Читать книгу Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells – Our Ride to the Renewable Future - Amanda Little - Страница 15

The wildcatters and Standard Oil were on a collision course, and the battle between them would be fought in the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court. This struggle would transform the diverse, chaotic oil business into the modern contours we know today as Chevron, Exxon, and other industry leaders. Howls of protest from independent oil companies against Standard Oil grew louder as the behemoth grew in might. The independents argued that Standard was blocking competition and controlling prices with cutthroat tactics that forced them to sell out. President Theodore Roosevelt allied himself with these independent companies, publicly denouncing Rockefeller and his colleagues as morally corrupt: “The methods by which the Standard Oil people…have achieved great fortunes,” he argued, “can only be justified by the advocacy of a system of morality which can also justify every form of…violence, corruption and fraud, from murder to bribery and ballot-box stuffing in politics.”

Roosevelt’s administration launched an investigation into Standard Oil’s business practices on the grounds that it was violating the Sherman Antitrust Act—a federal statute outlawing corporate monopolies or trusts. A trust is a megacompany that aggregates an array of smaller companies, controlling them under a single leadership. The law, still in force today, forbids such conglomerates on the grounds that they can stifle competition, innovation, and economic progress, hurting small businesses and disadvantaging consumers.

This conflict between Capitol Hill and Standard Oil trust escalated into a public spectacle that was equal parts Watergate and The Magnificent Seven, and the public lined up for ringside seats. “[It] became a kind of morality play for any individual who felt threatened by the new industrial order; a kind of commercial equivalent to the Western, as the last glimpse of a heroic age,” wrote historian Anthony Sampson. “The trust-busters saw themselves as defending the very core of democracy.”

Rockefeller was characteristically unfazed by the investigation, and cast the charges against his company as a challenge to the nation’s economic structure as a whole: “It must in good time be perceived by all that the centralized corporation is a necessity of progress. There has been substantial basis for popular suspicion…but it is poor logic to find against the whole idea of corporations because of these few failures.”

The Justice Department sued Standard Oil for antitrust violations in 1909 and, after 444 witnesses gave testimony, the company was found guilty; Rockefeller and his executives were slapped with the maximum penalty. The gray eminence himself was playing golf when news of the decision reached him. He read the messengered letter, slid it into his pocket, and said stonily, “Well, gentlemen, shall we proceed?” When his colleagues pressed him, he disclosed the damage: a $29 million fine ($638 million in today’s dollars). Standard appealed the decision, and the case went to the Supreme Court. On a sunny day in May 1911, the Supreme Court upheld the earlier verdict and ordered the monopoly to splinter into more than a dozen independent companies.

“This was an extraordinary task,” Yergin explained to me. “Here you had a company that spanned every state in the Union, operated in multiple countries, refined more than three-quarters of America’s oil, exported four-fifths of its kerosene, sold the railroads nearly all of their lubricating oil, and had a massive transportation business. How are you going to divide that up?” Standard’s executives decided to split up regionally. The largest of its subsidiaries was Standard Oil of New Jersey, which acquired Spindletop-born Humble Oil and later became Exxon. Standard Oil of California later became Chevron, subsequently merging with Buckskin Joe’s Texaco. Standard Oil of New York later became Mobil. Standard Oil of Ohio later became part of BP. Standard Oil of Indiana became Amoco. These subsidiaries eventually comprised six of the legendary “Seven Sisters” that dominated global oil production throughout the twentieth century.

As these spin-off companies competed to produce oil products better, faster, more cheaply, and more efficiently, they pushed each other to innovate. Mobil, for instance, developed a breakthrough method for refining oil into gasoline, which increased by 45 percent the amount of product it could get for every barrel of crude. By 1917, the profits of the spin-off companies had collectively shot up to double, then triple the profits of Standard Oil before the dissolution. Rockefeller, in turn, had nearly quadrupled his wealth and become the richest man in the world.