It was not so much that the value of Flagler’s holdings was threatened: by 1888 the value of Standard Oil shares had risen to more than $150 million, and even the eventual dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust was similar in financial impact to the reorganization, nearly a century later, of Ma Bell into all those little Baby Bells. For anyone who h

... See more

I have a gut sense that a Paramount Global overseen by Sumner Redstone , instead of his daughter, Shari , would have reached a different conclusion. After all, what is now known as Paramount Global was built on Sumner’s litigation risk-reward calculus.

In this, as in so many other ways, he was without peer, the preeminent builder of the frontier economy of the Northwest. By controlling the transportation structure of the region—a near-monopoly railroad that, at the time of his death, was only beginning to feel the competition of automobiles and public highways—he exercised more sweeping economic

... See more

Harriman and Schiff pressed for the allowance of a one-third interest in the Burlington for the UP, to achieve a soothing community of interest. The Morgan-Hill forces turned them down flat. Such an accommodation, they purred, might represent an illegal “restraint of trade” under federal statute. To understand the fierce struggle that now erupted,

... See more