Monopolies in Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Monopolies in Industry - Essay Example Rockefeller (American industrialist)-Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia, n.d). Originally, this Trust was made to bring cash in through the conversion from whale oil to kerosene. However, with the emergence of the automobile use, gasoline was the by-product that brought immense wealth to this industrial group. By 1890, the Standard Oil already controlled almost 90 percent of America’s oil industry with little competition remaining. Rockefeller took this opportunity to set prices arbitrarily, leaving consumers with no choice but to pay for the set price (The Standard Oil monopoly, by the Linux Information Project." The Linux Information Project (LINFO) Home Page, n.d). Aside from the dreary effects that consumers had to live with, this went on too far as it did not only had many people’s businesses or jobs taken away from them because of the elimination of competition and the ruthless predatory tactics of the trusts but at the same time it was a business that used extensive fraud, political corruption, and physical violence to maintain its monopoly (A History Of U.S. Monopolies." Investopedia – The Web’s Largest Investing Resource, n.d). Thus, the U.S Department of Justice took on several efforts to break the monopoly. Some of which would be the enactment of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that sought to limit monopolies and cartels. This act gave the government the power to shatter big companies into smaller pieces that would benefit not only one company or a group of people but the general public. However, this act only gave birth to the formation of domestic monopolies and was then used to differentiate between good and bad monopolies as seen by the government. In response to this, the Clayton Act was introduced that served as guidelines to whether mergers and acquisitions that were unavoidable should be allowed if they substantially lessened the competition in the market monopoly (A History