il Company can, I believe, prove beyond possibility of
contradiction that the result of its operations has been to reduce
immensely the cost of oil to the public, as well as to give facilities
in the way of distribution of the product which unassociated enterprise
could never have furnished. It can also show that in many, and, I
imagine, in the majority, of cases, it has endeavoured to repair by
offers of employment of various sorts whatever injuries it has done to
individuals by ruining their business. But these things constitute no
defence in the eyes of the American people.

There is the additional ground of public hostility that the weapons
employed to crush competitors have often been illegal weapons. Without
the assistance of the railway companies (which was given in violation of
the law) the Standard Oil Company might have been unable to win more
than one of its battles; but this fact, while it furnishes a handle
against the company and exposes a side of it which may prove to be
vulnerable, and is therefore kept to the front in any public indictment
of the company's methods, is an immaterial factor in the popular
feeling. Few Americans (or Englishmen) will not accept a reduced rate
from a railway company when they can get it. Whatever actual bitterness
may be felt by the average man against the Standard Oil Company because
it procured rebates on its freight bills is rather the bitterness of
jealousy than of an outraged sense of morality. The real bitterness--and
very bitter it is--is caused by the fact that the company has crushed
out so many individuals. On similar ground nothing approaching the same
intensity of feeling could be engendered in the British public.

Let us now recur for a moment to the views of the young woman quoted
above on the interesting topic of chaperons. We have seen that
insistence on the individuality is a conspicuous--perhaps it is the most
conspicuous--trait of the American character. Encouraged by the wider
horizon and more ample elbow-room and assisted by the something more
than tolerant good-will of his business associates, colleagues, or
competitors, the individual, once insisted on, has every chance to
develop and become prosperous and rich. Everything helps a man in
America to strike out for himself, to walk alone, and to dispense with a
chaperon. The Englishman is chaperoned at almost every step of his
business career; and I am not speaking now of the chaperonage of his
colleagu