It
was meant to seal men together, to wipe out national lines, to walk under
seas and fly through the air, to change the entire face of the world in
which men lived. Already the giant that was to be king in the place of old
kings was calling his servants and his armies to serve him. He used the
methods of old kings and promised his followers booty and gain. Everywhere
he went unchallenged, surveying the land, raising a new class of men to
positions of power. Railroads had already been pushed out across the
plains; great coal fields from which was to be taken food to warm the blood
in the body of the giant were being opened up; iron fields were being
discovered; the roar and clatter of the breathing of the terrible new
thing, half hideous, half beautiful in its possibilities, that was for
so long to drown the voices and confuse the thinking of men, was heard
not only in the towns but even in lonely farm houses, where its willing
servants, the newspapers and magazines, had begun to circulate in ever
increasing numbers. At the town of Gibsonville, near Bidwell, Ohio, and at
Lima and Finley, Ohio, oil and gas fields were discovered. At Cleveland,
Ohio, a precise, definite-minded man named Rockefeller bought and sold
oil. From the first he served the new thing well and he soon found others
to serve with him. The Morgans, Fricks, Goulds, Carnegies, Vanderbilts,
servants of the new king, princes of the new faith, merchants all, a new
kind of rulers of men, defied the world-old law of class that puts the
merchant below the craftsman, and added to the confusion of men by taking
on the air of creators.
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