Chapters 14-16 Summary and Analysis

By the middle of 1880, more than seventy percent of American oil is shipped abroad. Oil is the fourth largest export of the United States with the major competition being Russia, and it is cheaper to produce oil in Russia than it is in America. The Russian operation is owned by the Nobel Brothers. The Rothschilds also enter the oil business on the Caspian and Black Seas and oil is found in different parts of the world.

Rockefeller begins to integrate vertically to insure high volume and low costs. They use the same coercive tactics in vertical integration as they used in horizontal integration. The country is expanding to the west and new oil companies are forming, and the Standard trust divides the continent into eleven marketing districts. Rockefeller developes an extensive intelligence network.

In 1878 Thomas Edison invents the light...