Standard Oil was apparently something you were supposed to remember from high school.
That's because until Tuesday, the company was still the subject of a Justice Department decree forcing it to split into dozens of smaller chunks. A decree that came out of former President Theodore Roosevelt's lawsuit against Standard Oil, which his government won 108 years ago, and which your U.S. History class probably implied was the end of the story.
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After winning what historian Daniel Yergin calls "the most famous antitrust case" in U.S. history, the government only tried enforcing its resulting decree once, the Journal notes. Standard Oil still split up into 34 smaller companies over the years, including today's behemoths Exxon and Chevron. But since the decree only applied to Standard and not the entire industry, the Justice Department recently moved to end it and let newer, broader laws run their course.
The Standard Oil revision is all part of a larger DOJ review looking at antitrust cases from the 1800s and beyond, meaning you may see the end of a few more textbook relics in the coming months. Read more about this historic throwback at The Wall Street Journal.
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