APPENDIX D OUTLINE HISTORIES OF REPRESENTATIVE TRUSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 1. STANDARD OIL COMPANY 2. AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY 3. 4. 5. UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION 1. STANDARD OIL COMPANY* THE Outline history of the American oil combination falls naturally into three periods: 1872 to 1882; 1882 to 1899; 1899 to the present. In 1870 John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, and several others who, prior to 1870 and under three separate partnerships had been engaged in refining and shipping oil, organized a corporation known as the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. The business of the three partnerships was transferred to this corporation. Other like businesses were acquired so that by 1872 the combination had acquired nearly all of the two score of oil refineries located in Cleveland, Ohio. Preferential railway rates were secured by this corporation and by means of this advantage, competitors were virtually forced to join or to quit business. The corporation acquired from time to time a large number of other refineries in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and elsewhere. *This story is compiled from the opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court in the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey et al. v. the United States (221 U. S. 1.), from the U. S. Bureau of Corporations Report on the Petroleum Industry, from Moody's and Poor's Manuals of Industrials, and from Stevens' Industrial Combinations and Trusts. See p. 182 for treatment of employees by The Standard Oil Company. 334 Some refineries acquired were dismantled. Many of the properties acquired were kept as apparent competitors of the Standard. Control of pipe lines for transport of oil from the oil fields to the refineries in Cleveland, Pittsburg, Titusville, Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey was obtained by the oil combination after hard battling in the hot competitive style of the American late seventies and early eighties. By 1882 the combination had won control of about 90 per cent. of the business of producing, shipping, refining, and selling petroleum and its products. The second period begins with the drafting of the trust agreement in 1882. Nine trustees issued Standard Oil Trust certificates to represent the interest in the forty corporations and the various other properties held for the benefit of the combination. Under the trust agreement these nine trustees managed the entire business. They were empowered to form additional corporations in various states. Soon after they organized the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the Standard Oil Company of New York with capital stocks of $3,000,000 and $5,000,000 respectively, subsequently raised to $10,000,000 and $15,000,000. By 1888 the trust had interests in the following oil corporations: It is to be noted that many of those corporations were combinations of several business enterprises, just as it was shown above that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, within two years of its organization, was in control of some forty different plants, previously competitors. In 1892 the Supreme Court of Ohio declared this trust agreement void. Apparent dissolution of the trust followed, but the dissolution amounted to transfer of stock held in some sixty-four companies controlled by the trust to the remaining twenty companies. The nine trustees and immediate members of their families still owned together enough stock to maintan control as effectively as before this "dissolution." Contempt proceedings were instituted in 1897 by the attorney-general of Ohio-on the claim that the trust had not been dissolved according to the court decree, and proceedings were also begun to forfeit the charter of the Buckeye Pipe Line Company on the ground that it was connected with the illegal trust. The complicated situation, developed by the partial dissolution, and these further attacks led to a new form of organization whch opens the third and last period of the story. In January, 1899, the charter of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was so amended as to give it sweeping powers of a holding company The capital stock of this company which had been since 1892 $10,000,000, was raised to $110,000,000 and the trustees of the Ohio trust continued to be a majority of the board of directors. The stock of the various corporations controlled by the trust was transferred to this Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, in return for certificates of its common stock to the amount of $97,250,000. Ten million dollars of the $110,000,000 was preferred stock which was subsequently retired leaving the capitalization $100,000,000.* In the new oil fields developed in California, southeastern Kansas, northern Indian Territory, and northern Oklahoma, the Standard built or acquired refineries and pipe lines which extended its control over the oil business of these fields. When, in November, 1906, suit was filed in the Circuit Court of Missouri against the oil combination, the bill set forth that the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, about seventy subsidiary corporations and seven individuals were engaged in a conspiracy to restrain and to monopolize commerce in petroleum and its products. In the Supreme Court decision of this case, in May, 1911, Mr. Chief Justice White thus summarized the charges of the bill as to various means employed by the Standard Oil Trust from 1882 to 1899 and by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey since 1899, by which the combination sought to maintain its monopoly: "Rebates, preferences, and other discriminatory practices *The actual outstanding capital stock of the Oil Combination ranged from $71,000,000 to $73,400,000 from 1882 to 1887; rose to $90,000,000 from 1887 to 1890; rose to $96,900,000 in 1890, and from 1891 to 1900 was $97,250,000. It rose slightly until 1904 since when it has remained to date $98,338,300. On the outstanding stock at the respective dates the following dividends were paid: 1882, 4%; 1883-84, 6%; 1885-87, 10%; 1888, 111%; 1889 to 1894, 12%; 1895, 17%; 1896, 31%; 1897, 33%; 1898, 30%; 1899, 33%; 1900-01, 48%; 1902, 45%; 1903, 44%; 1904, 46%; 1905 to 1910, 40%; 1911, 37%; 1912 to 1915 inclusive 20%. |