Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporation: Executive-Corporate Cooperation and the Advancement of the Regulatory State

Murphey, William H.

doi:10.1080/14664658.2013.774983

American Nineteenth Century History

2013

DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2013.774983

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Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporation: Executive-Corporate Cooperation and the Advancement of the Regulatory State

William H. Murphey

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2019

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Cited by 2 publications

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“…137 The report demonstrated Standard's monopolistic practices, its abuse of the hydrometer gauge, price discrimination, pipeline dominance, and use of freight discrimination. 138 The report made a difference in two ways. First it pushed through Congress the Hepburn Act, which dramatically augmented the regulatory powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission over railroads and effectively put to an end the long practice of discriminatory freight deals.…”

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Roosevelt's Populism: The Kansas Oil War of 1905 and the Making of Corporate Capitalism

Williams

2019

J. gilded age prog. era

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The map of the American petroleum industry shifted rapidly from the Northeast to the Southwest at the turn of the twentieth century when spectacular gushers were struck first in Texas and soon in California, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The flood of small and mid-size oil producers broke the hold that the Standard Oil Company had for decades held on the industry. Competition defeated monopoly. Or so the conventional story goes. This article offers a more complicated narrative by focusing on conflicts between Standard Oil and independent producers in the booming towns of southeast Kansas in 1904 and 1905. In those years, John D. Rockefeller's firm established a monopoly through technologies of distribution and distillation and the production of scientific knowledge and opaque classifications of commodities. Oil producers revolted. A reform movement turned to the rhetoric and policy ideas of Populism as it sought to use state power to challenge the stranglehold of the “octopus.” This article explores the previously unrecognized significance of this movement by showing how the Kansas oil war contributed to the breakup of Standard Oil by the Supreme Court in 1911 and constituted one of the bottom-up sources for the reconstruction of American capitalism.

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Roosevelt's Populism: The Kansas Oil War of 1905 and the Making of Corporate Capitalism

Williams

2019

J. gilded age prog. era

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The Problem of Bigness: From Standard Oil to Google

Lamoreaux

2019

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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This article sets recent expressions of alarm about the monopoly power of technology giants such as Google and Amazon in the long history of Americans’ response to big business. I argue that we cannot understand that history unless we realize that Americans have always been concerned about the political and economic dangers of bigness, not just the threat of high prices. The problem policymakers faced after the rise of Standard Oil was how to protect society against those dangers without punishing firms that grew large because they were innovative. The antitrust regime put in place in the early twentieth century managed this balancing act by focusing on large firms’ conduct toward competitors and banning practices that were anticompetitive or exclusionary. Maintaining this balance was difficult, however, and it gave way over time—first to a preoccupation with market power during the post–World War II period, and then to a fixation on consumer welfare in the late twentieth century. Refocusing policy on large firms’ conduct would do much to address current fears about bigness without penalizing firms whose market power comes from innovation.

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Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporation: Executive-Corporate Cooperation and the Advancement of the Regulatory State

Cited by 2 publications

References 13 publications

Roosevelt's Populism: The Kansas Oil War of 1905 and the Making of Corporate Capitalism

Roosevelt's Populism: The Kansas Oil War of 1905 and the Making of Corporate Capitalism

The Problem of Bigness: From Standard Oil to Google

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