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.
An interesting feature developed through the relations which grew up between the railroads and the pipe-lines.