Most important was the simplification of the transportation problem by the development of pipe-lines. By 1872 they were the one oil gatherer. Several companies were carrying on the pipe-line business, and two of them had acquired great power in the Oil Regions because of their connection with trunk lines. These were the Empire Transportation Company and the Pennsylvania Transportation Company. The former, which had been the first business organisation to go into the pipe-line business on a large scale, was a concern which had appeared in the Oil Regions not over six months before Van Syckel began to pump oil. The Empire Transportation Company had been organised in 1865 to build up an east and west freight traffic _via_ the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, a new line which had just been leased by the Pennsylvania. Some ten railroads connected in one way or another with the Philadelphia and Erie, forming direct routes east and west. In spite of their evident community of interest these various roads were kept apart by their jealous fears of one another. Each insisted on its own time-table, its own rates, its own way of doing things. The shipper _via_ this route must make a separate bargain with each road and often submit to having his freight changed at terminals from one car to another because of the difference of gauge. The Empire Transportation Company undertook to act as a mediator between the roads and the shipper, to make the route cheap, fast, and reliable. It proposed to solicit freight, furnish its own cars and terminal facilities, and collect money due. It did not make rates, however; it only harmonised those made by the various branches in the system. It was to receive a commission on the business secured, and a rental for the cars and other facilities it furnished. It was a difficult task the new company undertook, but it had at its head a remarkable man to cope with difficulties. This man, Joseph D. Potts, was in 1865 thirty-six years old. He had come of a long and honourable line of iron-masters of the Schuylkill region of Pennsylvania, but had left the great forge towns with which his ancestors had been associated—Pottstown, Glasgow Forge, Valley Forge—to become a civil engineer. His profession had led him to the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he had held important positions in connection with which he now undertook the organisation of the Empire Transportation Company. Colonel Potts—the title came from his service in the Civil War—possessed a clear and vigorous mind; he was far-seeing, forceful in execution, fair in his dealings. To marked ability and integrity he joined a gentle and courteous nature.