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THE CLEVELAND TIMES

Standard Oil Broken Up for Monopolistic Acts

What will happen to the millions of dollars Rockefeller has?

As of 1911, Standard Oil, one of the largest oil companies in all of the USA has been broken up for monopolistic acts, after various attacks by many, the biggest by Ida Tarbell, with her exposé of Standard Oil, The History of Standard Oil. In 1911, the Supreme Court of the United States said that Standard Oil, which by then still had a 64% market share, originated in illegal monopoly practices and ordered it to be broken up into 34 new companies. The Cleveland based company got split up into some companies like Sohio, Comoco, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, etc.

Although John D. Rockefeller, the master mind to the monopoly of Standard Oil, shed all of his policy involvement of Standard Oil in 1896, he still remained president, and kept his stock. Another push against Standard Oil was Ohio. Ohio made an anti-trust law, to rebel against the Standard Oil Trust, a way that Standard Oil to centralize their holdings

They had vigorous attack against Standard Oil. Eventually Standard Oil left Ohio. That led to other states that were victims of the Standard Oil monopoly and the Standard Oil Trust to start to pull out. Still though, despite what everyone else wanted, Standard Oil still owned 90% of kerosene producers.

At one of Standard Oil’s highest points, it owned 22 of 26 of all Cleveland refineries. It may have been that Standard’s success really brought attention to all the muckrakers, especially one, Ida Tarbell. Ida Tarbell says that she did not intend to make such a riot with Standard Oil. “I never had an animus against their size and wealth, never objected to their corporate form. I was willing that they should combine and grow as big and wealthy as they could, but only by legitimate means. But they had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.”* Ida Tarbell’s father was taken out of business by Standard Oil. Obviously Ida Tarbell didn’t expect to cause such a “problem” for Standard Oil, but she did. Some people, like Pratt and Rogers, entrepreneurs who got bought out by Standard Oil are more then likely happy with the break up of the monopolistic company.

*Quote by Ida Tarbell from wikipedia.org