Between May and December, Sherman made his march from Lookout Mountain to the sea, cutting the Confederacy in two. For thirty years the people of Pennsylvania have been trying to break a free way to the ocean through the Alleghanies and the oil combination, and in vain. For ten years the hope of independent outlet to the sea from the oil-fields of Pennsylvania lay prostrate under the blow of the surrender of the Tidewater. Twice the people have tried again, only each time to be headed off. The first of these two rallies collapsed in the shut-down of 1887; the second was stopped at the cannon's mouth by an armed force at Hancock, New York, in the year of peace, 1892. By 1887 the people of the oil regions had recovered from the shock of losing the independent Tidewater Pipe Line,[285] and began to make new plans for getting to the sea. By some means the committee to whom they had intrusted the management of the new enterprise was persuaded to go to New York to confer with the officers of the oil combination, who had measures of conciliation to propose that would make it unnecessary to build the new pipe lines. This committee, and finally the constituency it represented, were made to believe that the cause of the woes of the oil country was simply and only that there was too much oil--not that there were too many empty or half-filled lamps. They agreed to cut down their business one-half, and were lured away from the project of getting full prices on a full product. The outcome was the "shut-down" of 1887. The producers were persuaded it would bring back oil to a dollar a barrel--to stay there; but after a brief and unremunerative spurt in values, a reaction, lasting to the present, carried prices to a lower level than ever, and the producers found that the last state of those who let such spirits enter them is always worse than the first. Several times before this the oil producers had tried to imitate the policy of scarcity, which the most brilliant business successes are teaching to be the royal road to wealth. It is stated by the report of the General Council of the Petroleum Producers' Union[286] that the producers had twice entered into arrangements with the oil combination to lessen the product and regulate the price of crude petroleum, and that in each case the arrangement had been violated by the latter when it seemed about to become profitable to the producer. Hence, when invited to confer for a third venture of this sort, the Council declined to do so. But in 1887 the invitation, extended for the fourth time, was a third time accepted. The producers succeeded in the restriction, but they did not better their condition. These men gave the world the spectacle of the producers flirting with the solitary and supreme buyer of their product, in the belief that he would help them to raise their price against himself.