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To: Charles Hughes who wrote (21545)	11/18/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Chaz - I belive that Standard had a tight grip on the service station business at one point. Even when I was a child they were omnipresent. Was this true and was it true before the antitrust suit? Also, was there more than one antitrust action, and how long did the legal actions last? Standard Oil had almost no service station presence before the breakup - there were almost no service stations, and the ones that did exist were mostly mom and pop operations. After the breakup, and the post WWI explosion in the use of automobiles, the companies resulting from the breakup had a feeding frenzy. There was the appearance of intense competition but since the owners were all pretty much the same people it was rather self serving. So in that sense the children of standard oil did develop a powerful control of the gasoline retail business. But except in urban east coast markets it was never more than about 60% and no one of the children had more than 20% or 25%. There were a number of skirmishes but two important actions. Standard Oil was under heavy pressure from about 1904 until the breakup in 1911. the book 'Titan' is good accurate research as well as a compelling read on this topic. enforcement actions of the Pinkertons and railroads in Rockefellers behalf, and the general atmosphere of physical intimidation in the 1920s, were pretty well documented Some pretty credible researchers have looked into both the pinkerton and predatory pricing stories and determined them to be largely 'urban myth'. At least at the senior management level, it was pretty well documented that Rockefeller wanted as low an operational profile as possible, and in fact wanted his hand to be invisible in the railroad tariff scheme - he wanted the perception that the cost was the cost, when in fact the rebates reduced his cost. He always preferred hidden financial leverage that made it appear that natural forces just happened to work in his favor. From that point of view, it is highly unlikely that he would have favored any visible intimidation. But in any event he was out of the day to day management of standard oil early in this century, I think he was only involved in board of directors activities after 1908. He became kind of a poster boy for robber barons but by the time of the initial anti-trust trials, he had been a figurehead executive for years. He officially retired in 1911.