In the early 1900s, most entrepreneurs would do anything they could in order to control competition threatening the growth of their business. Most of them enforced horizontal integration, where companies that produce similar products merge in order to achieve a monopoly. However, John D. Rockefeller, head of the Standard Oil Company, took a different approach to mergers. He decided to join with competing companies in trust agreements. Participants in a trust turned their stock over to the people who ran the separate companies as one large corporation to gain dividends on profits earned. Nevertheless, these were not legal mergers and Rockefeller used this to gain control of the oil industry of America. Once he controlled the market, prices rose far above original levels. Critics …show more content…
One of the most successful captains of industry was Andrew Carnegie, who entered the steel business and created the Carnegie Steel Company shortly after. By 1899, the steel company manufactured more steel than all of the factories in Great Britain combined. His success was due to the management practices that he initiated. He continually searched for ways to make better products at a lower cost and incorporated new machinery and techniques that helped with tracking precise costs. In addition, he attracted talented people by offering them stock in the company. Andrew Carnegie donated about 90 percent of the wealth he accumulated during his lifetime, which still supports the arts and learning today. In 1901, the Carnegie Steel company was bought out by another effective captain of industry, J.P. Morgan. Morgan was a banker who headed the most successful United States Steel Company by setting up a holding company to buy out the stock of other companies. In some way, these captains of industry each played a huge role in helping to better society during their time