The History of the Standard Oil Company: Briefer Version

This book is over 800 pages, starting from the early U.S. oil companies competing with one another in an 1890's style industrial struggle. It has detail. If you like hard data this is the source. Daunted by the size of this tome? read the last three chapters first. "The Price of Oil", "The legitimate Greatness of The Company" and "The Conclusion": these three chapters will put the present day in a new light for you. The Caspian Sea was an oil field before the Bolschevik Revolution. At that time czarist Russia was a world contender. Now Caspian Sea oil has been "rediscovered". What was the Burma oil co.? What were the yearly production figures? what were the various allocations of oil use? What role were other countries playing? This is the place to find it.

This is a wonderful account of the beginnings of the Standard Oil Company - from the perspective of one of the premier muckracker's of the 19th century. The book is mainly a series of articles strung together detailing some of the more illegal efforts of John D. Rockefeller to create a monopoly in the oil industry. It is a classic account of how to create a monopoly and has stories that involve everything from dynamiting the competition to innovative rebate plans that discourage competition..