%531. Rise of Great Corporations.%--That mechanical progress so astonishing should powerfully affect the business and industrial world was inevitable. Trades, occupations, industries of all sorts, began to concentrate and combine, and corporations took the place of individuals and small companies. In place of the forty little telegraph companies of 1856, there was the great Western Union Company. In place of many petty railroads, there were a few trunk lines. In place of a hundred producers and refiners of petroleum, there was the one Standard Oil Company. These are but a few of many; for the rapid growth of corporations was a characteristic of the period. %532. Millionaires and "Captains of Industry."%--As old lines of industry were expanded and new ones were created, the opportunities for money-getting were vastly increased. Men now began to amass immense fortunes in gold and silver mining; by dealing in coal, in grain, in cattle, in oil; by speculation in stocks; in iron and steel making; in railroading,--millionaires and multi-millionaires became numerous, and were often called "captains of industry," as an indication of the power they held in the industrial world. %533. Condition of Labor.%--Meanwhile, the conditions of the workingman were also changing rapidly: 1. The chief employers of labor were corporations and great capitalists. 2. The short voyage and low fare from Europe, the efforts made by steamship companies to secure passengers, the immense business activity in the country from 1867 to 1872, and the opportunities afforded by the rapidly growing West, brought over each year hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe to swell the ranks of labor. Between 1867 and 1873 the number was 2,500,000. 3. Bad management on the part of some corporations; "watering" or unnecessarily increasing their stock on the part of others, combined with sharp competition, began, especially after the panic of 1873, to cut down dividends. This was followed by reduction of wages, or by an increase in the duties of employees, and sometimes by both. %534. Labor Organizations; the Knights of Labor.%--Trades unions existed in our country before the Constitution; but it was at the time of the great industrial development during and after the war, that the era of unions opened. At first that of each trade had no connection with that of any other. But in 1869 an effort was made to unite all workingmen on the broad basis of labor, and "The Noble Order of Knights of Labor" was founded. For a while it was a secret order; but in 1878 a declaration of principles was made, which began with the statement that the alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, "would degrade the toiling masses," and announced that the only way to check this evil was to unite "all laborers into one great body." The knights were in favor of 1. The creation of bureaus of labor for the collection and spread of information.