The _Standard Oil_ was given six months to dissolve. The result was the same as in 1892. There were simply thirty-four companies apparently independent. In the midst of this new constellation, the _Standard Oil Company of New Jersey_, whose capital has risen to 600 million dollars, merely shines with a greater brilliance than its satellites. And the _Standard_ has no longer to fear attack from the Government of the United States, which bows obediently to its will. Even better, the late President Harding energetically supported its claims throughout the world. Whoever attacks the _Standard_ attacks the Federal Government itself. To think of Rockefeller's modest company in 1870, with its 600 barrels a day and its small capital of a million dollars, and to see what it has become to-day, is to be lost in amazement. In 1920, the Great Council of the _Standard_ controlled a capital of a thousand million dollars; representing almost equal profits, and a daily consumption of two hundred million barrels, which it even hopes to see presently increased to three hundred million. Here are the original and the present positions; they are widely different:-- Capital has increased from 1 to 1,000. Profits have increased from 1 to 100,000. Production has increased from 1 to 300,000. The _Standard_ has soared so high because it was a national enterprise. Every bank, every shipping company, every railway in the United States, was interested in the success of the Trust, for this great corporation exported to the four corners of the world a commodity drawn from the soil of the Union, and brought into the country, one year with another, more than a hundred million dollars. It looked as though all competition was impossible, and yet a European company has been found bold enough to attack, not only in Europe and Asia, but on its own ground of the United States, this financial power, whose turn-over must be estimated at twelve thousand million francs at least, or more than twice the pre-War budget of a nation like France. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: Forty per cent. of the capital of the _Royal Dutch_ is in French hands, but France unfortunately has no voice in the direction of this undertaking.] CHAPTER V THE _ROYAL DUTCH-SHELL_ In face of the formidable hegemony which the _Standard Oil_ exercised over the oil markets of the world, an opposition arose, at first timid, then bolder in proportion as success attended its efforts. This was the _Royal Dutch_ allied to the _Shell_. Thirty years have sufficed to give it a unique position in the world.