fixed plan of the bankers and insurance companies.

The factory owner was the supreme type of that sheer individualism
which had burst forth from the restraints of feudalism. He stood
alone fighting his commercial contests with persistent personal
doggedness. Beneath his occasional benevolence and his religious
professions was a wild ardor in the checkmating or bankruptcy of his
competitors. These were his enemies; he fought them with every
mercantile weapon, and they him; and none gave quarter.

Apart from the destructive character of this incessant warfare,
dooming many of the combatants, other intervening factors had the
tendency of holding back the factory owners' quick progress--
obstacles and drawbacks copiously described in later and more
appropriate parts of this work.


MIGHT OF THE RAILROAD OWNERS.

In contrast to the slow, almost creeping pace of the factory owners
in the race for wealth, the railroad owners sprang at once into the
lists of mighty wealth-possessers, armed with the most comprehensive
and puissant powers and privileges, and vested with a sweep of
properties beside which those of the petty industrial bosses were
puny. Railroad owners, we say; the distinction is necessary between
the builders of the railroads and the owners. The one might
construct, but it often happened that by means of cunning, fraud and
corruption, the builders were superseded by another set of men who
vaulted into possession.