study of Rockefeller's career must lead to the conclusion that,
before he had reached his thirtieth year, he had determined to
monopolize this growing necessity. The mere fact that this young
man could form such a stupendous plan indicates that in him we
are meeting for the first time a new type of industrial leader.
At that time monopolies were unknown in the United States. That
certain old English Kings had frequently granted exclusive
trading privileges to favored merchants most educated Americans
knew; and their knowledge of monopolies extended little further
than this. Yet about 1868 John D. Rockefeller started consciously
to revive this ancient practice, and to bring under one ownership
the magnificent industry to which Drake's sensational discovery
had given rise.

Daring as was this conception, the resourcefulness and the skill
with which Rockefeller executed it were more startling still.
Merely to catalogue, one by one, the achievements of the ten
succeeding fruitful years, almost takes one's breath away. Indeed
the whole operation proceeded with such a Napoleonic rapidity of
action that the outside world had hardly grasped Rockefeller's
intention before the monopoly had been made complete. We catch
one glimpse of Rockefeller, in 1868, as head of the prosperous
house of Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler, and eight years
afterwards we see him once more, this time the man who controlled
practically the entire petroleum business of the world. His
career of conquest began in 1870, when the firm of Rockefeller,
Andrews, and Flagler, joining hands with several large
capitalists in Cleveland and New York, was incorporated under the
name of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. In 1870 about
twenty-five independent refineries, many of them prosperous and