Monopoly Basics
A market situation where one company controls most or all of an industry.
What is a monopoly?
This oil tycoon founded Standard Oil.
Who is John D. Rockefeller?
Monopolies often lowered these for workers while increasing profits.
What are wages?
This 1890 law aimed to break up monopolies and trusts.
What is the Sherman Antitrust Act?
Modern tech companies like Amazon or Google are sometimes compared to these Gilded Age monopolies.
What are modern corporate monopolies?
These companies controlled every step of production, from raw materials to selling products.
What is vertical integration?
This steel industry leader built Carnegie Steel Company.
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
These labor organizations formed to fight poor working conditions and low pay.
What are labor unions?
This president became famous for trust-busting in the early 1900s.
Who is Theodore Roosevelt?
This modern concern involves companies controlling large amounts of consumer data.
What is data privacy / data control?
This strategy involved buying out competing companies to eliminate competition.
What is horizontal integration?
This railroad magnate controlled major rail lines in the West.
Who is Cornelius Vanderbilt?
This strike in 1892 involved steel workers protesting wage cuts.
What is the Homestead Strike?
This government belief allowed businesses to operate with little regulation.
What is laissez-faire?
This modern debate questions whether big companies should be broken up.
What is antitrust regulation today?
Large companies formed these agreements to secretly control prices and production.
What is a trust?
This banker helped finance major industries and railroads.
Who is J.P. Morgan?
This 1894 strike protested railroad wage cuts and disrupted train traffic nationwide.
What is the Pullman Strike?
This court case weakened the Sherman Antitrust Act by limiting its use against monopolies.
What is U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co.?
This term describes companies that dominate online shopping and digital markets.
What are tech giants / Big Tech?
This term describes wealthy industrial leaders who dominated business during the Gilded Age.
What are captains of industry / robber barons?
This industrialist controlled much of the sugar refining industry through the American Sugar Refining Company (Sugar Trust).
Who is Henry O. Havemeyer?
This term describes the extreme gap between the rich and the poor during the Gilded Age.
What is wealth inequality?
This later law strengthened antitrust regulations and targeted unfair business practices.
What is the Clayton Antitrust Act?
This issue reflects how extreme wealth concentration still exists today.
This issue reflects how extreme wealth concentration still exists today.