John D. Rockefeller: How the Standard Oil Breakup Made Him Richer

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In 1911 the Supreme Court ordered Standard Oil broken into 39 companies, a punishment meant to end the most notorious monopoly in American history. Instead it doubled John D. Rockefeller's fortune and left him the wealthiest person on earth. This episode traces how that happened, beginning in the chaotic oil boom of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Rockefeller ignored the gamble of drilling and focused on refining and transport, the toll booth every barrel had to pass through.

The turning point came in 1868, when he promised the Lake Shore Railroad 60 carloads of oil a day and won a rate of one cent per gallon, a 71 percent discount that rivals could never match. From there the story moves through the conquest of Cleveland, the secret South Improvement Company and its drawbacks, the 1882 Standard Oil Trust run by nine trustees, and the reporting of Ida Tarbell that turned the public against him. It closes on a hard question: do antitrust laws dismantle power or only rearrange it?

• Rockefeller's 1868 railroad deal guaranteed 60 carloads a day and handled all loading himself, cutting his shipping costs 71 percent below competitors.
• Between 1865 and 1870 the price of refined kerosene fell from 58 cents a gallon to 26 cents, which made him popular with ordinary consumers even as independent oilmen despised him.
• Under the South Improvement Company scheme of 1872, Standard Oil would have collected drawbacks, cash payments on the oil its own competitors shipped. In less than two months he absorbed or destroyed nearly all his Cleveland rivals.
• The Standard Oil Trust of January 1882 pooled the securities of 40 companies under nine trustees to slip past state ownership laws, and was valued at 70 million dollars at its creation.
• After the 1911 breakup Rockefeller held a quarter of the shares in each of the 39 new companies, and once the fear of government action lifted, their combined value doubled.