Thus in less than ten years Rockefeller had realized his
ambitious dream; he now controlled practically everything
concerned in the manufacture and sale of petroleum. The change
had come about so stealthily, so secretly, and even so
remorselessly that it impressed the public almost as the work of
some uncanny genius. What were the forces, personal and economic,
that had produced this new phenomenon in our business life? In
certain particulars the Standard Oil monopoly was the product of
well-understood principles. From his earliest days John D.
Rockefeller had struggled to eliminate the middleman. He
established factories to build his own barrels, to make his own
acids; he created his own selling firms, and, instead of paying
large storage charges, he constructed his own warehouses in New
York. From his earliest days as a refiner, he had adopted the
principle of paying no man a profit, and of performing all the
intermediate acts that had formerly resulted in large tribute to
middlemen. Moreover, the Standard Oil Company was apparently the
first great American industrial enterprise that realized the
necessity of operating with an abundant capital. Not the least of
Mr. Rockefeller's achievements was his success in associating
with the new company men having great financial standing--Amasa
Stone, Benjamin Brewster, Oliver Jennings, and the like,
capitalists whose banking resources, placed at the disposition of
the Standard, gave it an immense advantage over its rivals. While
his competitors were "kiting" checks and waiting, hat in hand, on
the good nature of the money lenders, Rockefeller always had a
large bank balance, upon which he could instantly draw for his
operations.

Nor must we overlook the fact that the Standard group contained a