ic value of the control of transportation and
profit by it. John D. Rockefeller happened to be more successful than
others in manipulating transportation. His refineries grew in size, as
they bought out or crushed their rivals, until by 1882 most of the
traffic in petroleum was under his control. Economy and sagacity had
much to do with the success, but were less significant than
transportation. Railway rates were yet unfixed by law and every road
sold transportation as best it could. Rockefeller learned to bargain in
freight rates, and through a system of special rates and rebates gained
advantages over every competitor. His lobby made it difficult to weaken
him through legislative measures, while his attorneys were generally
more skillful than his prosecutors before the courts. The recognition of
the existence of rebates did much to hasten the passage of the
Interstate Commerce Law. The group of corporations that flourished
because of them became the greatest of the trusts. By 1882 the
affiliated Rockefeller companies were so numerous and complicated that
they were given into the hands of a group of trustees to be managed as a
single business.

The Whiskey and Sugar Trusts, formed in 1887, had to do with commodities
in which transportation was not the controlling element. These
industries suffered from overproduction and ruinous competition, to
eliminate which the distilleries and sugar refineries entered into trust
agreements like that of the Standard Oil companies. Other lines of
manufacture followed as best they could. Before Cleveland was
inaugurated the trend was noticed and attacked.

Most of the agitation against the trusts came from individuals whose
lives were touched by them. Competition was ruthless and often
unscrupulous. Every man who was crushed by it hated his destroyer. There
was much changing of occupations as firms merged and reorganized and as
plants grew in size and ingenuity. Perhaps more workers changed the
character of their occupation in the eighties than in any other decade.
As each individual readjusted himself to his new environment, he added
to the mass of public opinion that believed the trusts to be a menace to
society.

As early as 1881 there was a market for anti-trust literature, for in
March of that year the _Atlantic Monthly_ printed the "Story of a Great
Monopoly," by Henry Demarest Lloyd, who became one of the leaders in the
attack. It had been fashionable to regard success as a