The History of the Standard Oil Company is a book written by journalist Ida Tarbell in 1904. It was an exposé of the Standard Oil Company, run at that time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in America's history. Originally serialized in 19 parts in McClure's magazine, the book was a seminal example of muckraking, and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts, large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust law in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries.
The History of the Standard Oil Company was credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil, which came about in 1911, when the Supreme Court of the United States found the company to be violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. The subsequent decision splintered the company into 34 "baby Standards."
The original book was a two-volume hardcover set. An abridged paperback edition was released later.
Famous quotes containing the words history, standard and/or oil:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind’s faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which seemeth to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity—namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.”
—Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)
“No skilled hands
caress a stranger’s flesh with lucid oil before
a word is spoken
no feasting
before a tale is told, before
the stranger tells his name.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)