esent, and the combination of the two constitutes in
large measure the 'community of interest.'

"But railways could not alone absorb rapidly enough those
mighty floods of gold. Presently John D. Rockefeller's
$2,500,000 a month had increased to four, to five, to six
millions a month, to $75,000,000 a year. Illuminating oil
was becoming all profit. The reinvestments of income were
adding their mite of many annual millions.

"The Rockefellers went into gas and electricity when those
industries had developed to the safe investment stage. And
now a large part of the American people must begin to enrich
the Rockefellers as soon as the sun goes down, no matter
what form of illuminant they use. They went into farm
mortgages. It is said that when prosperity a few years ago
enabled the farmers to rid themselves of their mortgages,
John D. Rockefeller was moved almost to tears; eight
millions which he had thought taken care of for years to
come at a good interest were suddenly dumped upon his
doorstep and there set up a-squawking for a new home. This
unexpected addition to his worriments in finding places for
the progeny of his petroleum and their progeny and their
progeny's progeny was too much for the equanimity of a man
without a digestion. . . .

"The Rockefellers went into mines--iron and coal and copper
and lead; into other industrial companies; into street
railways, into national, state, and municipal bonds; into
steamships and steamboats and telegraphy; into real estate,
into skyscrapers and residences and hotels and business
blocks; into life insurance, into banking. There was soon
literally no field of industry where their millions were not
at work. . . .

"The Rockefeller bank--the National City Bank--is by itself
far and away the biggest bank in the United States. It is
exceeded in the world only by the Bank of England and the
Bank of France. The deposits average more than one hundred
millions a day; and it dominates the call loan market on
Wall Street and the stock market. But it is not alone; it is
the head of the Rockefeller chain of banks, which includes
fourteen banks and trust companies in New York City, and
banks of great strength and influence in every large money
center in the country.

"