Stopping the drill afforded no immediate relief to the producers. It was for the future. And as soon as the Petroleum Producers’ Association had the movement well under way, it proposed another drastic measure—a thirty days’ shut-down—by which it was meant that all wells should cease pumping for a month. Nothing shows better the compact organisation and the determination of the oil producers at this time than the immediate response they gave to this suggestion. In ten days scarcely a barrel of oil was being pumped from end to end of the Oil Regions. “That a business producing three million dollars a month, employing 10,000 labouring men and fifty million dollars of capital, should be entirely suspended, dried up, stopped still as death by a mutual voluntary agreement, made and perfected by all parties interested, within a space of ten days—this is a statement that staggers belief—a spectacle that takes one’s breath away,” cried the Derrick, which was using all its wits to persuade the producers to limit their production. It was certainly a spectacle which saddened the heart, however much one might applaud the grim resolution of the men who were carrying it out. The crowded oil farms where creaking walking-beams sawed the air from morning until night, where engines puffed, whistles screamed, great gas jets flared, teams came and went, and men hurried to and fro, became suddenly silent and desolate, and this desolation had an ugliness all its own—something unparalleled in any other industry of this country. The awkward derricks, staring cheap shanties, big tanks with miles and miles of pipe running hither and thither, the oil-soaked ground, blackened and ruined trees, terrible roads—all of the common features of the oil farm to which activity gave meaning and dignity—now became hideous in inactivity. Oil seemed a curse to many a man in those days as he stood by his silent wells and wondered what was to become of his business, of his family, in this clash of interests. While the producers were inaugurating these movements, Captain Hasson and a committee were busy making out the plan of the permanent association which was to control the business of oil-producing and prevent its becoming the slave of the refining interest. The knowledge that such an organisation was being worked out kept the oil country in a ferment. In every district suggestions, practical and impractical, wise and foolish, occupied every producers’ meeting and kept the idle oil men discussing from morning until night. At one mass-meeting the following resolution was actually passed by a body of revengeful producers: