American labour. I am proud of the record, and
believe most Americans will be when they understand some things
better. These achievements, the development of this great foreign
trade, the owning of ships to carry the oil in bulk by the most
economical methods, the sending out of men to fight for the world's
markets, have cost huge sums of money, and the vast capital employed
could not be raised nor controlled except by such an organization as
the Standard is to-day.

To give a true picture of the early conditions, one must realize that
the oil industry was considered a most hazardous undertaking, not
altogether unlike the speculative mining undertakings we hear so much
of to-day. I well remember my old and distinguished friend, Rev.
Thomas W. Armitage, for some forty years pastor of a great New York
church, warning me that it was worse than folly to extend our plants
and our operations. He was sure we were running unwarranted risks,
that our oil supply would probably fail, the demand would decline, and
he, with many others, sometimes I thought almost everybody, prophesied
ruin.

None of us ever dreamed of the magnitude of what proved to be the
later expansion. We did our day's work as we met it, looking forward
to what we could see in the distance and keeping well up to our
opportunities, but laying our foundations firmly. As I have said,
capital was most difficult to secure, and it was not easy to interest
conservative men in this adventurous business. Men of property were
afraid of it, though in rare cases capitalists were induced to unite
with us to a limited extent. If they bought our stock at all, they
took a little of it now and then as an experiment, and we were
painfully conscious that they often declined to buy new stock with
many beautiful expressions of appreciation.

The enterprise being so new and novel, on account of the fearfulness
of certain holders in reference to its success, we frequently had to
take stock to keep it from going begging, but we had such confidence
in the fundamental value of the concern that we were willing to assume
this risk. There are always a few men in an undertaking of this kind
who would risk all on their judgment of the final result, and if the
enterprise had failed, these would have been classed as visionary
adventurers, and perhaps with good reason.

The 60,000 men who are at work constantly in the service of the
company are kept busy year in and year out. The past year