City.

In December, 1865, the freight charge per barrel for a carload of oil
from Titusville to New York, and the return of the empty barrels,
was $3.50.[1] To this figure was added the cost of transportation by
pipe-line from Pithole to Titusville, $1.00; cost of barreling, 25
cents; freight to Corry, Pa., 80 cents; making the total cost of a
barrel of crude oil in New York, $5.55. In January, 1866, the barrel
of oil in New York cost $10.40, including in this figure, however, the
Government tax of $1.00 and the price of the barrel, $3.25.

[Footnote 1: It is stated that in 1862 the cost of sending one barrel of
oil to New York was $7.45. Steamboats charged $2.00 per barrel from Oil
City to Pittsburg, and the hauling from Oil Creek to Meadville cost
$2.25 per barrel.]

The question of reducing these enormous transportation charges was first
broached, apparently, in 1864, when a writer in the _North American_,
of Philadelphia, outlined a scheme for laying a pipe-line down the
Allegheny River to Pittsburg. This project was violently assailed by
both the transportation companies and the people of the oil region,
who feared that its success would interfere with their then great
prosperity. But short pipe-lines, connecting the wells with storage
tanks and shipping points, grew apace and prepared the way for the vast
network of the present day, which covers this region and throws out arms
to the ocean and the lakes.

Among the very first, if not the first, pipe lines laid was one put down
between the Sherman well and the railway terminus on the Miller farm.
It was about 3 miles long, and designed by a Mr. Hutchinson; he had an