Standard Oil an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section II. It ordered Standard to break up into 34 independent companies with different boards of directors, the biggest two of the companies were Standard Oil of New Jersey (which became Exxon) and Standard Oil of New York (which became Mobil). Standard's president, John D. Rockefeller, had long since retired from any management role. But, as he owned a quarter of the shares of the resultant companies, and those share values mostly doubled, he emerged from the dissolution as the richest man in the world. The dissolution had actually propelled Rockefeller's personal
The History of the Standard Oil Company of Standard Oil's unfair and business strategies of questionable legality. One review from the "Economic Journal" fixated on the monumental nature of Tarbell's work, stating that "it is difficult to write about Miss Tarbell's remarkable achievement without using language approaching the edge of hyperbole. So careful is she in her facts, so sane in her judgements, that she seems to have reached the high-water mark of industrial history." Though Standard Oil Company accrued more cumulative value after it was broken up, the exposure of immoral and illegal business practices at the hands of Ida Tarbell became a striking symbol of