e enabled to effect enormous
economies in the storage and conveyance of oil. Pipe lines were laid
down connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo, Pittsburg,
Cleveland, and Chicago, and a network of feeding lines joining the
sources of supply. Thousands of huge tanks were erected for holding
surplus stores; a large number of agencies were established along the
sea-shore with storage attached. Further considerable economies were
effected by the undertaking of the manufacture of barrels and cans and
other subsidiary articles required in the trade. At the close of 1881
the owners of the entire capital of fifteen corporations and parts of
the stock of a number of others, the latter chiefly trading companies,
established the Trust. The number of shareholders thus associated was
forty, and they placed their stocks in the hands of nine of their
number as trustees, who continued to administer the whole business,
paying interest upon the certificates which represented the stock of
the several shareholders until March 1892, when the Trust was legally
dissolved. The legal dissolution of the Trust has not, however,
materially impaired its economic unity and power; on the contrary, it
has extended in the United States its monopolic control of the
market, and has already established a strong control over several
European markets for the sale of oil, and over the chief natural
sources of supply. Although a practical monopoly in many parts of the
interior had been acquired at a tolerably early date, there continued
to be active competition in all branches of the petroleum business
until 1884, when the war of rates, which had been waged for some time
with a formidable Canadian competitor, the Tidewater Company, ceased,
an alliance being formed between the rivals. From that time the
Standard Oil Trust has held a practical monopoly over the greater part
of the country. It has introduced new economies in the machinery of
refining, has found profitable uses for naphtha and other waste
products, and has vastly increased its output and the machinery of
distribution. Not content with controlling the market for crude oil,
it has during the last few years obtained the possession of larger and
larger portions of the oil-producing country, forming companies to
acquire mining rights, sink wells, and oust the private producers from
whom it had previously been content to purchase the raw material at
their own prices.

Bearing in mind the