Standard Oil Monopoly Analysis

Words: 570
Pages: 3

During the 1800s, American businesses were booming. Inventions and innovations were coming up left and right, and there were many new fields arising as well. Steel production became more efficient, oil was able to be refined, and Thomas Edison was making several inventions. Businesses were ever expanding and had few things obstructing them. While business was reaching a new high, the costs associated with this new level also increased. Factories often required lots of workers, who would usually work in poor conditions. Small companies were being run out of business. Monopolies were being put in place. When monopolies started coming into place, there were questions being raised. Some of these questions involved whether the government should step in and break up these monopolies. Were the government to break up these monopolies, that would include breaking up the monopoly of Standard Oil, a major U.S. company. Due to the actions big companies committed towards others, the U.S. government should break up the monopolies like those created by …show more content…
government should have broken apart this monopoly. According to a statement written by George Rice, a competitor of Standard Oil, the Standard Oil trust was guilty of tampering with the freight companies to favor Standard Oil. In addition Rockefeller, the main person behind Standard Oil, held a sizeable portion of the nation’s wealth. Only 500 people held most of the nation’s wealth (130 billion dollars) at this time. As a counter to this argument, Rockefeller suggested that big business is not truly guilty of anything except employing good business tactics. Rockefeller even said that they did not hesitate to invest millions on methods to cheapen the distribution of oil. While Rockefeller’s trust was diversifying their options for distribution, this did not mean they were not holding a monopoly, as Rice stated that his company could not flourish due to the poor freight