through thrift and cunning succeeded in developing the first
perfect trust, namely that known as Standard Oil. We cannot
forbear giving the following remarkable page from the
history of the times, to show how the need for reinvestment
of the Standard Oil surplus crushed out small capitalists
and hastened the breakdown of the capitalist system. David
Graham Phillips was a radical writer of the period, and the
quotation, by him, is taken from a copy of the Saturday
Evening Post, dated October 4, 1902 A.D. This is the only
copy of this publication that has come down to us, and yet,
from its appearance and content, we cannot but conclude that
it was one of the popular periodicals with a large
circulation. The quotation here follows:

"About ten years ago Rockefeller's income was given as
thirty millions by an excellent authority. He had reached
the limit of profitable investment of profits in the oil
industry. Here, then, were these enormous sums in cash
pouring in--more than $2,000,000 a month for John Davison
Rockefeller alone. The problem of reinvestment became more
serious. It became a nightmare. The oil income was
swelling, swelling, and the number of sound investments
limited, even more limited than it is now. It was through
no special eagerness for more gains that the Rockefellers
began to branch out from oil into other things. They were
forced, swept on by this inrolling tide of wealth which
their monopoly magnet irresistibly attracted. They
developed a staff of investment seekers and investigators.
It is said that the chief of this staff has a salary of
$125,000 a year.

"The first conspicuous excursion and incursion of the
Rockefellers was into the railway field. By 1895 they
controlled one-fifth of the railway mileage of the country.
What do they own or, through dominant ownership, control
to-day? They are powerful in all the great railways of New
York, north, east, and west, except one, where their share
is only a few millions. They are in most of the great
railways radiating from Chicago. They dominate in several
of the systems that extend to the Pacific. It is their
votes that make Mr. Morgan so potent, though, it may be
added, they need his brains more than he needs their votes--
at pr