To perfect the pipe-line system of transportation required many millions of capital.

The entire oil business is dependent upon the pipe-line.

Without it every well would be less valuable and every market at home and abroad would be more difficult to serve or retain, because of the additional cost to the consumer.

The expansion of the whole industry would have been retarded without this method of transportation.
Then the pipe-line system required other improvements, such as tank-cars upon railroads, and finally the tank-steamer.

Capital had to be furnished for them and corporations created to own and operate them.
Everyone of the steps taken was necessary if the business was to be properly developed, and only through such successive steps and by a great aggregation of capital is America to-day enabled to utilize the bounty which its land pours forth, and to furnish the world with light.
THE START OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY In the year 1867 the firms of William Rockefeller & Co., Rockefeller & Andrews, Rockefeller & Co., and S.V.Harkness and H.M.Flagler united in forming the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler.
The cause leading to the formation of this firm was the desire to unite our skill and capital in order to carry on a business of greater magnitude with economy and efficiency in place of the smaller business that each had heretofore conducted separately.