The Rise of Industry (2nd picture)

During the time of the industrial revolution in the United States many businesses became very large. Each company tried to make more money and be more powerful than the other. These companies created the horizontal integration, big companies bought or took over smaller ones that sold the same product, which is not very different from today. The second strategy was called the vertical integration, that is when a company buys up all of the businesses that takes in order to make a finished product. One really big company was the Standard Oil Company, also known as octopus. Its tentacles took over everything in its path. It retained a monopoly in the oil industry, and the oil became the dominant resource industrial world, so people depended on this resource. This allowed John D. Rockefeller, the owner of the company, to set whatever prices he wanted. The Standard Oil Co. atrted controling everything and wanted to take control of the government, bank, insurance, electricity and many more. People disliked it, but the company was too big for them to destroy.