The monopoly so created assures enormous profits, and leads to the formation of combined units of production of a formidable magnitude. The famous American petrol trust, the Standard Oil Company, was founded in 1900: "Its capital amounted to 150 million dollars. It issued 100,000,000 ordinary shares and 106,000,000 preference shares. These latter earned successively from 1900 to 1907, the following dividends: 48, 48, 45, 44, 36, 40, 40, 40 per cent., i..e, in all 341,000,000 dollars. From 1900 to 1907, the Standard Oil Company realised 889,000,000 dollars profits, of which 606,000,000 dollars were distributed in dividends, and the rest went to swell the reserve capital."8 "In all the different enterprises of the steel trust (the United States Steel Corporation) of the United States, in 1907, there were employed no less than 210,180 workmen and other employees. The most important firm of the German mining industry, the Mining Federation of Gelsenkirchen (Gelsenkirchner Bergwerksgesellschaft) employed, in 1908, 46,000 wage earners."9 In 1902, the American steel trust produced 9,000,000 tons of steel in one year.10 Its production constituted in 1901, 66.3 per cent., and in 1903, 56.1 per cent. of that of the whole of the United States.11 Its extraction of mineral ore grew from 43.3 per cent. to 46.3 per cent. in the course of the same years.
The report of the American government commission on trusts said: "Their superiority over their competitors finds its cause in the enormous dimensions of their enterprises and in their remarkable technical efficiency. Since its inception, the tobacco trust has devoted all its efforts to the substitution
