All of these bitter and spectacular struggles aroused intense public interest. The debate on the Interstate Commerce Bill was contemporaneous with them—the bill was passed in 1887, and had its effect. The feeling grew all over the coun try that whatever the merits of these specific cases, there was danger in the mysterious organisation by which such immense fortunes and such excessive power could be built up on one side of an industry, while another side steadily lost money and power. A new trial was coming to Mr. Rockefeller, one much more serious than any trial for overt acts, for the very nature of his great creation was to be in question. It was a hard trial, for all John D. Rockefeller asked of the world by the year 1887 was to be let alone. He had com pleted one of the most perfect business organisations the world has ever seen, an organisation which handled prac tically all of a great natural product. His factories were the most perfect and were managed with the strictest economy. He owned outright the pipe-lines which transported the crude oil. His knowledge of the consuming power of the world was accurate, and he kept his output strictly within its limit. At the same time the great marketing machinery he had put in operation carried on an aggressive campaign for new markets. In China, Africa, South America, as well as in remote parts of Europe and the United States, Standard agents carried refined oil. The Standard Oil Company had been organised to do business, and if ever a company did business it was this one. From Mr. Rockefeller himself, sit ting all day in his den, hidden from everybody but the remarkable body of directors and heads of departments which he had "acquired" as he wiped up one refinery and one pipe-line after another, to the humblest clerk in the office of the most remote marketing agency, everybody worked. There was not a lazy bone in the organisation, nor an in competent hand, nor a stupid head. It was a machine where everybody was kept on his mettle by an extraordinary system of competition, where success met immediate recognition, where opportunity was wide as the world's craving for a good light to cheer its hours of darkness. The machine was pervaded and stimulated by the consciousness of its own power and prosperity. It was a great thing to belong to an organisation which always got what it wanted, and which was making money as no business in the country had ever made it.
What more, indeed, could Mr. Rockefeller ask than to be let alone? And why not let him alone? He had the ability to keep together the wide-spread interests he had acquired— not only to keep them together, but to unify and develop them; why not let him alone? Many people even in the Oil Re gions were inclined to do so, some because they feared him— rumour said Mr. Rockefeller was vindictive and never for got opposition; others because they were canny and foresaw that they might want his help one day; still others because criticism of success is an ungracious business and arouses a suspicion that the critic may be envious or bitter. But there were a few people, as there always are, whom no cowardice, no self-interest, no fear of public opinion could keep quiet, and these people insistently urged that the Standard Oil Company was a menace to the commerce of the country. We
have been and are being wronged, they repeated. We have a right to do an independent business. Interference to drive us out is conspiracy. Let Mr. Rockefeller succeed in the oil business and he will attack other industries; he will have imitators. In fifty years a handful of men will own the country.
Mr. Rockefeller handled his critics with a skill bordering on genius. He ignored them. To see them, to answer them, called attention to them. He was too busy to answer them. "We do not talk much—we saw wood." This attitude of serene indifference is supremely wise. It belittles the critic and it gives the outsider who watches the game a feeling that a serenity so high must come from an impregnable position. There is no question but many a mouth opened to testify against the Standard Oil Company has been closed by Mr. Rockefeller's policy of silence. Only the few irreconcilables withstood his sphinx-like attitude, and yearly, from the com promising of 1880, these warnings and accusations were louder and more fierce. Probably the greatest trial Mr. Rockefeller has ever had has come from the persistency with which the few malcontents kept him before the public. They interfered with two of his great principles—"hide the prof its" and "say nothing." It was they who had ruined the South Improvement Company; it was they who had indicted him for conspiracy and compelled him to compromise in z880. It was they who now, after the splendid pipe-line organisa tion was completed and his market machinery was in order, kept up their agitation and their cursing. Their work began to tell. The feeling grew that the Standard Oil Com pany, or Trust, as it was by this time generally called, must be looked into. Even those who, dazzled by Mr. Rockefeller's achievement, were inclined to overlook its ethical side and to refuse to consider to what aggregation of power and abuse it might lead, began to feel that it would be quite as well to have the matter thrashed out, to have it settled once for all, whether the thing had been so bad in its making and was so dangerous in its tendencies as the "oil-shriekers" pre tended. In the House of Representatives, when the question of ordering an investigation of trusts by the Committee on Manu factures was up in 1887, the liveliest concern was shown as to whether the Standard Oil Company, "the most important case" of all, would escape. More than one member asked to be assured before consenting to the investigation that the Standard would be put on the rack. The same interest was shown in the Senate of New York State, where an investiga tion was ordered for February, i888. It was certain indeed now that Mr. Rockefeller would not be allowed much longer to work in the dark. He was to be dragged into the open, much as he might deplore it, to explain what his trust really was, to prove to a suspicious and hostile public that he had a right to exist.