organisation was held, “the Petroleum Parliament” or “Congress” it was called. This Congress, which met in Titusville, was composed of 172 delegates. It was claimed that it represented at least 2,000 oil producers, and not less than seventy-five millions in money. It is certain it included the representative men of the Oil Regions, those to whose daring, hard work, and energy the discovery and development of the oil fields, as they were known at that time, were entirely due. [Illustration: WOODEN CAR TANKS ] [Illustration: BOILER TANK CARS ] [Illustration: WOODEN TANKS FOR STORING OIL ] [Illustration: RAILROAD TERMINAL OF AN EARLY PIPE LINE ] For four days the Congress was in session, and it is a remarkable comment on the seriousness with which it had undertaken its work that, although reporters from all parts of the country interested in oil were present, nothing leaked out. In December a second session of four days was held in Titusville, but no announcement of what was doing was made to the press. Indeed, it was only as lines of action developed that the public became familiar with what the producers had resolved on in the days of secret session which they had held. Their resolutions had been eminently wise and they undertook their support vigorously and intelligently. First and foremost they resolved to stand by all efforts to secure an outlet to the seaboard independent of the Standard and the allied railroads. Two enterprises were put before them at once. The first was what was known as the Equitable Petroleum Company, an organisation started by one of the most resourceful and active independent men in the oil country, one of whom we are to hear more, Lewis Emery, Jr. This company, in which some 200 oil producers in the Bradford field had taken stock, proposed to lay a pipe-line to Buffalo and to ship their oil thence by the Erie Canal. They had acquired a right of way to Buffalo and had capital pledged to carry out the project. The second enterprise to come before the newly formed union was much more ambitious. It was nothing less than a revival of Mr. Harley’s enterprise which had attracted so much attention in 1876. It was revived now by the three men who had been operating the Columbia Conduit Line under a lease—Messrs. Benson, McKelvy and Hopkins, who had been set free by the sale of that property to the Standard. Their experience with the pipe-line business had convinced them it was one of the most lucrative departments of the oil industry. They believed too that oil could be pumped over the mountains, and no sooner were they free than they took up Mr. Harley’s old idea and engaged the same engineer he had brought into the enterprise, General Herman Haupt, to survey a route from Brady’s Bend on the Allegheny River to Baltimore, Maryland—a distance of 235 miles. To both of these projects the General Council of the Union gave promise of support.