government should have broken apart this monopoly. According to a statement written by George Rice, a competitor of Standard Oil, the Standard Oil trust was guilty of tampering with the freight companies to favor Standard Oil. In addition Rockefeller, the main person behind Standard Oil, held a sizeable portion of the nation’s wealth. Only 500 people held most of the nation’s wealth (130 billion dollars) at this time. As a counter to this argument, Rockefeller suggested that big business is not truly guilty of anything except employing good business tactics. Rockefeller even said that they did not hesitate to invest millions on methods to cheapen the distribution of oil. While Rockefeller’s trust was diversifying their options for distribution, this did not mean they were not holding a monopoly, as Rice stated that his company could not flourish due to the poor freight