In the United States, where the growth is most clearly marked, the Standard Oil Trust forms the leading example of a successful Trust.

In 1881, this Standard Oil Company having maintained for some ten years tolerably close informal relations with its leading competitors in the Eastern States, and having crushed out the smaller companies, entered into a close arrangement with the remaining competitors, with the view of a practical consolidation of the businesses into one, though the formal identity of the several firms was still maintained.

The various companies which entered into this union, comprising nearly all the chief oil-mills, submitted their businesses to valuation, and placed themselves in the hands of a board of trustees, with an absolute power to regulate the quantity of production, and if necessary to close mills, to raise and lower prices, and to work the whole number as a joint concern.

Each company gave up its shares to the Trust, receiving notes of acknowledgment for the worth of the shares, and the total profits were to be divided as dividend each half-year.

This Trust has continued to exist, and has now a practical monopoly of the oil trade in America, controlling, it is reckoned, more than 90 per cent.