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fmmmmmmammm THE DAY BOOK! wmmm&ti N. D. COCHRAN EDITOR AND PUBLISHER. COO 5. PEOBIA ST. CHICAGO, TLU. TelenhnftPQ Editorial. Monroe 363 SUBSCRIPTION By Carrier In Chi cago, 30 cent a Month. By Mall. United States and Canada. 13.00 a Entered as second-class matter April 21, 1914 at the postoMlce at Chicago. I1L. Under the Act of March 8. 187 STRIKE AT CRUDE OIL STORAGE By W. A. Frisbfe, Editor of the Minneapolis Daily News. Along with the extortionate prices of gasoline have come a universal yammering and a jumping up and down on the part of the public Industry and pleasure are both af fected. Congress is beginning to have a vague consciousness that something is the matter somewhere and more sensitive M. CVs are bring-'l ing m Dills designed as remedies. The way to find where a wild ani mal lives is to pick up Its trail and follow it back to where it started. The same method is applicable to mo nopoly. Trailing back the Standard oil from the consumer's end we come first to the local distributing system, then to the tank car, then to the re finery, then to the storage tanks for crude from which the refinery is sup plied, then to the pipe lines and lastly to the oil welL Wells Involve risk; a ' bore may be dry or a Tblower;" an or ganization to handle all the wells ne cessary to furnish Standard refineries with sufficient crude would be com plicated and costly. Consequently the oil trust takes the cheaper, quicker way of con trolling the oil and gasoline business. It Is done by means of the artificial facilities for gathering, refining and distributing the raw materials and If the federal government really decides to work for the relief of gas- ollne consumers, it must consequent- ly go after the trust where it lives: ' jiz., In its control of the TOOLS of J production and distribution. Pipe lines were the original weap- ons of the oil monopoly. But they x have been declared carriers of inter state commerce and are accordingly J subject to federal regulation. If they T are still a strong factor in protecting ' monopoly, the way is already pro vided to make their regulation more efficient. But the storage tanks, the next sta tion on the trail from well to consum er, are NOT subject to any public regulation whatever. Storage is the i real answer to the present gasoline situation. It Is reported that the oil monopoly maintains enough crude storage ca pacity to keep its refineries going six months. This means that the trust , can fill its storage when crude is cheap. It can run from its storage f6r a time, thus disappearing from the market as a buyer of crude and reducing the current demand to a point where wells begin to cease pumping and the supply is cut down. ' Then the trust comes into the mar ket as a buyer again and bids up crude prices regardless, knowing that it needs but little to refill its storage, but that the independents must pay the top price for their crude since they have comparatively little storage capacity. Thus the trust is assured of an ad equate supply of crude at minimum prices all the time while the inde pendents must buy from day to day in a market completely dominated by the trust. This manipulation has been per formed again and again and every time it has been followed by and ad vance in gasoline prices. The trust makes all the profit; the independents take less profit from the high-priced gasoline than they did before the br Jhe finished products. iv46S began.