Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Copyright, 1904, by Ames
JOHN DAVISON ROCKEFELLER IN 1904
Born July 8, 1839
THE HISTORY OF
THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY
“An Institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.”
“The American Beauty Rose can be produced in its splendorand fragrance only by sacrificing the early buds whichgrow up around it.”
PREFACE
This work is the outgrowth of an effort on the partof the editors of McClure’s Magazine to deal concretelyin their pages with the trust question. Inorder that their readers might have a clear andsuccinct notion of the processes by which a particular industrypasses from the control of the many to that of thefew, they decided a few years ago to publish a detailed narrativeof the history of the growth of a particular trust. TheStandard Oil Trust was chosen for obvious reasons. It wasthe first in the field, and it has furnished the methods, thecharter, and the traditions for its followers. It is the mostperfectly developed trust in existence; that is, it satisfies mostnearly the trust ideal of entire control of the commodity inwhich it deals. Its vast profits have led its officers into variousallied interests, such as railroads, shipping, gas, copper,iron, steel, as well as into banks and trust companies, andto the acquiring and solidifying of these interests it hasapplied the methods used in building up the Oil Trust. Ithas led in the struggle against legislation directed againstcombinations. Its power in state and Federal government,in the press, in the college