Reading Company

The United States was in the midst of a severe economic downturn.

during the previous year, a number of developments converged to create a meltdown, including the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the collapse of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and a number of economic problems coming out of Argentina.

In April 1893, the US Treasury announced the value of its gold had fallen below its mandated holding requirements.

loans across the country began to default.

I just photographed the building that he was talking about.

It was the former mansion of a Reading Railroad executive by the name of Gustavus Nichols.

who was built in the 1870-something, and he lived there, and once his family died, it was converted into some sort of apartment, like an upscale place, apparently, and it was called the Aldine, and it's kind of been referred to as the Aldine Mansion since then, and it was slated for demolition by the Reading Development Authority, and then In the 90s, Dr. Gary Wegman, a dentist in the area, purchased it with the idea of restoring it and living there eventually.

And he did some work on it, did some windows, roofing, painting, and then it just sort of slowed down.

And I think, you know, he was talking about he didn't want the fencing to block out gardens that were, you know, a lot of these neighborhood gardens nearby there.

But at any rate, it's been popularly known as the Aldine Mansion, but it was the Nichols, as everything in Reading was.

who's the Reading Railroad guy, people who built these huge, huge mansions.

It's really quite a stately building, a beautiful building, and I'm hoping that he does eventually get that thing fixed up and livable.

Well, we s-

The Reading Railroad.

We said Reading.

[laughs] Yeah.

With a promptness which would have done credit to Mr. Rockefeller himself, Messrs. Benson, Hopkins, and McKelvey changed their plan.

The new idea was to lay a six-inch line from Rixford in the Bradford field to Williamsport on the Reading Railroad, a distance of 109 miles.

The Reading, not having had so far any oil freight, was happy to enter into a contract with them to run oil to both Philadelphia and New York until they could get through to the seaboard themselves.

In November 1878, a limited partnership called the Tidewater Pipe Company was organized with a capital of $625,000 to carry out the scheme.

The success of the Tidewater experiment brought Mr. Rockefeller face to face with a new situation.

Just how serious this situation was is shown by the difference in the cost of transporting a barrel of oil to the seaboard by rail and transporting it by pipe.

According to the calculation of Mr. Gowan, the president of the Reading Railroad, the cost by rail was at that time from 35 to 45 cents.

The open rate was from $1.25 to $1.40 and the Standard Oil Company probably paid about 85 cents when the roads were not protecting it from injury by competition.