rst few years the Rockefeller
houses--he rapidly organized three, one after another--competed with a
large number of other units in the oil business on somewhat more than
even terms. At this time Rockefeller was merely one of a large number of
successful oil refiners, yet during these early days a grandiose scheme
was taking shape in that quiet, insinuating, far-reaching brain. He
said nothing about it, even to his closest associates, yet it filled his
every waking hour. For this young man was taking a comprehensive sweep
of the world and he saw millions of people, in the Americas, in Europe,
and in Asia, whose need for the article in which he dealt would grow
more insistent every day. He saw that he was handling a product which
was becoming as much a necessity of life as the air itself. The young
man reached out to grasp this business. "All of it," we can picture
Rockefeller saying to himself, "all of it shall be mine." Any study of
Rockefeller's career must lead to the conclusion that, before he had
reached his thirtieth year, he had determined to monopolize this
growing necessity. The mere fact that this young man could form such a
stupendous plan indicates that in him we are meeting for the first time
a new type of industrial leader. At that time monopolies were unknown in
the United States. That certain old English Kings had frequently
granted exclusive trading privileges to favored merchants most educated
Americans knew; and their knowledge of monopolies extended little
further than this. Yet about 1868 John D. Rockefeller started
consciously to revive this ancient practice, and to bring under
one ownership the magnificent industry to which Drake's sensational
discovery had given rise.

Daring as was this conception, the resourcefulness and the skill with
which Rockefeller executed it were more startling still. Merely to
catalogue, one by one, the achievements of the ten succeeding fruitful
years, almost takes one's breath away. Indeed the whole operation
proceeded with such a Napoleonic rapidity of action that the outside
world had hardly grasped Rockefeller's intention before the monopoly
had been made complete. We catch one glimpse of Rockefeller, in 1868, as
head of the prosperous house of Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler,
and eight years afterwards we see him once more, this time the man who
controlled practically the entire petroleum business of the world. His
career of conquest began in 1870, when the firm