•

18 19
MONOPOLY CA~TAL NT CORPORATION •

and in the first stages of growth, for outside financing. Later TIIE GIA . f m the Rockefeller family via a
1 f his compa Y ro f d
this need declined in importance or disappeared altogether as wrest contra of t khol er support was decisively de eate
ontest or s oc 1 fi d
the giants, reaping a rich harvest of monopoly profits, found proxy c uld-be rebel w s unceremonious y re . . .
themselves increasingly able to take care of their financial and the wo f 1929 great changes came to the oil indus-
needs from internally generated funds. At the same time, the In the years a .ter 1 t' 1 as formed· the rich Middle East-
h . t nat1ona car e w ' . b
domineering founders of family fortunes were dying off, leav- try: t e in er eiled up· d omes t'ically , the depression- orn
ern fields were oP b 'ht hat amounted to government
ing their stockholdings to numerous heirs, foundations, chari- · · g system roug w b f
ties, trust funds, and the like, so that the ownership unit which Prorat1on1n t f monopo1y prices, . . the tripling of the num er o
b .
once exercised absolute control over many enterprises became h
°
enforcemen. 1 · three d eca d es a nd the widespread su st1tu-
motor ve ices . in d
sent eman d and production skyrocket-
increasingly amorphous and leaderless. Thus the larger corpo-
rations gradually won more and more independence from both 1
ing. ow t ? Did they continue to act as a t earn, all doing t e1r h
bankers and dominant stockholders, and their policies accord-
ingly were geared to an ever greater extent each to its own velopmen s. th . t . t of the group as a whole, as t e
b t ornate e in eres s d"d h
interests rather than being subordinated to the interests of a est o pr would lead us to expect? Or I eac
group. interest-group theory t nities in its own interest?
seek to exploit the nelw. olppdor ~t bout the answer. California
We are not of course maintaining that interest groups have Th ecord leaves itt e ou a . b.
disappeared or are no longer of any importance in the United e rd . . t Middle Eastern production in a ig way
Standar , getting in ° . l teamed up intema-
States economy. We do hold that they are of rapidly diminish- but without adequate marketing ou~ ehts, f the ''brother''
ing importance and that an appropriate model of the economy th than wit one o
tionally with T~xaco ra :: New England market, traditional
no longer needs to take account of them. It is not the purpose
companies, and invaded t at the cost of depressing
of the present work to support this view with empirical evi- stronghold of Jersey and Socony, even 1 . following Cali-
dence, despite its ready availability. But since belief in the . · Th 0thers were not ong in
gasoline prices. e h . Standard companies
crucial importance of interest groups is a deeply rooted tenet . , 1 d by now t e various
fom1a s examp e, an f th 1911 marketing areas
of left-wing thought, it seems wise to cite one specific example have completely broken away fi·om eh ther as well as from
of the dissolution process as it has affected what would once and are busily stealing markets rom eac 0
the non-St~ndard ~ompanies. d which in the early days, no
have been generally admitted to be one of the two most power-
ful interest groups, the Rockefeller group. Meanwhile Indiana Standar d d "t lf from the for-
The core of the Rockefeller interest group was the original 1
doubt at Rockefeller behest, had ex~ u et" I se ofits which the
Standard Oil Company which, after its break-up in 1911 under eign field began to hunger for the antaks .1c porn their Middle
the Sherman Antitrust Law, became a number of separate 1 .es were ma ing
I international carte compani f . . d the Italians and
companies operating in different regions of the country. There I d . there ore 101ne
Eastern operations. n iana A . ·ndependents in
is ample evidence that these companies remained in one inter- ·
Japanese as well as certain sma Iler mer1can I
d th '
Mi"ddle
est group under firm Rockefeller control through the 1920's. ' b 0ff ·ng Iran an o er
scabbing on the cartel Y eri . h than the standard
They respected each other's marketing areas and generally Eastern producers a 25-75 profit spit1 rat er
worked together against the rapidly rising independents. An 50-50 t"ll b
attem£t by the President of Standard of Indiana in 1929 to It is· possible that the oId Stan d a rd companies may s 1 e