This great success was wholly the fruit of George Westinghouse's personal endeavor. It owed nothing to extraneous influences. It had been accomplished along those manly, independent, Yankee lines which have made that name synonymous with hustle and success in every part of the civilized world. Above all, the man had organized and developed his companies without the aid of the "System" or without truckling to its votaries. In consequence he had incurred the deadly hatred of some of its lords paramount. In the business world Westinghouse's great rival was the General Electric Company. To mention "Westinghouse" and "General Electric" in the same breath was to speak of a thing and its antithesis. Everything George Westinghouse was or had been the General Electric was not and had never been. The General Electric had been and was by leave of the "System"; in fact, was one of the very foremost examples of its methods. Its high-priest was J. Pierpont Morgan; its home, Wall Street; its owners, the principal votaries of the "System." It had grown because of their favor and by means of the rankest exhibitions of knock-down-and-drag-out methods of consolidation of all competitors but--Westinghouse. Just previous to 1894 Westinghouse had rejected a dazzling scheme of uniting the two institutions on an immense capitalization which would have absorbed millions and millions of the people's savings and earned millions in commissions for its projectors. Wall Street's indignation at his hardihood knew no bounds, and at the time of which I write the yegg-men of the "System" were laying for him with dark-lantern and sand-bag.