September 24, 1869. Black Friday. On Wall Street, men throw themselves from windows as the gold market collapses. Fortunes vanish between breakfast and lunch. One broker shoots himself at his desk.
But in Cleveland, a thirty-year-old accountant reads the telegraph dispatches with an expression his partners would later describe as "satisfied." While others panic, John D. Rockefeller sees opportunity.
Within forty years, that accountant would control 91% of American oil refining. His Standard Oil Trust became the template for monopoly power—and the target of the greatest antitrust case in American history.
This episode traces how a man who never raised his voice systematically destroyed thousands of competitors. The Cleveland Massacre of 1872. The railroad rebates that made competition impossible. Mrs. Backus, who refused to sell her refinery until she had no choice. George Rice, who fought for twenty years and lost everything.
And Ida Tarbell, the journalist whose father was ruined by Standard Oil, who spent five years documenting the methods that built the greatest fortune in American history.
In 1911, the Supreme Court ordered Standard Oil broken into thirty-four pieces. The octopus was dismembered.
In 1999, Exxon and Mobil—two of those pieces—merged back together.
The octopus was cut into pieces. The pieces grew into octopuses. And the cycle continues.
When does strength become tyranny? When does efficiency become domination?
The ledger has two columns. Someone else is keeping the books.