THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8541, 23 September 1907, Page 5

THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY.

HUGE PROFITS.

Received September 22, 4.46 p.m. NEW, YORK, September 21. Before the Federal Court the Treasurer of the Standard Oil Company admitted that the profits of the Company since 1882 had been one hundred and eight millions sterling. (The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey controls about 70 subsidiary companies, handling over 90 per cent, of the petroleum business, both of the home and export trade of the United States. A practical monopoly was secured by a course of operations beginning in 1870, the design throughout of the persons conducting the enterprise, of whom Messrs John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, H. H. Rogers, H. M. Flagltr, J. D. >Archbold, 0. H. Payne and C. L. Pratt, are the survivors, being to suppress competition in the transportation and sale of refined petroleum. Between 1870 and 1882 the design was effected by means of agreements between various companies engaged in the business, and in 1882 the result aimed at was rendered more certain by the vesting in trustees of sufficient stock in the. 39 companies then concerned to enable the trustees to control operations. In 1897, this combination having meanwhile been declared illegal, the Standard Oil Company, • which was hitherto the producing ar.d celling corpoiation increased its capital from £2,000,000 to £24,000,000, and acquired tne stock hitherto held by trustees.)