John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller was the founder of Standard Oil and the central figure in the book’s account of how competitive markets in the United States gave way to powerful trusts in the late nineteenth century. Standard Oil’s rapid consolidation of the oil business made Rockefeller extraordinarily wealthy, but it also exposed the limits of markets without safeguards: a firm could suppress rivals, concentrate economic power, and acquire influence over politics. The resistance to that concentration—through farmer-led movements, federal regulation, and investigative journalism—became a test of whether inclusive political institutions could defend inclusive markets.

Building Standard Oil

Rockefeller started Standard Oil in 1870. The company quickly eliminated rivals in Cleveland and sought control of the transportation and retailing of oil and oil products. By 1882, it had become a massive monopoly, known in the language of the day as a trust. In 1890, Standard Oil controlled 88 percent of refined oil flows in the United States.

That dominance brought Rockefeller a fortune on an unprecedented scale: he became the world’s first billionaire in 1916. The book contrasts this accumulation with the earlier competitive character of markets in much of the northern and midwestern United States. Across the 1890s, large trusts spread through sector after sector, often controlling more than 70 percent of their markets; wealth inequality rose as competition yielded to monopoly.

Monopoly and Political Power

Standard Oil represented more than success in business. Its ability to eliminate competitors and dominate the movement and sale of oil showed how a market could cease to offer a level playing field. When powerful firms blocked rivals and new technologies from entering on equal terms, market activity alone did not guarantee inclusive economic institutions.

The company’s reach also became a symbol of political influence. Contemporary cartoons pictured Standard Oil as an octopus whose tentacles wrapped around both the oil industry and Capitol Hill. The image made visible the book’s central concern: economic concentration could become political power, allowing a few firms to shape the rules that governed them.

Organizing Against the Trusts

Opposition to monopoly developed through collective action as well as government. The Populist movement arose amid a prolonged agrarian crisis in the Midwest, where farmers objected to unfair and discriminatory business practices. Founded in 1867, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry mobilized farmers; in 1873 and 1874, Grangers won control of eleven Midwestern state legislatures. Rural discontent later helped produce the People’s Party, which received 8.5 percent of the popular vote in the 1892 presidential election.

In subsequent elections, Populists supported the unsuccessful Democratic campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, who adopted many of their issues. This grassroots organizing sought to counter the influence Rockefeller and other business magnates exerted over national politics. Farmers also pressed for formal regulation: nearly all of the fifty-nine petitions concerning trusts submitted to Congress before the Sherman Antitrust Act came from farming states and organizations, including the Farmers’ Alliance.

Regulation and Public Scrutiny

The political response began to take legislative form with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which created the Interstate Commerce Commission and initiated federal regulation of industry. The Sherman Antitrust Act followed in 1890, establishing a basis for attacks on trusts. Under Theodore Roosevelt, federal action intensified: in 1902, he used the Sherman Act to break up the Northern Securities Company, affecting the interests of J.P. Morgan, and later suits targeted Standard Oil, Du Pont, and the American Tobacco Company. Roosevelt also strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission through the Hepburn Act of 1906, expanding its authority and allowing it to inspect railway financial accounts. Under his successor, William Taft, the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911 marked a high point of trust prosecution.

Investigative journalists helped turn corporate power into a matter of public knowledge. Ida Tarbell’s 1904 book, History of the Standard Oil Company, played a key role in shifting public opinion against Rockefeller and his business interests, culminating in the company’s breakup. The book presents this reporting as part of a wider institutional check: where political institutions protected a free media, journalists could expose abuses and help broad segments of society resist threats to inclusive economic and political life.