By mid-1863, twenty refineries operated in the Cleveland area and shipped a quarter of their kerosene abroad. At first, the profits came in so thick and fast that everybody—big and small, clever and inept—made handsome profits without the fierce winnowing of adversity, the stern lash of marketplace discipline. Rockefeller sarcastically alluded to these palmy days as “the harvest time in which such large profits were reaped by the saloonkeepers and preachers and tailors and men from all the walks of life who were fortunate enough to find an oil still.”6 Oil was put to myriad uses during the
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