While most of America found itself in a financial ditch dug by the Civil War, the country’s first industrial capitalists were rising, consolidating, and controlling the nation. According to an excerpt from A Call To Action, by Populist presidential candidate James B. Weaver, trusts used threats, intimidation, and wreck to build industrial empires. One such empire, the Standard Oil Company, was created by John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller acquired his immense wealth by buying out competitors or driving them out of business by initiating rate wars. In doing so, he caused a severe loss of jobs and left the poorer class with a the sudden loss of work. Ruthless tactics such as those of Rockefeller’s left laborers to suffer from poverty and only justified
