it's the fact that he has complete control over the U.S government
Explanation:
as you can see in the picture the company's "arms" are grabbing and destroying everything to show who has power and to never question them again or more punishments are to come.
The Cartoon can be view as symbols representing 1. A political cartoon representing various political expressions 2. What or who does the octopus represent 3. How did the wealthy industrial feel about taking advantage of workers and consumers 4. How did American’s feel about trust and big
The above can be summarized as follows
The cartoon “The Standard Oil Octopus”, and other similar ones that were seen with the rise of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, accurately represents the differing viewpoints of the wealthy “captains of industry” and those of average working class Americans during the Second Industrial Revolution. This new class of wealthy industrialists truly believed in the all-American image of opportunity for the common man and social Darwinism, that is, survival of the fittest. The only reason that they could fully clear their moral conscience for taking advantage of workers and consumers to make profit was by convincing themselves that they had the ultimate right to engage in such practices.
Clearly, Americans who were not lucky enough to part of such an elite class were severely dissatisfied by the industrialists’ use of their corporate power. The octopus’ head is representative of the central trust of the Standard Oil Company, composed of a board of trustees headed by Rockefeller. The tentacles represent the way that the trust controlled every aspect of every branch of the Standard Oil Company, across the entire nation. Cartoons such as these led to the widespread distrust of industrialist methods, as the tentacles surrounding the governmental buildings indicate Rockefeller’s use of bribery to influence Congressmen and other officials to prevent the passing of anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws.
Once such cartoonists revealed to Americans this ultimate corruption in the governmental system, the ruthlessness of industrialists such as Rockefeller became painfully clear and they became an enemy of the public, constantly portrayed in a negative light, causing Americans to have mistrust in corporate systems as a whole. Regardless of how Rockefeller justified and rationalized his methods, his reasoning would not be heard by American workers and consumers, who saw only the unjust consequences of his trusts.
