Genius could take so unspeakable a thing as a shirt and sing it into an immortal song, but a barrel--and an oil-barrel, greasy and ill-smelling--even genius could do nothing with that. But the barrel plays a leading rôle in the drama of the great monopoly. Out of it have flown shapes of evil that have infected private fortunes, the prosperity of more than one industry, the fiduciary honor of great men, the faithfulness of the Government to its citizens. Perhaps a part of what genius could do for the shirt--force a hearing for the wronged--may be done for this homely vessel of the struggling independent by the kindly solicitude of the people to learn every secret spring of the ruin of their brothers.
The market--the barrel that went to market--the freight rate that stopped the barrel that went to market--the railway king who made the rate that stopped the barrel that went to market--the greater king who whispered behind to the railway king to make the rate that stopped the barrel that went to market--this is the house that Jack unbuilt.
Such is the superiority of a simple business organization, where "evolution" has not carried the details of the industry out of sight of the owner, and where the master and man, buyer and seller, are in touch, that the independent refiners could overcome the tax imposed on them by this pooling of the pipe line and the railroads, and not only survive but prosper moderately. During the three years--from 1885 to 1888--following the first attack upon them under the contract just described, they state, in their appeal to the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1888, they were "enabled by their advantages in the local markets to keep up, maintain, and even increase their business."[227] These "outsiders" shipped their oil largely in barrels because the trunk-lines had made it as nearly impossible as they could for them to ship in tank-cars. They, like all in the trade, could not live without access to the European market. Out of every hundred barrels of various kinds of products from the distillation of petroleum, forty are of an illuminating oil not good enough to be burned in this country. It must be sold in Europe or not sold at all; and a manufacturer who cannot get rid of 40 per cent. of his product must give up manufacturing. To destroy the barrel method of shipment would destroy those who could use no other; and to close their outlet to Europe would make it impossible for them to continue to manufacture for the home supply. The barrel was the only life-raft left to the sinking independent.