_Resolved_, that to give a wider market throughout the world to petroleum, to enhance its price and to protect producers from unjust combinations of home refiners, a committee be appointed to ask the representatives of foreign governments at Washington to request their respective governments to put a proper tariff on refined oil and to admit crude oil free into the ports of their respective governments. Toward the end of October Captain Hasson presented the scheme which he and the committee had prepared. It proposed that there should be established what was called a Petroleum Producers’ Agency.[29] This agency was really an incorporated company with a capital of one million dollars, the stock of which was to be subscribed to only by the producers or their friends. This agency was to purchase all the oil of the members of the association at at least five dollars a barrel. If stocks could be kept down so that the market took all of the oil at once, the full price was to be paid at once in cash; if not, the agency was to store the oil in tanks it was to build, and a portion of the price was to be paid in tank certificates. By thus controlling all the oil, the agency expected to protect the weakest as well as the strongest producer, to equalise the interest of different localities, to prevent refiners and exporters from accumulating stocks, and to prevent gambling in oil. The agency was to take active means to collect reliable information about the oil business—the number of wells drilling, the actual production, the stocks on hand—things which had never been done to anybody’s satisfaction. Indeed, one of the standing causes for quarrels between the various newspapers of the region was their conflicting statistics about production and stocks. It was to make a study of the market and see what could be done to increase consumption. It was to oppose monopolies and encourage competition, and, if necessary, it was to provide co-operative refineries which the producers should own and control. The spirit of the agency, as explained by Captain Hasson, was most liberal, considering the interests of even the drillers and pumpers. “Advise every employee to take at least one share of stock for himself,” he said in his address, “and one for his wife and each of his children, and encourage him to pay for it out of his saved earnings or out of his monthly pay. If he is not able to keep up his instalments, assure him that you will help him, and then take care to do it. You will thus do him a double kindness, and benefit his family by encouraging habits of thrift and economy. You owe this much to him who so nobly seconded your efforts to gain control of the market by stopping work. You had all to gain, and he had nothing to hope for but your benefit. Now show your appreciation of his acts by this evidence of your regard for his welfare.”