Capital has increased from 1 to 1,000.
Profits have increased from 1 to 100,000.
Production has increased from 1 to 300,000.
The Standard has soared so high because it was a national enterprise. Every bank, every shipping company, every railway in the United States, was interested in the success of the Trust, for this great corporation exported to the four corners of the world a commodity drawn from the soil of the Union, and brought into the country, one year with another, more than a hundred million dollars. It looked as though all competition was impossible, and yet a European company has been found bold enough to attack, not only in Europe and Asia, but on its own ground of the United States, this financial power, whose turn-over must be estimated at twelve thousand million francs at least, or more than twice the pre-War budget of a nation like France.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Forty per cent. of the capital of the Royal Dutch is in French hands, but France unfortunately has no voice in the direction of this undertaking.
THE ROYAL DUTCH-SHELL
In face of the formidable hegemony which the Standard Oil exercised over the oil markets of the world, an opposition arose, at first timid, then bolder in proportion as success attended its efforts.
This was the Royal Dutch allied to the Shell. Thirty years have sufficed to give it a unique position in the world.