I have been curious since reading of Standard’s break up to find out what did happen. Surely the company did not just go away just as the Rockefellers did not go broke. Well in the early ’80s I heard something about a merger that was putting pieces of Standard Oil back together and it hit me – maybe what happened was only on paper?

So what do you know about Standard and its breakup?

1) What year did Standard Oil first come into existence?
a) 1850
b) 1870
c) 1885
d) 1890

2) How much of the United States business in oil did Standard control when it was sued by the federal government?
a) 55%
b) 65%
c) 80%
d) 90%

3) Which law was enacted to attack monopolies like Standard?
a) The Volstead Act
b) The Robinson-Patman Act
c) The Sherman Antitrust Act
d) The Clayton Antitrust Act

4) Who was president when Standard Oil was sued and ordered broken into separate companies?
a) McKinley
b) T. Roosevelt
c) Taft
d) Wilson

5) How many companies was Standard ordered to be broken into?
a) 34
b) 107
c) 9
d) 21

6) The breakup was based on what clause in the law?
a) vertical monopoly
b) restraint of trade
c) horizontal monopoly
d) too big to fail

7) Which of these current companies is the largest legacy of Standard Oil?
a) ExxonMobil
b) Shell
c) Chevron
d) BP

8) A criticism of the break up being ordered by the government was
a) Standard was punished for its success
b) Standard was a superior competitor
c) Standard created low prices for the consumer
d) All of the above were criticisms

9) Which of these is not in some part a legacy of Standard Oil?
a) Shell
b) ChevronTexaco
c) BP
d) Conoco-Phillips

10) This company considered to be a cosmetics company was founded as part of the original Standard Oil?
a) Revlon
b) Estee Lauder
c) Palmolive
d) Cheseboro-Ponds

Answers? Don’t you want to wash some oil off first?

1) b) 1870
2) d) Numbers aren’t exact, but close to 90% in years prior to the actual lawsuit
3) c) The Sherman Antitrust Act (this Sherman was brother to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman)
4) c) Taft – work started under Roosevelt, but the actual suit and breakup was under Taft
5) a) 34
6) b) “restraint of trade”
7) a) ExxonMobil
8) d) all of the above. Have you heard anything like this recently?
9) a) Shell
10) d) Cheseboro-Ponds. Its signature product, Vaseline, was a byproduct of Standard’s processing

I tried to find evidence of interlocking directorates among the baby Standards but could not find any. Such is supposedly illegal but thought to exist.