AN OIL WAR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15332, 15 June 1910, Page 6

AN OIL WAR.

An oil war is in progress in Mexico, and the American public is being given a glimpse of the commercial methods that have enabled the Standard Oil Trust to become the wealthiest and most powerful corporation in the world. The Waters Pierce Company is a tentacle of the Trust, and the territory allotted to it by the Rockefeller interests includes Mexico as well as some of tho southern States. For many years it succeeded in avoiding any public association with the parent body, while adopting its methods and selling its oil. The real facts of tho position were revealed in tho course of an investigation conducted by the United States Government in 1907 into the methods of the Trusts, and since that time efforts have been made by some of the States immediately concerned to break down the company's systoin of secret rebates and to expose its other illegal practices. Last year the courts of Texas imposed upon the corporation fines amounting to £326,600 for violation of the anti-trust laws, and ordered that it should cease to transact business in the State at all. In the meantime another great corporation had arisen in Mexico, where tho Waters Pierce Company had previously enjoyed an absolute monopoly. Messrs Pearson and Sons secured control of oil wells in Mexico, erected refineries and proceeded to sell oil in the open market, thus preventing a continuance of the ruthless exploitation that had made it possible for the Waters Pierce Company to pay a dividend of about GOO per cent in 1904. A bitter struggle''between the two concerns commenced at once, and the younger of them has been compelled to meet the peculiar taotics that have made tho Standard Oil Trust notorious all over the world. The last reports show that Messrs Pearson and Sons are in no immediate danger of commercial oxtinction, probably because they have tho sympathy of tho public, and the president of the "trust tentacle" is about to stand his trial in Texas on a charge of having falsely sworn that his business was not controlled by the Standard OH Company. Tho situation has a peculiar interest to New Eealand, in view of the fact that the production of oil in Taranaki may seriously threaten the monopoly enjoyed by trie great American Trust in this country and lead to a similar contest here.