Ledger entry
Standard Oil Order, Monopoly, and the Machine to Break It
A week on this page, with a shorter path. Open any tab. Tap a held card. Weigh stays optional.
8 verified of 8 long quotations
Standard Oil week · held papers
One week on this entry
This is a week on this entry. A parent can run Monday–Friday at the table from the held cards. High school is the default height. The shorter path stays on the named sentences and skips the marked contract page. It is not a school year.
Held papers, Monday through Friday. When we don't hold the page, the card says so.
Hunt · do we hold this?
The artifact is the held card. Open Rockefeller, 1909, or the Sherman Act. Fun is do-we-hold-this.
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Monday The oil trade, in his words
Read “The Light.” Open the Rockefeller card. Find the line about individual competition already quoted at the top of this entry. Then find the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. At the table: what does he say happened to the price?
Open Rockefeller, 1909. Find the butcher and the baker. Find the word oil. If a card is not held, stop.
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Tuesday Rebates and a drawback
Read “The Machine.” Open Rockefeller and find the rebate sentence. Open Tarbell and find the drawback on every barrel his rivals shipped. A parent can skip the marked contract page. At the table: what does he admit, and what does she add?
Open Rockefeller. Find the word rebates. Then open Tarbell and find drawback. Stay on the cards we hold.
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Wednesday Ninety per cent.
Read “The Muckraker.” Open Tarbell. Find the ninety per cent. sentence already quoted here, then the loaded-dice sentence. At the table: which words are hers in 1904, and which later line does this entry leave as a citation?
Open Tarbell. Find ninety per cent. If the card is not held, stop.
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Thursday The statute on the page
Read “The Law.” Open the Sherman Act. Find the sentence that begins “Every contract.” At the table: which words does the act make illegal?
Open the Sherman Act. Find the words restraint of trade. Stay on the card we hold.
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Friday Thirty-seven companies
Read “The Court,” then “What We Learned” if you want the takeaway. Open the 1911 opinion. Find thirty-seven subsidiary companies. At the table: what does the Court tell New Jersey it may not do? Weigh stays optional. Nothing is scored.
Read “The Court” if you want. Open the 1911 card. Find thirty-seven. Weigh is optional. Nothing is scored.
Weigh stays optional. Nothing is scored. The Hepburn card is a citation until we hold a clean official page.
What the evidence strongly supports.
What was achieved
The company was built, and the statute reached it. Rockefeller wrote that individual competition in large affairs was past. Tarbell put the drawback and the ninety per cent. on the page. In 1911 the Court stopped New Jersey from voting the stock of thirty-seven subsidiaries.
What it cost
The record we hold stops short of the later story. We do not hold the Hepburn transcript or a later tally of Rockefeller's fortune. The 1911 page does not name a billionaire. Twenty-one years passed between the Sherman Act and this decree.
Both columns are drawn from the same documents. Neither is our characterisation.
The words, laws and letters from the time.
Every long quotation carries where it came from. Open a verified one to see the passage it sits in — or open the source card.
“The day of individual competition in large affairs is past and gone”John D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, 1909Verifiedchecked against the document
See it where it is written
…rm of partnership. It is equally true that combinations of capital are bound to continue and to grow, and this need not alarm even the most timid if the corporation, or the series of corporations, is properly conducted with due regard for the rights of others. The day of individual competition in large affairs is past and gone —you might just as well argue that we should go back to hand labour and throw away our efficient machines—and the sober good sense of the people will accept this fact when they have studied and tried it out. Just see how [66] the list of stockholders in the gr…
“Naturally, all sorts of people went into it: the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker began to refine oil”Random Reminiscences of Men and EventsVerifiedchecked against the document
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…orty years until, at the age of about fifty-six, I retired. The story of the early history of the oil trade is too well known to bear repeating in detail. The cleansing of crude petroleum was a simple and easy process, and at first the profits were very large. Naturally, all sorts of people went into it: the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker began to refine oil , and it was only a short time before more of the [82] finished product was put on the market than could possibly be consumed. The price went down and down until the trade was threatened with ruin. It seemed absolutely necessary to extend the market for oil by…
“The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, of which I was president, did receive rebates from the railroads prior to 1880, but received no advantages for which it did not give full compensation.”Random Reminiscences of Men and EventsVerifiedchecked against the document
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…ndard certificates, as we suggested she should do. THE QUESTION OF REBATES Of all the subjects which seem to have attracted the attention of the public to the affairs of the Standard Oil Company, the matter of rebates from railroads has perhaps been uppermost. The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, of which I was president, did receive rebates from the railroads prior to 1880, but received no advantages for which it did not give full compensation . The reason for rebates [108] was that such was the railroads' method of business. A public rate was made and collected by the railroad companies, but, so far as my knowledge extends, was seldom retained in full; a portion of it was repaid to the shippers as …
“He also had a drawback on every barrel his rivals shipped.”The History of the Standard Oil CompanyVerifiedchecked against the document
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… railroad should allow no rebate to any other shipper unless that shipper could guarantee and furnish a quantity of oil for shipment which would, after deduction of his commission, realise to the road the same amount of profit realised from the Standard trade. He also had a drawback on every barrel his rivals shipped . No clause in the South Improvement Company’s contract with railroads had given more offence to the oil world than that which called for a drawback to the company on the oil shipped by outsiders. It will be remembered that the beneficiaries of this contract w…
“It manufactured fully ninety per cent. of this product, and aimed to manufacture 100 per cent.”The History of the Standard Oil CompanyVerifiedchecked against the document
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…ith the Tidewater’s story in mind, would be bold enough to attempt to reach the sea? For the time being, then, the Standard Oil Company had things all its own way. It collected with its ally, the Tidewater, practically the entire output of a great raw product. It manufactured fully ninety per cent. of this product, and aimed to manufacture 100 per cent . It was a common carrier, and so obliged to deliver oil to rival refineries if they called for it, but these refineries paid forty or forty-five cents for a service which cost the Standard Oil Trust not over one-fourth of the sum. Mr. Rockefeller had every re…
“Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair.”The History of the Standard Oil CompanyVerifiedchecked against the document
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…exclude men by all the codes from the rank of gentlemen, just as such practices would exclude men from the sporting world or athletic field. There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field where men must not start fair. Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair . Business played in this way loses all its sportsmanlike qualities. It is fit only for tricksters. The effects on the very men who fight these methods on the ground that they are ethically wrong are deplorable. Brought into competition with the trust, badgere…
“Every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- wise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.”Sherman Antitrust ActVerifiedchecked against the document
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…y of December, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine. An act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled , Sec. 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- wise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal . Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceedin…
“The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was enjoined from voting the stocks or exerting any control over the said thirty-seven subsidiary companies”Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United StatesVerifiedchecked against the document
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…ombination found to exist. 3 29 The bill was dismissed as to all other corporate defendants, thirty-three in number, it being adjudged by § 3 of the decree that they 'have not been proved to be engaged in the operation or carrying out of the combination.' 4 30 The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was enjoined from voting the stocks or exerting any control over the said thirty-seven subsidiary companies , and the subsidiary companies were enjoined from paying any dividends as to the Standard Company, or permitting it to exercise any control over them by virtue of the stock ownership or power acquired by means of the combination. The individuals and corporatio…
Primary sources named in this entry — tap to open
Where the record disagrees.
What we could not check.
Of 8 long quotations in this entry, 8 were located in a document we hold. The rest are listed here rather than left to look the same as the ones we could check.
- Every long quotation in this entry was located in a document we hold.
Where the record stops, we stop. “Complete” is not a status we use.
Read the full record.
Underlined sources and quotations open a card — held text, restricted, or not held yet.
The Light
Start with the oil trade as Rockefeller told it in 1909. Crude was easy to clean, he wrote, and at first the profits were large. Then too many people refined more than anyone would buy. The price fell. The trade, he said, was threatened with ruin.
He and his partners bought the largest refineries they could and tried to run them from one office. A sentence often given to him — that the day of combination is here to stay, and individualism has gone — is cited from a later biography we do not hold. The 1909 book is the page we can open. He also wrote there about the University of Chicago. He did not put a total on his gifts in that book, so we do not print one.
The Machine
Standard's edge was not only the still. It was the railroad rate.
Rockefeller did not deny the rebates:
Ida Tarbell, working from contracts and testimony, described the other half of the bargain. After 1877, she wrote, he had a rebate on every barrel he shipped.
A parent can skip from here to The Muckraker. The next paragraph names the South Improvement contracts in dollars. A younger reader can leave it unread and still follow the week.
In 1872 the South Improvement Company, Tarbell wrote, shipped its own oil about a dollar a barrel cheaper than anyone else, and took a dollar a barrel on oil its competitors moved. New York's Hepburn Committee took testimony on railroad rebates in 1879. We do not yet hold a clean official page of that report, so the card stays a citation.
The Muckraker
Tarbell's father had been in oil. She spent years on court records and company paper, first in McClure's, then in the 1904 book we hold. A 1939 sentence of hers about fair play is still under copyright, so it stays a citation. The book we hold says:
She also wrote:
The Law
Congress had already written a tool, in 1890:
The act sat for years before this case used it.
The Court
In 1911 the Supreme Court kept the lower court's finding. It commanded the dissolution of the combination, and it sent the stock of the pieces back to the stockholders.
Later writers count the pieces differently, and later trade names are not on this page. The opinion we hold says thirty-seven subsidiaries.
What We Learned
The honest ledger:
✅ The company was built, and the statute reached it. Rockefeller wrote that individual competition in large affairs was past. Tarbell put the drawback and the ninety per cent. on the page. In 1911 the Court stopped New Jersey from voting the stock of thirty-seven subsidiaries.
❌ The record we hold stops short of the later story. We do not hold the Hepburn transcript or a later tally of Rockefeller's fortune. The 1911 page does not name a billionaire. Twenty-one years passed between the Sherman Act and this decree.
The takeaway: Here are the documents. You decide what the rebate, the statute, and the thirty-seven companies add up to.
Further Reading — Primary Sources: Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909) · Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) · Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) · Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911) · Hepburn Committee testimony (1879). Books: Titan — Ron Chernow · The Prize — Daniel Yergin. Next Chapter: The Civil Rights Movement — The Promise Redeemed (1896–1965).
Weigh it — only if you want to.
Nothing here is scored. You can read the whole entry without touching this.
There is no correct answer. The ledger counts both sides; the weighing is yours.
The takeaway
Here are the documents. You decide what the rebate, the statute, and the thirty-seven companies add up to.
The curator button follows you. He answers only from this ledger and the sources behind it — and stops when he can’t cite.