roperty was secured at low prices
and made valuable by buildings and development. Large unimproved
tracts of land near the important business centres were acquired. We
brought our industries to these places, made the land useful, and
increased the value, not only of our own property, but of the land
adjacent to it to many times the original worth. Wherever we have
established businesses in this and other countries we have bought
largely of property. I remember a case where we paid only $1,000 or so
an acre for some rough land to be used for such purposes, and, through
the improvements we created, the value has gone up 40 or 50 times as
much in 35 or 40 years.

Others have had similar increases in the value of their properties,
but have enlarged their capitalization correspondingly. They have
escaped the criticism which has been directed against us, who with our
old-fashioned and conservative notions have continued without such
expansion of capitalization.

There is nothing strange or miraculous in all this; it was all done
through this natural law of trade development. It is what the Astors
and many other large landholders did.

If a man starts in business with $1,000 capital and gradually
increases his property and investment by retaining in his concern much
of his earnings, instead of spending them, and thus accumulates values
until his investment is, say, $10,000, it would be folly to base the
percentage of his actual profits only on the original $1,000 with
which he started. Here, again, I think the managers of the Standard
should be praised, and not blamed. They have set an example for
upbuilding on the most conservative lines, and in a business which has
always been, to say the least, hazardous, and to a large degree
unavoidably speculative. Yet no one who has relied upon the ownership
of this stock to pay a yearly income has been disappointed, and the
stock is held by an increasing number of small holders the country
over.

THE MANAGEMENT OF CAPITAL

We never attempted, as I have already said, to sell the Standard Oil
stock on the market through the Stock Exchange. In the early days the
risks of the business were great, and if the stock had been dealt in
on the Exchange its fluctuations would no doubt have been violent. We
preferred to have the attention of the owners and administrators of
the business directed wholly to the legitimate development of the
enterprise rather than to speculation in its share