The men and women who do the work of the world have the right to the floor. Everywhere they are rising to "a point of information." They want to know how our labor and the gifts of nature are being ordered by those whom our ideals and consent have made Captains of Industry over us; how it is that we, who profess the religion of the Golden Rule and the political economy of service for service, come to divide our produce into incalculable power and pleasure for a few, and partial existence for the many who are the fountains of these powers and pleasures. This book is an attempt to help the people answer these questions. It has been quarried out of official records, and it is a venture in realism in the world of realities. Decisions of courts and of special tribunals like the Interstate Commerce Commission, verdicts of juries in civil and criminal cases, reports of committees of the State Legislatures and of Congress, oath-sworn testimony given in legal proceedings and in official inquiries, corrected by rebutting testimony and by cross-examination--such are the sources of information. One important exception is in the description of the operations of a great international combination in England, Germany, Holland, and elsewhere in Europe; this has had to be made from unofficial material. The people there are neither economically nor politically developed to the point we have reached in America, of using the legislative investigation and the powers of the courts to defend livelihoods and market rights, and enforce the social responsibilities of industrial power. Full and exact references are given throughout for the guidance of the investigator. The language of witnesses, judges, and official reports has been repeated verbatim, except for the avoidance of the surplusage and reduplication usual in such literature, and that, to permit the use of the dialogue form, the construction has been changed from the third person to the first in quotations from evidence. With these qualifications, wherever quotation marks have been used, the transcription is word for word. Evidence from such sources is more exact, circumstantial, and accurate than that upon which the mass of historical literature is founded. To give the full and official history of numbers of these combinations, which are nearly identical in inspiration, method, and result, would be repetition. Only one of them, therefore, has been treated in full--the oil trust. It is the most successful of all the attempts to put gifts of nature, entire industries, and world markets under one hat. Its originators claim this precedence. It was, one of its spokesmen says, "the parent of the trust system."[3] It is the best illustration of a movement which is itself but an illustration of the spirit of the age. CHAPTER II CUT OFF FROM FIRE