comparison with the number of transactions we carried on, that they
were really the exceptions that proved the rule.

Every week in the year for many, many years, this concern has brought
into this country more than a million dollars gold, all from the
products produced by 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