In 1870 he formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio and started his strategy of buying up the competition and consolidating all oil-refining under one company. By 1878 Standard Oil held about 90% of the refining capacity in the U.S. In 1881 the company was reorganised as the Standard Oil Trust. The three main men of "Standard Oil" were [Henry H. Rogers]?, [William Rockefeller]?, and John D. Rockefeller.
This attracted attention from anti-trust authorities in the 1890s, the Ohio Attorney General filed and won an antitrust suit in 1892 and the company was broken up. However, the owners remained in charge of the smaller companies.
Standard Oil was not a loved company. Through a series of dubious business practices it either subdued competitors or engaged in illegal transportation deals with the railroad companies to ensure it could undercut it competitors prices. Standard Oil, formed well before the discovery of Spindletop and a demand for oil other than for heat and light, was well placed to control the growth of the oil business. It did this by ensuring it owned and controlled all aspects of the trade.
The following quotation (by whom?) perhaps epitomises the company as perceived by the public.
'"Standard Oil" has from its birth to present writing been responsible for more hell than any other trust or financial thing since the world began. Because of it the people have sustained incalculable losses and have suffered untold miseries.'
There were eight distinct groups of individuals and corporations which made up the big "Standard Oil":
"Standard Oil's" governing rules were as rigid as the laws of the Medes? and Persians, yet so simple as to be easily understood by any one:
The success of "Standard Oil" was largely due to two things -- to the loyalty of its members to each other and to "Standard Oil," and to the punishment of its enemies. Each member before initiation knew its religion to be reward for friends and extirmination for foes. The "Standard Oil" man was constantly reminded in a thousand and one ways that punishment for disloyalty is sure and terrible, and that in no corner of the earth can he escape it, nor can any power on earth protect him from it.
"Standard Oil" was never loud in its rewards nor its punishments. It did not care for the public's praise [except through phony P.R.] nor for its condemnation, but endeavored to avoid both by keeping its "business" to itself.