Question

Think about what happened to Standard Oil.

Write a paragraph in which you explain whether or not you agree with the actions taken by the government to interfere with the growth of Standard Oil as a monopoly.

Use details from the lesson and reading.

Answer 1

I agree with the government’s decision to break up Standard Oil because, as the lesson and reading explain, Rockefeller’s company used anticompetitive tactics—secret railroad rebates, predatory pricing, and buyouts of rivals—to capture roughly 90% of U.S. oil refining and deliberately exclude competitors, which undermined free markets and harmed consumers and small businesses; after Ida Tarbell’s exposés and mounting public concern, the federal government used the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) to sue, and the Supreme Court’s 1911 ruling that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly and its ordered breakup into many companies corrected concentrated market power while restoring competition, something that better protected consumers and encouraged innovation (even if critics argue some economies of scale were lost).