In his struggle to gain control of the chaotic American oil industry in the 1870s, John D. Rockefeller—founder and president of Standard Oil—worked first to gain a monopoly on the railroads, which were then oil’s main transport. Next he moved to gain control over the pipelines that connected the refineries to the railroads. Independent oil producers responded by banding together to fund a pipeline of their own that would run from Pennsylvania to the coast, bypassing the need for railroads and Rockefeller’s network of pipelines. Rockefeller tried buying up the land that lay in the path of the
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