stepped into the room. I was well into the introduction, when out came
Mr. Rogers' watch, and with what must have appeared to the visitor as
astonished consternation.

"I do hope you will excuse me," he exclaimed in the middle of a
handshake, "but, my gracious, I am overdue upstairs," and he bolted.

His place was taken fifty seconds after by Mr. Rogers' secretary, who in
less than five minutes had exchanged a check of $4,086,000, made out to
herself and indorsed in blank, for the bundle of stocks, and in another
minute I was ushering the old gentleman into the elevator.

When he came to on the sidewalk he got his breath sufficiently to say:
"Phew! I thought my trade was a big one, but that friend of yours,
Rogers, must have had some other fellow upstairs who was going to turn
in $40,000,000 of stuff, because he did appear dreadfully excited!"

The success of "Standard Oil" is largely due to two things--to the
loyalty of its members to each other and to "Standard Oil," and to the
punishment of its enemies. Each member before initiation knows its
religion to be reward for friends and extermination for foes. Once
within the magic circle, a man realizes he is getting all that any one
else on earth can afford to pay him for like services, and still more
thrown in for full measure. Moreover, while a "Standard Oil" man's
reward is always ample and satisfactory, he is constantly reminded in a
thousand and one ways that punishment for disloyalty is sure and
terrible, and that in no corner of the earth can he escape it, nor can
any power on earth protect him from it.

"Standard Oil" is never loud in its rewards nor its punishments. It does
not care for the public's praise nor for its condemnation, but endeavors
to avoid both by keeping its "business" to itself. As an instance, in
connection with certain gas settlements I made with "Standard Oil," it
voluntarily paid one of its agents for a few days' work $250,000. He had
expected at the outside $25,000. When I published the fact, as I had a
right to, "Standard Oil" was mad as hornets--as upset, indeed, as though
it had been detected in cheating the man out of two-thirds of his just
due, instead of having paid him ten times what was coming to him.

CHAPTER III

THE MEN IN POWER BEHIND THE "SYSTEM"

In the great Thing known to the world as "Standard Oil," the most
perfect embodiment of a "system" which I will endeavor to get before my
readers in later chapters, th