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A Monopoly Isn’t the Same as Legitimate Greatness
Competent monopolists aren’t good monopolists
If you do much reading about antitrust, you’re sure to come across Ida Tarbell, the campaigning investigative journalist whose masterful 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company (free ebook, free audiobook), brought down John D. Rockefeller and his monopolistic Standard Oil Company, which was broken up in 1911. It split into seven companies, many of which are still with us—or were, until recent mergers (think: Exxon, Mobil, Esso, Chevron, Texaco, and Amoco).
After repeatedly reading about Tarbell’s remarkable work, I decided I should read it for myself. I’d just finished Amy Klobuchar’s somewhat overlong Antitrust (do yourself a favor and skip it, trying either Zephyr Teachout’s Break ’Em Up or David Dayen’s Monopolized for a more disciplined and invigorating read, though if you see a copy of Antitrust in a bookstore, do peruse its excellent selection of trustbuster-era editorial cartoons) and decided it was past time for me to read Tarbell’s work.
It’s a fantastic book. Tarbell was a sprightly writer with a talent for understatement as she unraveled the grifts of Rockefeller and his cronies, which makes her conclusions all the more devastating. Tarbell was a self-trained writer — she came from a political family and grew up watching her father and his friends in the Pennsylvania oil fields get crushed by Rockefeller’s dirty tricks — and had a gift for speaking and organizing. She toured the nation with her book, speaking out against monopolies and building momentum for a political attack on the richest, most powerful man the world and his cronies.
Tarbell’s work has real applicability today. Her account of Rockefeller’s tactics to corner the world’s energy supply has infinite parallels to today’s tech robber barons. Equally important is the context of her work: Tarbell was self-trained and made no pretense about objectivity. She was a campaigner…
