Monopolies in America : Empire Builders and Their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates

368 Pages·2000·5.32 MB·English

by  Charles R. Geisst

MONOPOLIES
in
AMERICA
(cid:1)
books by charles r.geisst
Wall Street:A History
100Years ofWall Street
Exchange Rate Chaos:Twenty-five Years of
Finance and Consumer Democracy
Investment Banking in the Financial System
Entrepot Capitalism:Foreign Investment and
the American Dream in the Twentieth Century
Visionary Capitalism:Financial Markets and
the American Dream in the Twentieth Century
The Political Thought of John Milton
A Guide to Financial Institutions
A Guide to the Financial Markets
Raising International Capital:International Bond
Markets and the European Institutions
Financial Futures Markets
(cowritten with Brendan Brown)
MONOPOLIES
in
AMERICA
(cid:2)
Empire Builders and Their Enemies
from Jay Gould to Bill Gates
(cid:1)
charles r. geisst
1
2000
1
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires
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São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 2000 by Charles R.Geisst
Published by Oxford University Press,Inc.
198 Madison Avenue,New York,New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press,Inc.
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be
reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,
in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,
photocopying,recording,or otherwise,without the
prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Geisst,Charles R.
Monopolies in America : Empire builders and their enemies
from Jay Gould to Bill Gates / Charles R.Geisst.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-512301-8
1. Monopolies—United States—History.
2. Big business—United States—History. I. Title.
HD2757.2.G45 2000 338.8'2'0973—dc21 99-14340
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Meg,
a chip off the old writer’s block
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contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 The “Monopolist Menace” (1860–1890) 11
2 “Good”and “Bad”Trusts (1890–1920) 47
3 Looking the Other Way (1920–1930) 92
4 Collapsing Empires (1930–1940) 126
5 Concentrating on Fascism (1940–1953) 167
6 Déjà Vu (1954–1969) 203
7 Bearing Down (1970–1982) 247
8 Good-bye Antitrust (1983–1999) 282
Notes 321
Bibliography 333
Index 341
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preface
The history of monopolies in America is relatively short but
manages to encompass most of the important developments in industry,
Wall Street, and political thinking over the last 130 years. Within that
entire time,no one single history has ever been written touching upon the
constant tug-of-war that developed between Washington and corporate
America. Since the days of the nineteenth-century industrialists, bigness
in industry and the role of government in curbing it have added many col-
orful personalities and strong ideologues to the overarching debate about
the nature of the American experiment and the attempts at controlling
free market capitalism.Many of the original questions are still raised today
and have a strange aura of déjà vu surrounding them. In the immediate
post–Civil War years, concern over the spread of the railways and their
attempts to consolidate were widespread.John D.Rockefeller’s dominance
of the oil market and Carnegie’s tight grip over the steel industry all have
been replayed in one form or other within the last decade.In many cases
the corporate names involved in these battles have remained the same,as
ix