"England," says Emerson, "reaches to the Alleghanies; America begins in Ohio." In the Western Reserve of Ohio, hive of abolitionists and Union soldiers, was the same spirit of America which, at Columbus, Mississippi, had defended its market rights as outposts of all other rights. It was only a few years ago discovered that the flames of the "burning springs" of the Caspian Sea, China, and America, whose torches kindled the lamp of history, were beacon-fires uncomprehended by a procession of civilizations, and waiting to light man to the knowledge that the earth beneath him was a city of domes, huge receivers storing up the products of vaster gas-retorts below. Man found that he need not wait for this spirit to come to him out of the "caverns measureless to man." He could go to it, as in oil, and, tapping the great tanks, could lead their flighty contents to homes and mills, to emerge there as light and warmth and power. Experience in oil had made ready skill and capital to use the new treasure. In a very few years thousands of miles of pipe were laid, and millions of capital invested in the natural-gas business, mainly in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The gas was found in the same general localities as oil, and the methods of procuring and distributing it were similar, and the similarity easily extended to the methods of administering this bounty of nature as "property." Toledo began to be supplied in 1887 with the new fuel through pipe lines by two companies. They obtained their franchises as competitors, but were soon found to be one in ownership, prices, and all details of management. The discovery that the two companies at Toledo were really one, and that one the evil one of the oil trust, aroused the apprehensions of the people, and these were increased by a number of circumstances.