Business: Can Competition

When it was launched at the Century's turn by the gaudiest crew of bigtime promoters in U. S. history, American Can Co. was very nearly a perfect monopoly. It had at the start, thanks to the tireless efforts of Judge William Moore, Daniel Gray ("Tsar") Reid and William Bateman ("Tin Plate") Leeds, over nine-tenths of the country's entire can business. But by the time the trustbusters of Roosevelt I got to work on it, American Can had already destroyed its virtual monopoly by its dizzying prices. Competitors had swarmed in under the "Tin Can...

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