It has travelled far since it began in the Dutch Indies, with a tiny capital of a million florins and seven small tank steamers. Its annual production, which was then 25,000 tons, to-day exceeds 15 million tons. Its fleet of tankers is one of the most powerful in the world. Last year it amounted to 1,400,000 tons. _And the_ Royal Dutch _controls a capital of twenty-two thousand million francs_. Partial Decline of the Standard The _Standard Oil_ is certainly no longer the colossus of the world. It has never completely recovered from the last judgment delivered against it in 1912, which compelled it to separate from its subsidiary companies. Although the sentence of the Supreme Court could not put an end to the community of interests which united these--since Rockefeller himself possessed 25 per cent. of the shares of the various affiliated companies--it has certainly hampered the development of the _Standard_ during the last few years. The very heavy taxation imposed upon it has also contributed to limit its powers of expansion. The American Government takes 44 per cent. of its income in the form of taxes. In 1920 Rockefeller paid an ordinary federal tax of 12 per cent. and a super-tax of 65 per cent. In fact, Rockefeller and all his associates are being driven out of the business by the federal taxes. If Rockefeller is the person who paid in 1920 the largest sum in income tax (14,800,000 dollars), it is clear that the greater part of his money is passing from the coffers of the company to be invested in Government, State and municipal securities which are not taxable. _Up to about 1890 the_ Standard Oil _reigned as absolute mistress of the oil market, both in Europe and America_. But in 1890 the oil from the Caucasus, Galicia and Rumania began to break up this monopoly. Purely European financial groups, the Rothschilds of Paris and Vienna, the Nobels of Sweden, the great German banks, and those of Lille and Roubaix which later were to form the "Consortium du Nord," became progressively more and more interested in the new oil enterprises that were taking shape in Eastern Europe. Germany had formed an actual Trust, the _Europeanische Petroleum Union_, which, but for the War, would certainly have led to German control of all European oil. Instead of only two great Trusts fighting for world supremacy for the benefit of Britain or the United States, we should see a third, claiming Europe and Turkey in Asia for its share in the name of Germany. But this group, expanding rapidly when war broke out, found itself opposed from that moment by another organization, the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, which was also advancing by giant strides and which concentrated all its power throughout the world against that of the _Standard Oil_.