They were on top for a while, but later fell behind because they didn't invest. There were heavy tarrifs in place to "protect" the monopoly from foreign competition.
If privately arising monopolies could only be kept from buying out their regulators, they'd privately break down before they became too odious... for example Google, which for years was the only remotely good search engine, is now merely one of the better search engines. If there had been a "department of consumer information safety," staffed by the best industry professionals status can buy, that might have not happened.
