resort to this false tactic. My only desire all my life has been the desire to attract as many capable people as possible to work together, that is, to arrange so that they work with me, and not against me. When I met such a person, I wanted to convince him that joint work is more economical, that it expands the market, that it is much more expedient to unite separate branches of trade. If I had not been able to convince "my competitors" of the validity of this idea, the "Standard Oil Company" would not exist. Can anyone really admit that the people supposedly ruined by me and forced to join the Standard Oil Company could exhibit that unshakable corporate spirit, the existence of which even our enemies must recognize for us? Let us go further and suppose that a man who foresees his imminent ruin is really forced to join the only person who points out to him a possible outcome. But is it possible that a man so barbarously deprived of my self-respect should work hand in hand with me to expand and increase my own business?
Rockefeller was primarily an organizer and distinguished himself by his ability to attract the most intelligent forces to cooperation everywhere. The list of those bypassed by him is extremely long and includes the enumeration of most of his most cruel opponents. As for the formation of the trust, it must be regarded as the effect of the invention of machines that economize human energy. Just as machines, at their first appearance, sent a certain number of workers around the world, so how small enterprises were first forced to reduce their production, and then began to produce the product cheaper, which was not slow to affect the consumer with the price of the product and the worker with an increase wages, and on the capitalist by an increase in the rent of capital, so the effect of the trust is at first destructive, and its creative power will manifest itself only later and little by little. If someone is not close to the idea of ​​a brilliant future of trusts according to Rockefeller, we pay attention precisely to Rockefeller, precisely in the unconditional honest conduct of business, which Rockefeller repeatedly publicly demanded, declaring, along with this demand, strict control by the state and guarantees of society, we have nothing to say to him. The idea of ​​trusts, no matter how strange it may sound, is in a sense a deeply socialist idea and, according to Rockefeller, acquires a completely special character, being the trading principle of the future. There is no doubt that trusts will more and more conquer industrial and commercial markets, more and more enter into life, just as they entered into the life of trading houses.
The idea of ​​the trust runs like a red thread through Rockefeller's entire life. Rockefeller had already taken the first steps towards the realization of his idea at the age of eighteen, when, in the role of a church warden, he organized a collection of donations for the construction of the church. This first charitable trust became a significant episode not only in his life, but also in the history of the whole world, because for many years Rockefeller continues to devote his work to charity.
But it is the Standard Oil Company that with all confidence can be called the most ingenious trading business of our time. The trade campaigns she carried out to conquer foreign markets can only be compared with the military campaigns of Napoleon. In our time, on the whole earth (except Russia), there is hardly such a run-down place where it would not be possible to find kerosene produced by the Standard Oil Company.
What can we say about cultural countries, if the product of the Standard Oil Company has penetrated even into the wild depths of Asia and Africa. In a small flat-bottomed boat, on the back of an elephant or a zebu, deliveries of kerosene are made through the virgin places of the upper Ganges and the Indus. There is not a single village in all of India whose inhabitants are at least not familiar with the name of an American company. The company maintains warehouses in hundreds of large cities. The managers of these warehouses, often forced to guard them with a revolver or a gun in their hands, are all shades, from brown to black and yellow natives: Zikki, Gurkhases, Mohammedans, Hindus. In Kirahi, I must say, there is one of the most original American factories. Here, Balochistani and people from the Indus Valley work on machinery. All cars are surrounded on all sides by small wire nets to prevent the long hair of the natives or their the widest bloomers did not get into the canvas during the operation of the machinery. At the passage of the Khyber, at the gates of Afghanistan, in the city of Peshawer, there is a huge warehouse. The kerosene sold here from the pens is not packaged: it flows from a grand source in Kansas, so to speak, directly into the primitive lamp of the Afghans. By pipeline, it is taken from the Kansas oilfields to a kerosene plant, distilled there, loaded onto tankers, which are transported to India, then pumped into tank cars, taken to a warehouse in Peshawer, and finally directly on small, drawn bulls, wagons, on which a large inscription of the company, Standard Oil Company, flaunts, kerosene passes into the hands of savages, consumers. On the backs of camels and donkeys, in long caravans led by Arabs and Negroes, this kerosene from the coast penetrates far into the wild continent of Asia, and often huddles in unexplored countries. It burns in a Maori hut in the mountains of New Zealand and illuminates the dwelling of a whaler on the shores of Greenland.
India, Arabia, Persia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Morocco, and so on, are awash with zinc mugs and specially shaped tin bottles, an invention of the Standard Oil Company. The natives use both kerosene and a bottle, the latter often finding unusually original uses. Thus, one of the agents of society, whose task is to acquire new markets and who sometimes travel for years in foreign lands, willy-nilly learn the most diverse languages ​​​​and often become experts in local customs - one of these agents bought in Muscat a bird cage made from a flask for kerosene in five gallons (about 22 liters). The cage was made to perfection, and everything needed was reproduced there: a door, feeders, crossbars, a ring for rocking a bird - everything was made from the material of one flask. The same flasks filled with perfumes are found as incense burners in Hindu temples; they, in the form of rice plates, are found in the bazaars of Beirut, Lucknow, Calcutta, Madras, and even serve as flasks for water, vessels for milk and lamps. Sometimes the same flask finds its use as a fireproof jewelry box.
And on such a huge path, there are many difficulties that need to be overcome: sometimes they became religious and racial features, there the company ran into a uniform chaos of dialects, and here it ran into the most cruel barbarism. It is hard to imagine how many millions were spent on just one victorious trading campaign, how sometimes it was necessary to conquer the market step by step, and more than one volume could have gone into describing all this work. We will give here only a brief description of the campaign to conquer the Chinese market, both in view of the fact that it will give some, albeit weak, idea of ​​​​the difficulties that had to be overcome, and because this story is not without a certain amount of comedy.
The statistics of the Standard Oil Company calculated that if China could be conquered for American kerosene, one could not worry about acquiring new markets for a long time to come. The first steps of the trading campaign began. At first, the mandarins of many individual communities made it a crime to use kerosene. The priests imposed punishments on those who used kerosene, and the huge merchant guilds, spread throughout the face of the Middle State, and in constant communication with each other, announced a boycott to every merchant who dared to sell kerosene. The answer was simple: most of the ruling class turned out to be interested in the production of vegetable oil, and therefore they used all their authority to expel the "foreign devil" with its mineral oil, which was a serious competitor to the local vegetable product, from the market. Added to this was the fact that the Chinese at first did not know how to handle kerosene. Their lamps were foul-smelling, smoky night-lights without glasses, perhaps a little like our old oil lamps - they gave little light, but there was no fuss or inconvenience with them. Of course, kerosene could not be lit in such lamps, and it was necessary, first of all, to invent a cheap, expedient lamp for China.
For many months, the company's technicians worked on this project until they finally succeeded. The newly invented lamp has a small, brightly colored tank with a wide stem and a hook for hanging. The wick is arranged in such a way that it gives the maximum light, and the glass the greatest thrust; once filled, the lamp burns for 11 hours - in a word, this small lamp is perfection itself. The company's own lamp stands about 11 cents, for China it sells for 71/2 cents. For example, last year, about a