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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I read Chernow's biography of Rockefeller, "Titan". It's an excellent biography. But it has one amusing flaw. In a chapter he'll present facts about Rockefeller, and then have a summation. The summation is the popular view of Rockefeller, while the facts in the rest of the chapter tend to contradict it.

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If the summation of the popular view is at odds with the facts of the man, is that a flaw, or perhaps the natural contradiction of Rockefeller as a human being? The title is "Titan", but he dies just like all of us. I can't help but think of the ending of Barry Lyndon or The Seventh Seal

Since Chernow never explained this, I suspect he just couldn't break free of the conventional view.

For example, in the chapter on the anti-trust trial, Chernow concluded that Rockefeller had an unstoppable monopoly that needed the government to reign it in (the conventional view). Yet in the text he wrote that throughout the trial, Standard Oil's market share steadily declined and Rockefeller was unable to stem the retreat. There was no explanation of the discrepancy.

A different take on this is "Nothing Like It In The World" by Ambrose. It's about the building of the first continental railroad. Ambrose writes in it that he fully embraced the conventional view of it, but his research for the book turned everything on its head, and he came out of the experience with a very different view.

I do have copy of Chernow's tome on Hamilton, but haven't got around to reading it yet.

> Yet in the text he wrote that throughout the trial, Standard Oil's market share steadily declined and Rockefeller was unable to stem the retreat.

The general consensus seems to be that the antitrust trial against Microsoft had a significant impact on the company's behavior long before it concluded, forcing it to stop acting like a bull in a china shop.

I don't see the two views on Standard Oil as necessarily being contradictory, but I'll freely admit I'm completely ignorant of the situation.

SO never did charge monopoly prices. The consumer price of kerosene dropped 70% during the rise of SO.

From what I remember he did have an unstoppable monopoly. It helped that he could push around the railroads. But remember this is oil. When he was in charge Pennsylvania at one point was the oil capital of the world. That is obviously a position that is impossible to keep right?

Chernow's explanation was that his competitors had learned how to compete with him.

He bought all of the domestic competitors. Which is why they broke up standard oil into different oil companies. Then they all floated on the stock exchange and made him monstrously richer. Or at least he tried to. The idea was once you discover a lot of oil, its harder to control.

but then what happened was international oil companies came around. Venezuela was very rich until they ruined it. RDS was immortalized by Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udZgIsIKU30