Standard Oil
A company so large the law had to invent something new
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A monopoly is when one company controls a market so completely that it can set the price itself, and Standard Oil is the case that put the term into law. The breakup is the origin of modern competition law, and the successors still exist as Exxon, Chevron and Mobil. Investigative journalism was decisive: Ida Tarbell's series of 1902–04, built on the company's own documents, has become a founding example of what the press can accomplish. Rockefeller became richer from the breakup than he had been before it, because the parts together rose in value.
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John D. Rockefeller built a company controlling almost all oil refining in the United States. It grew so powerful that Congress passed new laws against monopolies, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it broken into 34 pieces.
Sources
- Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904)
- Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911)
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