This combination was effected a few years before the War, when the Western Union Telegraph Company, after a long and fierce contest, succeeded in absorbing all its competitors.

Similar forces were bringing together certain continuous lines of railways, but the creation of huge trunk systems had not yet taken place.

How far our industrial era is removed from that of fifty years ago is apparent when we recall that the proposed capitalization of $15,000,000, caused by the merging of the Boston and Worcester and the Western railroads, was widely denounced as "monstrous" and as a corrupting force that would destroy our Republican institutions.

Naturally this small-scale ownership was reflected in the distribution of wealth.

The "swollen fortunes" of that period rested upon the same foundation that had given stability for centuries to the aristocracies of Europe.