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, survey- ing 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 serv- ants, the newspapers and magazines, had begun to cir- culate in ever increasing numbers. At the town of Gib- sonville, near Bidwell, Ohio, and at Lima and Finley, Ohio, oil and gas fields were discovered. At Cleve- land, Ohio, a precise, definite-minded man named Rock- efeller 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. They were mer- chants glorified and dealt in giant things, in the lives of men and in mines, forests, oil and gas fields, facto- ries, and railroads. And all over the country, in the towns, the farm houses, and the growing cities of the new country, peo- ple stirred and awakened. Thought and poetry died
