New York had thirty separate companies engaged in the business of local transportation.

Indeed the Civil War period developed only one corporation that could be described as a "trust" in the modern sense.

This was the Western Union Telegraph Company.
Incredible as it may seem, more than fifty companies, ten years before the Civil War, were engaged in the business of transmitting telegraphic messages.

These companies had built their telegraph lines precisely as the railroads had laid their tracks; that is, independent lines were constructed connecting two given points.

It was inevitable, of course, that all these scattered lines should come under a single control, for the public convenience could not be served otherwise.