Unsure how to prevent a complete collapse,

the stock exchange shuts down

and stays closed for ten straight days.

The Panic of 1873 triggered

the first full-blown national depression,

and nobody quite knew what to do about it.

For the first time,

large-- very large-- numbers of American workers were without jobs.

Workers got laid off, but the owners,

they still lived in the style that they were accustomed to.

But no one was shedding any tears for John D. Rockefeller.

People were saving their tears for themselves,

when they found themselves out of work,

out of their homes, out of food, out of hope.

While many of the biggest companies

in the country struggle to survive,

Rockefeller sees opportunity,

his belief in the survival of the fittest kicking in.

As his competition collapses,

Rockefeller picks them off,

buying out bankrupt oil companies for next to nothing.

I find that I do better in bad markets.

I buy things in bad markets.

And, you can't do that in a great economy.

You can't buy it.

Either you're gonna buy it very expensively

or not be able to buy it at all.

So there's a lot of opportunity, I find, in the bad times.

By the time the depression is through,

Rockefeller has created the largest corporate empire in America.

He was playing the game of industry,

and he was simply better at it than everybody else.

He saw the industrial marketplace

as a place for the survival of the fittest,

and he was fitter than anybody else,

therefore he survived.

Not only that, therefore he deserved to survive,

and they didn't.