1. Standard Oil’s Capitalist Ventures

2. John D. Rockefeller Born In Richford, New York on July 8, 1839
Largest shareholder in the Standard Oil Company
Estimated net worth of around $374 Billion USD (adjusted for inflation) in 1937 at the time of his death

3. Standard Oil as a company:
Founded in 1890 by John D. Rockefeller in Cleveland, Ohio.
By 1890, they controlled over 90 percent of the refined oil industry in the united states.
After the breakup of Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller would become one of the richest men in the world due to his large stake in the company before the breakup
Maintained control over their competition at the start by taking in part in a formation of a cartel with the rail works to ensure the treatment of Standard as a preferential “High volume shipper”

4. Standard Oil’s rise to a monopoly:
In less than four months in 1872, Rockefeller and his company managed to control 22 out of the 26 oil companies in Cleveland.
The company expanded through vertical and horizontal integration, meaning that not only did they buy out competitors but Standard controlled and owned the entirety of their production process.
The company used bullying like tactics to its competitors to pressure them to be bought out by Standard. The Charles Pratt and Company would go on to be acquired by Standard, with this company being a major competitor at the time. Rockefeller told Pratt that if he refused his offer of acquisition he would “run them into bankruptcy and then cheaply buy up their assets at auction”

6. Standard’s transition into a trust
In 1882 Rockefeller faced a problem, legislation prevented companies that were incorporated in one state to be operated in another. To get around this Rockefeller lawyers used a new innovative way to incorporate all of their holdings into one company using a “Trust”. This meant that nine people who were the “trustees” were in charge of 41 individual companies
After Standard Oil was made a trust, they appeared to be so powerful that they always seemed to prevail against competitors, critics and their political enemies. It was, at the time, the most powerful and feared business in the world.

7. Standard’s Involvement with Anti-Trust:
In 1880 the New York World stated, that Standard Oil was ‘the most cruel, impudent, pitiless and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country”.
A key document that led to Standard’s eventual breaking up as a company was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which was written to make monopolization and anti-competitive behaviour inside business’s illegal.
A key figure in the battle against Standard Oil and Rockefeller was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt during his ascent to presidency initiated dozens of lawsuits under the Sherman Anti- Trust Act.

8. Standard Oil’s Breakup:
After years of holding the Oil industry in a tight fisted grip, the supreme court finally ruled in that Standard’s business practices were breaching the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. They ruled that the company should broken up into 34 new companies.
Rockefeller actually made money of the breakup. Since Rockefeller owned 25% of Standard at the time of the breakup he received a proportion of shares in the new founded companies. In the 10 years after the break up of Standard it is reported that Rockefeller’s networth rose to $900 million.