At that time the petroleum fields of Pennsylvania were just beginning to be developed, and young Rockefeller's attention was soon attracted to them. He seems to have been one of the first to realize the vast possibilities of the oil business, and in 1865, he and his brother William built at Cleveland a refinery which they called the Standard Oil Works. They had little money, but unlimited nerve, and very soon began the work of consolidation, which culminated in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust in 1882. They were able to kill competition largely by securing from the railroads lower shipping rates than any competitor, in some cases going so far as to get a rebate on all oil shipped by competitors. That is, if a railroad charged the Standard Oil Company one dollar to carry its oil between two points and charged a competitor a dollar and a quarter for the same service, that extra quarter went, not into the coffers of the railroad, but into the coffers of the Standard Oil Company. Such methods of business have since been made illegal, and the Standard is compelled to do business on the same basis as its competitors, but its vast resources and occupancy of the field give it an advantage which nothing can counteract. The operations of the Standard Oil Company naturally piled up a great fortune for John D. Rockefeller--how great cannot even be estimated. Not until comparatively recent years, did he turn his attention from making money to spending it, but when he did, it was in a royal fashion. Ten million dollars were given to the University of Chicago, which opened its doors in 1892, and now has an enrollment of over five thousand students; ten million more were given to the General Education Board, organized in 1903, for the purpose of promoting education in the United States, without distinction of race, sex, or creed, and especially to promote and systematize various forms of educational beneficence; a million was given to Yale; the great Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded at New York and liberally endowed; and Mr. Rockefeller's total benefactions probably exceed a total of thirty millions. This will soon be greatly increased, for he has just asked Congress to charter an institution to be known as the Rockefeller Foundation, which he will endow on an enormous scale to carry out various plans of charity, through centuries to come.