The Verdict was a short-lived political magazine, lasting only from 1898 to 1900. This cartoon was perhaps its most famous output, and typical of the journal’s tenor. The journal was partisan to the Democratic Party in outlook; its short two-year run meant that The Verdict existed largely to attack Republican William McKinley, then president of the United States, and his tolerance of monopolies in American business. No one typified the power of monopolies more than John D. Rockefeller, the owner of the Standard Oil Company and a whole series of other business ventures focused on the refining, transportation, and distribution of petroleum. Rockefeller invested in building a petroleum industry when the substance was burned mainly to heat homes and provide them with light; the invention of the combustion engine—which needed gasoline, a petroleum by-product, as a fuel—made his investment explode. At one point in the early twentieth century, Rockefeller’s fortune amounted to 3 percent of the United States’ entire gross domestic product. Naturally, such financial power frightened many Americans.