty cents a barrel; within a year, prices had tumbled to forty-eight cents—cheaper than the cost of hauling water in some towns. Just as Carnegie expanded his steel operations after the 1873 panic, so Rockefeller saw the slump as a chance to translate his master blueprint into reality. To capitalize on rival companies selling at distress-sale prices, he slashed Standard Oil’s dividend to increase its cash reserves. Standard Oil weathered the six-year depression magnificently, a fact Rockefeller attributed to its conservative financial policy and unparalleled access to bank credit and investor cash.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
The oil-refining industry staggered under so much surplus capacity that even Standard Oil, comprising a quarter of the industry, operated only two of its six main Cleveland plants. For all that, it managed to post such creditable profits that it sometimes wooed competitors simply by giving them a privileged peek at its books. Rockefeller was acquiring unstoppable momentum and, having subdued Cleveland, he soon began his march from city to city in an unrelenting campaign of national consolidation.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Cleveland
EPUB paragraph 15 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
As his operations grew, Rockefeller made a fetish of secrecy, flavored with paranoia, a legacy of his self-conscious boyhood. One day, he saw an office employee talking to a stranger and later inquired after the man’s identity. Although the subordinate said the man was a friend, Rockefeller lectured him, “Well, be very careful what you say. What does he want here? Don’t let him find out anything.” “But he is just a friend,” the employee replied. “He doesn’t want to know anything. He has just come to see me.” “Quite so,” said Rockefeller, “but you can never tell. Be careful, be very careful.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 16 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In absorbing competitors, Rockefeller was equally secretive and asked them to continue operating under their original names and not divulge their Standard Oil ownership. They were instructed to retain their original stationery, keep secret accounts, and not allude on paper to their Cleveland connection; internal correspondence with Standard Oil was often conducted in code or with fictitious names. Rockefeller also did this as a necessary legal expedient, for under existing law Standard Oil of Ohio couldn’t own property outside the state, a situation that invited deception by companies that operated nationally.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Standard Oil of Ohio · Cleveland
EPUB paragraph 17 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Rockefeller warned refiners joining Standard Oil not to parade their sudden wealth, lest people wonder where they got the cash. After striking a deal with one Cleveland refiner, he invited him to his Euclid Avenue home one night and said: “But you must keep this contract secret even from your wife. When you begin to make more money, don’t let anybody know it. Don’t put on any more style. You have no ambition to drive fast horses, have you?” With such thoroughgoing stealth, Standard Oil executives worried that if some newly acquired refiner died, his heirs might mistakenly claim ownership of the refinery.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Euclid Avenue
EPUB paragraph 18 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Rockefeller was similarly suspicious of any boasting or ostentation among associates. One day, he was riding on a train in Cleveland with Pittsburgh refiner O. T. Waring when Waring asked him who owned a handsome, dark green hillside house in the distance. “You wish to know who owns that house?” asked Rockefeller, suddenly very upset. “It’s our Mr. Hopper, who makes barrels for us. Whew! It’s an expensive house, isn’t it? I wonder if Hopper isn’t making altogether too much money? Let’s look into it.” Back in the office, he pored over the accounts, decided that Hopper’s profits were excessive, and terminated the contracts with him. In a similar vein, Rockefeller was concerned that if he advertised his own wealth through fancy houses, he might attract investors into the refining business and only worsen the excess capacity problem.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Cleveland · Pittsburgh · Hopper · O. T. Waring
EPUB paragraph 19 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
As will be seen, Rockefeller was capable of extraordinary ferocity in compelling submission from competitors. He might starve out obdurate firms by buying all available barrels on the market or monopolize local tank cars to paralyze their operations. Yet Rockefeller didn’t apply this pressure lightly and preferred patience and reason—if possible—to terror. He was not only purchasing refineries but assembling a managerial team. The creation of Standard Oil was often less a matter of stamping out competitors than of seducing them into cooperation. In general, Rockefeller was so eager to retain original management that he accumulated expensive deadwood on the payroll and, for the sake of intraempire harmony, preferred to be conciliatory. Several years later, one colleague wrote to him that almost the entire executive committee “have made up their minds that the policy of buying out our competitors has had its day and that to pay men salaries for doing nothing is poor business, though these men have been all their active business lives in the Oil business.” This policy, which kept colleagues from defecting and forming competing companies, was one of many expensive extravagances that accompanied the creation of the monopoly.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 20 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
With access to Oil Creek via the Allegheny River, Pittsburgh was an optimal crossroads for oil traffic, and it was inevitably targeted by Rockefeller for his second great wave of consolidation. After the failed Pittsburgh Plan, Rockefeller hoped to prod, wheedle, and cajole both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia refiners into Standard Oil.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Oil Creek · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · Allegheny River · Pittsburgh Plan
EPUB paragraph 21 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
During the autumn of 1874, Rockefeller and Flagler attended a secret summit meeting in Saratoga Springs with their Pittsburgh and Philadelphia counterparts, Charles Lockhart and William G. Warden. By snapping up the strongest refiners in these two towns, Standard Oil hoped that it would then easily corral the smaller refiners in their wake. With its racetrack and gambling casino, Saratoga Springs was a fashionable resort for wealthy sportsmen and, as Commodore Vanderbilt’s summer home, a popular gathering spot for confidential business talks. After breakfast, the four refiners retreated to a pleasant pavilion by a spring, where they talked for six hours. Only by banding together in one firm, Rockefeller argued in his most soothing manner, could they avert destructive price-cutting. When Lockhart and Warden hesitated, Rockefeller played his trump card: He invited Warden to come to Cleveland and inspect the Standard Oil books. When Warden later examined them, he was taken aback: Rockefeller could manufacture kerosene so inexpensively that he could sell below Warden’s production costs and earn a profit. After several weeks of appraising Standard Oil and being assured of a voice in its management, Warden and Lockhart joined forces with Rockefeller. In the clandestine sale of their plants, they had the foresight to take payment in Standard Oil stock. Since Rockefeller’s papers from this period are sparse, we don’t know precisely why these powerful rivals yielded to him, but they were probably attracted by the access to railroad rebates, lower interest rates, scarce tank cars, and technical expertise that went along with the partnership.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry M. Flagler · William G. Warden · Charles Lockhart · Cornelius Vanderbilt · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · Saratoga Springs
EPUB paragraph 22 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
With this decisive stroke, Rockefeller absorbed more than half of the Pittsburgh refining capacity, with the leading Philadelphia refinery tossed in for good measure. In this way, he activated a self-sustaining movement as his new allies agreed to consolidate business in their localities and supervise the purchase of the remaining independent refineries. A massive chain reaction was thus set in motion that rippled through both refining centers, with local businessmen now acting as Rockefeller’s agents. Of twenty-two Pittsburgh refiners in existence when Rockefeller struck his Saratoga Springs deal, only one was still in existence independently two years later.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · Saratoga Springs
EPUB paragraph 23 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Rockefeller was especially delighted to snare Charles Lockhart, a bearded Scot with a frosty, taciturn manner who was, in Rockefeller’s words, “one of the most experienced, self-contained, and self-controlled men in business.”During the Saratoga meeting, he impressed the Standard men because he listened attentively but hardly breathed a syllable, which elicited Rockefeller’s highest praise: “That’s the kind of man I’d like to have go fishing with me.”Though the oil business was comparatively young, Lockhart was already a veteran, having sold Seneca Oil along with William Frew in a Pittsburgh store in the 1850s. Soon after Edwin Drake’s discovery, Lockhart had carried the first samples of Pennsylvania kerosene to London. Besides creating the top Pittsburgh refiner, Lockhart, Frew and Company, the two men had also joined forces with William Warden to establish a Philadelphia affiliate, Warden, Frew and Company, which later evolved into the Atlantic Refining Company. This innovative trio of refiners shipped oil to Liverpool aboard steamers lined with iron tanks, reducing both the risk of fire and the noisome smells. The antithesis of the penurious Lockhart, Warden was an effusive, bighearted man with a broad face and muttonchop whiskers. With wider-ranging interests than the average Standard Oil man, he was a former abolitionist who had donated money to black causes after the war, a conscientious Presbyterian, and an active reformer in Philadelphia politics.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William G. Warden · Charles Lockhart · Standard Oil · Edwin Drake · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · London · William Frew · Pennsylvania · Seneca Oil · Saratoga · Atlantic Refining Company · Liverpool
EPUB paragraph 24 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
While stepping up his Pittsburgh and Philadelphia campaigns, Rockefeller also established a critical foothold in New York, where he had already bought the Devoe Manufacturing Company, specialists in case oil, and the Long Island Company, operator of a large refinery. Through the efforts of brother William, Rockefeller now took over Charles Pratt and Company. A short man with a sandy beard, Charles Pratt was a self-made Baptist with the habitual reticence that Rockefeller prized. He had manufactured paints before the Civil War and this had led him into oil refining. With a flair for merchandising, he had made his high-quality kerosene, Astral Oil, a common fixture in American households and so adroitly managed exports to Europe and Asia that the brand acquired international fame.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Charles Pratt · New York · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · Europe · Asia · Civil War · Devoe Manufacturing Company · Long Island Company · Astral Oil · Uncle William
EPUB paragraph 25 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In time, Charles Pratt felt slighted and pushed aside by Rockefeller, who sometimes admired his conservative style but generally mocked him as an old fogy lacking in vision. Quite unlike Warden and Lockhart, Pratt ended up on the losing side of many policy disputes with Rockefeller and took to writing him querulous letters laced with self-pity. During one squabble with Rockefeller in 1881, Pratt wrote petulantly, “I cannot see good in any effort of mine to influence you or others by any arguments.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Charles Pratt · William G. Warden · Charles Lockhart
EPUB paragraph 26 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
The undisclosed purchase of Charles Pratt’s firm brought into the Standard fold one of the most energetic, swaggering figures in its history: Henry H. Rogers, who had led the committee of New York refiners that indignantly contested the SIC. He was now one of the first turncoats who defected to the Standard camp, and Rockefeller gloated over such conquests. “I’m happy to state that in most cases the very men who were desperately opposed to anything the Standard Oil Company might suggest … when they met us face to face, when they came to know from us rather than from those maligners, they readily joined us and never had occasion to regret.” Though he later clashed with Rockefeller, Rogers was a versatile executive who directed, in turn, Standard’s crude-oil purchases, pipelines, and manufacturing operations. As petroleum by-products grew in importance, Rogers, with a technical grasp that exceeded Rockefeller’s, patented a landmark process for separating naphtha from crude oil.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry H. Rogers · Charles Pratt · Standard Oil · South Improvement Company · New York · Rogers
EPUB paragraph 27 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
No sooner had Standard Oil enlisted Charles Pratt than New York independents began to experience unaccountable shortages of vital supplies. John Ellis and Company, which manufactured petroleum jelly, suddenly found it couldn’t book the requisite railroad cars for crude-oil shipments. Some invisible force was working against them. As the firm tried to unravel this mystery, a Standard Oil representative took the opportunity to drop by for a friendly chat with John Ellis and warned him, “You are helpless. You will have to sell out.” Appalled by this heavy-handed treatment, Ellis retorted, “I will never sell out to any company as crooked as the Standard Oil.” Ellis stayed independent, but few firms had the resources or fortitude to withstand the unceasing pressure exerted by the growing legions of Standard Oil minions.
Names: Charles Pratt · Standard Oil · New York · John Ellis
EPUB paragraph 28 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In his lightning offensives in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York, Rockefeller was buying refineries in strategic railroad and shipping hubs, where he could negotiate excellent transportation rates. But despite its proximity to the wells, he never considered Oil Creek an economical place for refineries—which didn’t enhance his popularity in western Pennsylvania. Many ingredients used in refining—from sulfuric acid to glue to barrel hoops—cost more in that secluded area than in urban centers. By demoting the Oil Regions as a refining center, Rockefeller threatened the livelihood of thousands of people in Titusville, Franklin, and Oil City and offended their sense of justice. The locals were taught to believe, in Rockefeller’s words, that “the place where the oil was produced, gave certain rights and privileges that persons seeking to engage in other localities had no right to presume to share.” Rockefeller struck them as an evil interloper, a usurper of their birthright, when he was merely exercising his right to practice business where he pleased.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · New York · Titusville · Oil City · Oil Creek · Oil Regions · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · Franklin · Pennsylvania
EPUB paragraph 29 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Nonetheless, to enforce an airtight monopoly, he needed to capture the Oil Creek refineries, if only to dismantle the least efficient ones. On January 22, 1874, he stunned local refiners by buying the Imperial Refining Company and its vast facility near Oil City. For local anti-Standard firebrands, it was a move laden with ominous symbolism. One of the consenting sellers was Captain Jacob J. Vandergrift, a husky little man with a Santa Claus beard. A former skipper on the Ohio River, Vandergrift was a wealthy, God-fearing temperance advocate who commanded universal power and respect. Along Oil Creek, his desertion to Standard Oil was considered treasonous betrayal, and it demoralized local independents—precisely what Rockefeller had wanted. In early 1875, Rockefeller captured the second largest Titusville refiner, Porter, Moreland and Company, which brought twenty-seven-year-old John D. Archbold—the diminutive homilist who had electrified the crowd at the Titusville Opera House with his blazing oratory against the SIC—into the Standard Oil fold. Now, convinced that competition was a dated concept, Archbold suddenly enlisted under the banner of industrial consolidation.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Jacob J. Vandergrift · Standard Oil · South Improvement Company · Titusville · Oil City · Oil Creek · Santa Claus · Titusville Opera House · Imperial Refining Company · Ohio River · Porter · Moreland
EPUB paragraph 30 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Aside from Henry Flagler, Archbold was the most significant figure recruited by Rockefeller. Even before he set eyes on him, Rockefeller was intrigued. Registering at a Titusville hotel one day, he noted the signature above his own name: “John D. Archbold, $4 a barrel.” This cocky self-promotion impressed Rockefeller, for crude oil was selling at substantially below that price. Nine years younger than Rockefeller, the boyish Archbold was a short spark plug of a man, weighing about 130 pounds. The son of a Baptist circuit preacher who abandoned his family when John was ten (the prevalence of ministers’ sons at Standard Oil is striking), he had come to Titusville as a teenager and grown up with the industry. Quick-witted and optimistic, a jovial raconteur, he “laughed his way to a great fortune,” as one contemporary said. Though not easily charmed, Rockefeller was enchanted by Archbold’s high spirits, his inexhaustible fountain of jokes and stories; his short stature aside, he was the man at Standard Oil who most resembled Big Bill. Archbold became Rockefeller’s proxy, picked successor, surrogate son, and court jester. Before long, Rockefeller learned that this preacher’s son was overly fond of worldly pleasure and spent his nights drinking and playing poker. In time, Rockefeller forced him to repudiate alcohol, but even this only seemed to draw them closer together.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Henry M. Flagler · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · Titusville · John
EPUB paragraph 31 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
When Archbold went over to Standard Oil, he was denounced bitterly as a “renegade” and “deserter” and incurred special resentment from former admirers. He was such a deft, good-natured diplomat, however, that Rockefeller assigned him to absorb the Oil Creek refiners. In no other place did Rockefeller so sorely need an attractive substitute. Around Titusville, Standard Oil was reviled as the “octopus,” and Rockefeller was regarded as a monster. Mothers scolded their children by saying, “Run, children, or Rockefeller’ll get you!” As a result, the original Standard Oil officials never conducted buyout talks directly but operated through “acquaintances, competitors, and friends of the competitive refiners, best calculated to explain to them the situation, best fitted to succeed in the negotiations because of their intimate acquaintance, kindly relations and the mutual confidence of neighbors and friends.” Archbold was the smiling face who mollified enemies and restored peace, and with his advent Rockefeller no longer needed to go to Oil Creek.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · Titusville · Oil Creek
EPUB paragraph 32 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In September 1875, Standard Oil formed the Acme Oil Company, a front organization to take over local refiners under Archbold’s guidance. Within months, he had bought or leased twenty-seven refineries, moving at such a hectic pace that he nearly drove himself to collapse. Over the next three or four years, Archbold herded the remaining independents into Standard Oil. Several letters from Archbold to Rockefeller confirm the latter’s contention that he paid fairly for refiners. After grudgingly paying an exorbitant $12,000 for one refinery, Archbold told Rockefeller, “We have the feeling that it is a large price for the property and do not doubt but that if we could hold out for a time on the present low basis we might do better, but whether the difference is worth the ammunition is a question.” Once the purchase was settled, he added, “I found it a very difficult trade to make, & was compelled to make some concessions to the parties that I disliked very much to make regarding which I will explain to you more fully when I see you.” Though independent refiners often felt squeezed by Rockefeller, he didn’t always exploit their vulnerability to the maximum possible extent and sometimes even showed leniency.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · Acme Oil Company
EPUB paragraph 33 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
At least one prominent refiner contended that he was subjected to coercion by Standard Oil when he tried to build a new refinery. Samuel Van Syckel, the pipeline pioneer, said a Standard Oil representative had offered him a good salary to abandon the project. “He then said that I could make no money if I did refine oil. He also said if I did I could not ship it. He said he would say to me confidentially that they had made such arrangements with the railroads in reference to freight—in reference to getting cars—he knew I could make no money if I did make oil.” Van Syckel bowed to superior force.
Names: Standard Oil · Samuel Van Syckel · Van Syckel
EPUB paragraph 34 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In May 1875, Rockefeller completed his grand design of controlling all the major refining centers when he covertly bought J. N. Camden and Company of Parkersburg, West Virginia, and rechristened it the Camden Consolidated Oil Company. Camden’s correspondence documents the stealth involved in this sort of takeover. Before consummating the sale, Standard Oil requested a minute inventory of his properties and was ready to send its expert superintendent, Ambrose McGregor, to investigate. Yet Johnson Newlon Camden himself, a well-known Democratic politician, feared that the superintendent of his barrel factory might recognize McGregor and warned Standard Oil, “We would prefer having him to come here, but don’t see how he could do it without exposing the whole thing. I find the Superintendent of the Barrel Factory is a little curious about what is going on.” That even a superintendent was kept in the dark about the new owners underscores the priority that Standard Oil placed on confidentiality.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Johnson Newlon Camden · Standard Oil · Ambrose McGregor · Parkersburg · West Virginia · McGregor · Camden Consolidated Oil Company
EPUB paragraph 35 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
The Camden deal remedied a flagrant weakness for Rockefeller, who dominated refineries in the areas served by the New York Central, the Erie, and the Pennsylvania Railroads. There was only one gaping hole left in the map: the territory controlled by the maverick Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad, whose tracks spanned southern Pennsylvania, connecting a cluster of refineries in Parkersburg and Wheeling, West Virginia, with an oil-export center in Baltimore. Even more intolerable for Rockefeller, the upstart B&O dared to handle crude oil shipped to Pittsburgh through a pipeline called the Columbia Conduit Company, which had defied Standard Oil at every turn. In short, the B&O was providing comfort to the last independent refiners still holding out in open rebellion against his imperial rule.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Johnson Newlon Camden · Standard Oil · New York Central · Pittsburgh · Parkersburg · Ohio · Pennsylvania · Erie · Baltimore · West Virginia · Columbia Conduit Company · Pennsylvania Railroads · Wheeling
EPUB paragraph 36 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
The president of the B&O, John W. Garrett, had long exhorted Camden to fight the Standard Goliath and offered him marked-down freight rates to do so. Now that he had—unbeknownst to Garrett—defected to Rockefeller, Camden wanted to retain the rates expressly designed to shore up Standard Oil opponents. On May 12, 1875, scarcely able to suppress his mischievous glee, Camden informed his new owners in Cleveland, “Mr. Garrett … is coming out to see us tomorrow. I suppose he will encourage us to keep up our oil business and fight the ‘combination’ ”—that is, Standard Oil. And he negotiated excellent rates with Garrett. In exchange for shipping fifty thousand barrels of oil monthly, he would receive a ten-cent-a-barrel drawback on all refined oil sent via the B&O—whether shipped by Camden or by his competitors. That Garrett revived the infamous drawback when he thought he was fighting Standard Oil shows that nobody could claim exclusive virtue in this business.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Johnson Newlon Camden · Standard Oil · Cleveland · John W. Garrett
EPUB paragraph 37 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
That spring, Rockefeller gave Camden wide leeway to buy up refiners serviced by the B&O, and he quickly snatched up three Parkersburg refiners. At several points, Camden, like Archbold, bristled at the excessive prices he paid. “It almost makes me weepy to pay out good money for this kind of junk,” he told Rockefeller, “but as it is a part of our duty to mankind, I suppose it is necessary to carry it through without flinching.” The completion of the Baltimore campaign left John D. Rockefeller, still in his thirties, the sole master of American oil refining. Since no major crude-oil deposits had been unearthed beyond western Pennsylvania—Russia, perhaps, being the lone exception—it also meant that he monopolized the world kerosene market. He was now living a fantasy of extravagant wealth that would have dwarfed the most febrile daydreams of William Avery Rockefeller. And few people beyond the oil business had ever even heard of him.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · John D. Archbold · Johnson Newlon Camden · Russia · Parkersburg · Pennsylvania · Baltimore
EPUB paragraph 38 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
The swift raids on the principal refining centers cost such a king’s ransom that Rockefeller’s most ticklish problem was how to bankroll this marathon buying spree. To entice refiners, he offered them the option of taking payment either in cash or stock, and he always dreaded the choice of cash. “I would whip out our check book with rather a lordly air and remark, as if it were a matter of entire indifference to us, ‘Will I write a check or would you prefer payment in Standard Oil shares?’ ” If they chose cash, he often had to scramble among banks to scrounge up money. By encouraging opponents to take stock, he conserved funds and also enlisted the allegiance of quondam foes in his burgeoning enterprise. But few companies followed the lead of Clark, Payne and invested in Standard Oil instead of taking payment.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Clark · Payne
Source: Ron Chernow, Titan. Names and relationships retain the full atlas’s extraction limits. Map points are references; historical sites and regions can be approximate. Open the full interactive atlas.