feller's scheme comprehended
more than the acquisition of refineries. In the main the Rockefeller
group left the production of crude oil in the hands of the private
drillers, but practically every other branch of the business passed
ultimately into their hands. Both the New York Central and the Erie
railroads surrendered to the Standard the large oil terminal stations
which they had maintained for years in New York. As a consequence, the
Standard obtained complete supervision of all oil sent by railroad into
New York, and it also secured the machinery of a complete espionage
system over the business of competitors. The Standard acquired companies
which had built up a large business in marketing oil. Even more dramatic
was its success in gathering up, one after another, these pipe lines
which represented the circulatory system of the oil industry. In the
early days these pipe lines were small and comparatively simple affairs.
They merely carried the crude oil from the wells to railroad centers;
from these stations the railroads transported it to the refineries at
Cleveland, New York, and other places. At an early day the construction
and management of these pipe lines became a separate industry. And now,
in 1873, the Standard Oil Company secured possession of a one-third
interest in the largest of these privately owned companies, the American
Transfer Company. Soon afterward the United Pipe Line Company went under
their control. In 1877 the Empire Transportation Company, a large
pipe line and refining corporation which the Pennsylvania Railroad had
controlled for many years, became a Standard subsidiary.

Meanwhile certain hardy spirits in the oil regions had conceived a much
more ambitious plan. Why not build great underground mains directly from
the oil regions to the seaboard, pump the crude oil directly to the city
refineries, and thus free themselves from dependence on the railroads?
At first the idea of pumping oil through pipes over the Alleghany
Mountains seemed grotesque, but competent engineers gave their
indorsement to the plan. A certain "Dr." Hostetter built for the
Columbia Conduit Company a trunk pipe line that extended thirty miles
from the oil regions to Pittsburgh. Hardly had Hostetter completed his
splendid project when the Standard Oil capitalists quietly appeared and
purchased it! For four years another group struggled with an even more
ambitious scheme, the construction of a conduit, five hundred mil