The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, being situated at Cleveland, had the advantage of different carrying lines, as well as of water transportation in the summer; taking advantage of those facilities, it made the best bargains possible for its freights.  Other companies sought to do the same.  The Standard gave advantages to the railroads for the purpose of reducing the cost of transportation of freight.  It offered freights in large quantity, car-loads and train-loads.  It furnished loading facilities and discharging facilities at great cost.  It provided regular traffic, so that a railroad could conduct its transportation to the best advantage and use its equipment to the full extent of its hauling capacity without waiting for the refiner’s convenience.  It exempted railroads from liability for fire and carried its own insurance.  It provided at its own expense terminal facilities which permitted economies in handling.  For these services it obtained contracts for special allowances on freights.

But notwithstanding these special allowances, this traffic from the Standard Oil Company was far more profitable to the railroad companies than the smaller and irregular traffic, which might have paid a higher rate.

To understand the situation which affected the giving and taking of rebates it must be remembered that the railroads were all eager to enlarge their freight traffic.  They were competing with the facilities and rates offered by the boats on lake and canal and by the pipe-lines.  All these means of transporting oil cut into the business of the railroads, and they were desperately anxious to successfully meet this competition.  As I have stated we provided means for loading and unloading cars expeditiously, agreed to furnish a regular fixed number of car-loads to transport each day, and arranged with them for all the other things that I have mentioned, the final result being to reduce the cost of transportation for both the railroads and ourselves.  All this was following in the natural laws of trade.

PIPE-LINES VS.  RAILROADS

The building of the pipe-lines introduced another formidable competitor to the railroads, but as oil could be transported by pumping through pipes at a much less cost than by hauling in tank-cars in a railroad train the development of the pipe-line was inevitable.  The question was simply whether the oil traffic was sufficient in volume to make the investment profitable.  When pipe-lines had been built to oil fields where the wells had ceased to yield, as often happened, they were about the most useless property imaginable.