New York's Specialty While business leaders like Henry Ford are busy building larger and more efficient factories, financiers like J.P. Morgan are exploring new ways to put together complicated deals. Loans from commercial banks are still soaring (top right), but the biggest investment banks in New York are now managing stock and bond offerings for many of the new corporate giants.

	Pushing the Limits Inevitably, some industrialists take the game too far. John D. Rockefeller, who formed Standard Oil to refine petroleum into kerosene, hates competition. Any competition. He resorts to extreme tactics to absorb or ruin all his smaller rivals, achieving a near-total monopoly of the refining industry. The Supreme Court steps in, declaring that Standard Oil has restrained trade, and must be broken up. American Tobacco, another near-monopoly, is also broken into pieces by the Court, in a separate case.
	Unstoppable Giants Despite the break-up of two early monopolies, the continuing trend is towards the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. This trend persists to the present day. New manufacturing giants, led by Ford, are built on funding that is 200 times greater than that of the average manufacturer (barely visible, in chart at top left). The railroads are even bigger financial monsters. At the same time, business is being re-directed from regional banks into the hands of the biggest New York firms (right).