Galena-Signal Oil and the Standard Oil Monopoly

Galena-Signal Oil Company was founded in eighteen sixty-five and built a reputation for producing some of the highest-quality lubricants in the country, products used by most American railroads. In eighteen seventy-eight, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil purchased it.

Rockefeller used Galena-Signal's lubricants to tighten his grip on the railroads, and that leverage helped him build a virtual monopoly over the United States oil industry. When the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in nineteen eleven, Galena-Signal became independent again. It operated from this headquarters from nineteen oh one until it was absorbed by Valvoline in nineteen thirty-one.

The company's short history here is also the history of how industrial monopoly was built and eventually broken.