profited by it, and that he had turned his Cleveland plant into a machine for carrying out its provisions, had caused the oil country to fix on him the entire responsibility. Then the oil men’s experience with Mr. Rockefeller in 1873 had been unfortunate. They charged the failure of their alliance to his duplicity. There is no doubt that Mr. Rockefeller played a shrewd and false game with the oil men in 1873, but the failure of their alliance was their own fault. They did not hold together—they failed to limit their production as they agreed, they suspected one another, and at a moment, when, if they had been as patient and wise as their great opponent they would have had the game in their own hands, and him at their feet, as he had been in 1872, for the sake of immediate returns, they abandoned some of the best features of their organisation, and allied themselves with a man they distrusted. When that alliance failed they threw on Mr. Rockefeller’s shoulders a blame which they should have taken on their own. Another very real cause for their anxiety and dislike was that as the refiners’ alliance progressed the refiners made a much larger share of the profits than the producers thought fair. The abandoning of their alliance in 1873 had of course put an end to their measures for limiting production and for holding over-production until it could be sold at the prices they thought profitable. The drill had gone on merrily through 1873, 1874, and 1875, regardless of consumption or prices. By the end of 1874 there were over three and a half million barrels of oil in stock, more than twice what there had ever been before. Production was well to a million barrels a month and prices that year averaged but $1.15 a barrel. For men who considered three dollars a starvation price this was indeed hard luck. Things looked better by the end of 1875, for production was falling off. By March, 1876, stocks had been so reduced that there was strong confidence that the price of crude oil must advance. By June the Oil City Derrick began to prophesy “three-dollar oil” and to advise oil men to hold crude for that price. In August three dollars was reached in the Oil City exchange. It had been nearly four years since that price had been paid for oil, and the day the point was reached (August 25) the brokers fairly went mad. They jumped on their chairs, threw up their hats, beat one another on the back, while the spectators in the crowded galleries, most of them speculators, yelled in sympathy. Before six o’clock that day oil reached $3.11¼. Nobody thought of stopping because it was supper time. The exchange was open until nearly midnight, prices booming on to $3.17½. It seemed like old times in the Oil Region—the good old flush times when people made a fortune one day and threw it away the next!