“But railways could not alone absorb rapidly enough those mighty floods of gold.  Presently John D. Rockefeller’s $2,500,000 a month had increased to four, to five, to six millions a month, to $75,000,000 a year.  Illuminating oil was becoming all profit.  The reinvestments of income were adding their mite of many annual millions.

“The Rockefellers went into gas and electricity when those industries had developed to the safe investment stage.  And now a large part of the American people must begin to enrich the Rockefellers as soon as the sun goes down, no matter what form of illuminant they use.  They went into farm mortgages.  It is said that when prosperity a few years ago enabled the farmers to rid themselves of their mortgages, John D. Rockefeller was moved almost to tears; eight millions which he had thought taken care of for years to come at a good interest were suddenly dumped upon his doorstep and there set up a-squawking for a new home.  This unexpected addition to his worriments in finding places for the progeny of his petroleum and their progeny and their progeny’s progeny was too much for the equanimity of a man without a digestion. . . .

“The Rockefellers went into mines—­iron and coal and copper and lead; into other industrial companies; into street railways, into national, state, and municipal bonds; into steamships and steamboats and telegraphy; into real estate, into skyscrapers and residences and hotels and business blocks; into life insurance, into banking.  There was soon literally no field of industry where their millions were not at work. . . .

“The Rockefeller bank—­the National City Bank—­is by itself far and away the biggest bank in the United States.  It is exceeded in the world only by the Bank of England and the Bank of France.  The deposits average more than one hundred millions a day; and it dominates the call loan market on Wall Street and the stock market.  But it is not alone; it is the head of the Rockefeller chain of banks, which includes fourteen banks and trust companies in New York City, and banks of great strength and influence in every large money center in the country.

“John D. Rockefeller owns Standard Oil stock worth between four and five hundred millions at the market quotations.  He has a hundred millions in the steel trust, almost as much in a single western railway system, half as much in a second, and so on and on and on until the mind wearies of the cataloguing.  His income last year was about $100,000,000—­ it is doubtful if the incomes of all the Rothschilds together make a greater sum.  And it is going up by leaps and bounds.”

Little discussion took place after this, and the dinner soon broke up.  All were quiet and subdued, and leave-taking was done with low voices.  It seemed almost that they