The trust proved to be an attractive proposition to large business concerns. Within five years combinations had been formed in cotton oil, linseed oil, lead, sugar, whisky, and cordage, and it was not long before a system of interlocking interests began to consolidate the control of all staple manufactures in the hands of a few financiers. Six years after its formation the Standard Oil Company was paying to a small group of holders about $20,000,000 annually in dividends on a capital of $90,000,000, and the recipients of these large dividends began to invest in other concerns. In 1879, one of them, H. M. Flagler, became a director of the Valley Railroad; in 1882, William Rockefeller appeared as one of the directors of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul; in 1887, John D. Rockefeller was connected with a syndicate which absorbed the Minnesota Iron Company, and about the same time representatives of the Oil Trust began to figure in the Northern Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, and the Ohio River railways. Thus a perfect network of financial connections throughout the country was built up. But on the whole the decades following the Civil War were characterized by economic anarchy, _laissez faire_ with a vengeance. There were prolonged industrial crises accompanied by widespread unemployment and misery among the working classes. In the matter of railway management the chaos was unparalleled. Shortly after 1870 a period of ruinous competition set in and was followed by severe financial crises among the railways. Passenger and freight rate "wars" for the "through" traffic brought many roads to the verge of bankruptcy, in spite of their valiant efforts to save themselves by exorbitant charges on subsidiary branches where they had no competition. Crooked financiering, such as the watering of stocks, misappropriation of construction funds by directors, and the purchase of bankrupt lines by directors of larger companies and their resale at great advances, placed a staggering burden of interest charges against practically all of the lines. In 1873 nearly half of the mileage in the country was in the hands of court receivers, and between 1876 and 1879 an average of more than one hundred roads a year were sold under the foreclosure of mortgages. In all this distress the investors at large were the losers while the "inside" operators such as Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage doubled their already over-topping fortunes.