es
long, from the oil regions to Baltimore. The American people looked on
admiringly at the splendid enterprise whose projectors, led by General
Haupt, the builder of the Hoosac Tunnel, struggled against bankruptcy,
strikes, railroad opposition, and hostile legislatures, in their
attempts to push their pipe line to the sea. In 1879 the Tidewater
Company first began to pump their oil, and the American press hailed
their achievement as something that ranked with the laying of the
Atlantic Cable and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. But in less
than two years the Rockefeller interest had entered into agreements with
the Tidewater Company that practically placed this great seaboard pipe
line in its hands.

Thus in less than ten years Rockefeller had realized his ambitious
dream; he now controlled practically everything concerned in the
manufacture and sale of petroleum. The change had come about so
stealthily, so secretly, and even so remorselessly that it impressed the
public almost as the work of some uncanny genius. What were the forces,
personal and economic, that had produced this new phenomenon in our
business life? In certain particulars the Standard Oil monopoly was the
product of well-understood principles. From his earliest days John D.
Rockefeller had struggled to eliminate the middleman. He established
factories to build his own barrels, to make his own acids; he created
his own selling firms, and, instead of paying large storage charges, he
constructed his own warehouses in New York. From his earliest days as a
refiner, he had adopted the principle of paying no man a profit, and of
performing all the intermediate acts that had formerly resulted in large
tribute to middlemen. Moreover, the Standard Oil Company was apparently
the first great American industrial enterprise that realized the
necessity of operating with an abundant capital. Not the least of Mr.
Rockefeller's achievements was his success in associating with the
new company men having great financial standing--Amasa Stone, Benjamin
Brewster, Oliver Jennings, and the like, capitalists whose banking
resources, placed at the disposition of the Standard, gave it an immense
advantage over its rivals. While his competitors were "kiting" checks
and waiting, hat in hand, on the good nature of the money lenders,
Rockefeller always had a large bank balance, upon which he could
instantly draw for his operations.

Nor must we overlook the fact that the S