overshadowing these accustomed business practices, new and startling
conditions that had to be met and fought were now appearing.

Instead of a multitude of small, detached railroads, owned and
operated by independent companies, the period was now being reached
of colossal railroad systems. In the East the small railroad owners
had been well-nigh crushed out, and their properties joined in huge
lines under the ownership of a few controlling men, while in the
West, extensive systems, thousands of miles long, had recently been
built. Having stamped out most of the small owners, the railroad
barons now proceeded to wrangle and fight among themselves. It was a
characteristic period when the railroad magnates were constantly
embroiled in the bitterest quarrels, the sole object of which was to
outdo, bankrupt and wreck one another and seize, if possible, the
others' property.


THE RISE OF THE FIRST TRUST.

It was these conflicts that developed the auspicious time and
opportunity for a change of the most world--wide importance, and one
which had a stupendous ultimate purport not then realized. The wars
between the railroad magnates assumed many forms, not the least of
which was the cutting of freight rates. Each railroad desperately
sought to wrench away traffic from the others by offering better
inducements. In this cutthroat competition, a coterie of hawk-eyed
young men in the oil business, led by John D. Rockefeller, saw their
fertile chance.

The drilling and the refining of oil, although in their comparative