asserted by many, and several State courts have sustained the
position, that a Trust is in America an illegal association, because
it implies on the part of its constituent corporations a violation of
the conditions under which they received the powers and privileges
conferred in their charters by the government of the several States.
Their illegality consists, it is held--

(1) In surrendering the power to manage and control their business to
some persons other than those legally authorised.

(2) In engaging, through the Trust, in kinds of business not
authorised by the charter.

Sec. 9. It is, however, the economic character and powers of the Trust,
and not its legal position, which concern us here.

The following short history of the origin and _modus operandi_ of the
Standard Oil Trust, the largest and in some respects the strongest of
these organisations, will serve to give distinctiveness to the idea of
the Trust:--

Petroleum began to be an article of extensive commerce about the year
1862. The wells from which the crude petroleum oil was drawn were in
Pennsylvania, and the work of boring the wells with machinery and
extracting the oil grew to be a considerable business. The crude oil
was sold to various refiners, who set up factories in Cleveland
(Ohio), in Pittsburg, and in several other cities. By 1865 these
factories had become pretty numerous, and in that year a private
refinery at Cleveland, owned by a few partners, obtained a charter
forming it into a corporation entitled the Standard Oil Company, with
a capital of $100,000. Until 1870 the progress of the company was
comparatively slow. In order to increase their hold upon the sources
of production in Pennsylvania, and to expand their trade, they began
to purchase stock in corporations already existing in that State, and
succeeded in establishing others, with which they worked in close
alliance. A Standard Oil Company was organised at Pittsburg, the stock
of which passed into the hands of the owners of the Cleveland Company.
They then proceeded to establish agencies in other States, primarily
for the sale of their goods, but when these businesses were firmly
planted they obtained for them from the several States charters
incorporating them as companies for refining oil. In 1872 the
shareholders of the Standard Oil Companies at Cleveland, Pittsburg,
and Philadelphia organised another corporation called the South
Improvement Company, obtaining a charte