In 1850, Wells and Company, Livingston and Company, and Butterfield,
Wasson and Company so far violated the contemporaneously sacrosanct
belief in the greater efficiency of the competitive system and the
contemporaneously pseudo-religious authority of the whole principle of
competition as to combine into one large corporation, the American
Express Company. Later, Wells, Fargo and Company organized as a joint
stock company with a capital of $300,000. The year 1854 saw the
consolidation of Adams and Company, Harnden and Company, Thompson and
Company, and Kingsley and Company into the Adams Express Company, and in
the same year the United States Express Company was organized. The
origin of the Southern Express Company dates from 1886--it is controlled
by and is recognized as a part of the Adams Express Company. These four
express companies continued through the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth as the four great branches of the express service system of
the United States. It is true that there existed by their side a number
of other companies, but the latter were subsidiary, local and
comparatively unimportant. The fields of activities of these four great
national systems were as follows: _Adams-Southern_--the East, middle
West, and several western routes, and the South; _American_--the East,
middle West and trans-Mississippi; _United States_--the East outside of
New England and the middle West, with several western routes; and
_Wells-Fargo_--the far West and the Southwest, with several eastern
routes. But there have long been complete understanding and gentlemen's
agreements among the separate companies; and for practical purposes they
formed, not four units of competition for the express business of the
country, but four branches of one organization. Several Canadian
companies also do business in the United States.