bpoenaed. If you know nothing, you can tell nothing. If
you know about the business, you might tell something which would ruin
us." The mere presence of a stranger has always been distasteful to him.
The custom of espionage has made him suspect that others are as watchful
as himself. He has been described erroneously as a master of complicated
villainy. He is, for evil or for good, the most single-minded man
alive. He looks for a profit in all things. Even his devotion to the
Sunday-school is of a piece with the test. "Put something in," says
he, speaking of the work, "and according as you put something in, the
greater will be your dividends of salvation."

His triumphant capture of the oil trade is a twice-told tale. All the
world knows how he crushed his rivals by excluding their wares from the
rail-roads, which gave him rebates, and then purchased for a song
their depreciated properties. At every point he won the battle. He laid
stealthy hands upon the pipe-lines, designed to thwart his monopoly, as
he had previously laid hands upon the railway lines. He discovered no
new processes, he invented no new methods of transport. But he made
the enterprise of others his own. The small refiner went the way of
the small producer, and the energy of those who carried oil over the
mountains helped to fill Rockefeller's pocket. The man himself spared no
one who stood between him and the realisation of his dream. Friends and
enemies fell down before him. He ruined the widow and orphan with the
same quiet cheerfulness wherewith he defeated the competitors who had
a better chance to fight their own battle. The Government was, and is,
powerless to stay his advance. It has instituted prosecutions. It has
passed laws directed at the Standard Oil Company. And all is of no
avail. Before cross-examining counsel, in the face of the court,
Rockefeller maintains an impenetrable silence. He admits nothing. He
confesses nothing. "We do not talk much," he murmurs sardonically; "we
saw wood." A year ago it was rumoured that he would be arrested when
he returned to America from Europe. He is still at large. The body of a
multi-millionaire is sacred.

He is master of the world's oil, and of much else beside. Having won the
control of one market, he makes his imperial hand felt in many another.
His boast that "money talks" is abundantly justified. The power of money
in making money is the only secret that the millionaires of America
discover for t