Empire Transportation Company, a large pipe line and refining
corporation which the Pennsylvania Railroad had controlled for
many years, became a Standard subsidiary.

Meanwhile certain hardy spirits in the oil regions had conceived
a much more ambitious plan. Why not build great underground mains
directly from the oil regions to the seaboard, pump the crude oil
directly to the city refineries, and thus free themselves from
dependence on the railroads? At first the idea of pumping oil
through pipes over the Alleghany Mountains seemed grotesque, but
competent engineers gave their indorsement to the plan. A certain
"Dr." Hostetter built for the Columbia Conduit Company a trunk
pipe line that extended thirty miles from the oil regions to
Pittsburgh. Hardly had Hostetter completed his splendid project
when the Standard Oil capitalists quietly appeared and purchased
it! For four years another group struggled with an even more
ambitious scheme, the construction of a conduit, five hundred
miles long, from the oil regions to Baltimore. The American
people looked on admiringly at the splendid enterprise whose
projectors, led by General Haupt, the builder of the Hoosac
Tunnel, struggled against bankruptcy, strikes, railroad
opposition, and hostile legislatures, in their attempts to push
their pipe line to the sea. In 1879 the Tidewater Company first
began to pump their oil, and the American press hailed their
achievement as something that ranked with the laying of the
Atlantic Cable and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. But
in less than two years the Rockefeller interest had entered into
agreements with the Tidewater Company that practically placed
this great seaboard pipe line in its hands.