Nobody realised more fully what had been accomplished in the Oil Regions than the oil men themselves. Nobody rehearsed their achievements so loudly. “In ten years,” they were fond of saying, “we have built this business up from nothing to a net product of six millions of barrels per annum. We have invented and devised all the apparatus, the appliances, the forms needed for a new industry. We use a capital of $200,000,000, and support a population of 60,000 people. To keep up our supply we drill 100 new wells per month, at an average cost of $6,000 each. We are fourth in the exports of the United States. We have developed a foreign market, including every civilised country on the globe.” But what had been done was, in their judgment, only a beginning. Life ran swift and ruddy and joyous in these men. They were still young, most of them under forty, and they looked forward with all the eagerness of the young who have just learned their powers, to years of struggle and development. They would solve all these perplexing problems of over-production, of railroad discrimination, of speculation. They would meet their own needs. They would bring the oil refining to the region where it belonged. They would make their towns the most beautiful in the world. There was nothing too good for them, nothing they did not hope and dare. But suddenly, at the very heyday of this confidence, a big hand reached out from nobody knew where, to steal their conquest and throttle their future. The suddenness and the blackness of the assault on their business stirred to the bottom their manhood and their sense of fair play, and the whole region arose in a revolt which is scarcely paralleled in the commercial history of the United States. CHAPTER TWO THE RISE OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER’S FIRST CONNECTION WITH THE OIL BUSINESS—STORIES OF HIS EARLY LIFE IN CLEVELAND—HIS FIRST PARTNERS—ORGANISATION OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY IN JUNE, 1870—ROCKEFELLER’S ABLE ASSOCIATES—FIRST EVIDENCE OF RAILWAY DISCRIMINATIONS IN THE OIL BUSINESS—REBATES FOUND TO BE GENERALLY GIVEN TO LARGE SHIPPERS—FIRST PLAN FOR A SECRET COMBINATION—THE SOUTH IMPROVEMENT COMPANY—SECRET CONTRACTS MADE WITH THE RAILROADS PROVIDING REBATES AND DRAWBACKS—ROCKEFELLER AND ASSOCIATES FORCE CLEVELAND REFINERS TO JOIN THE NEW COMBINATION OR SELL—RUMOUR OF THE PLAN REACHES THE OIL REGIONS.