1208
Balls
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
So, at the time (1930) ball jar actually would have qualified as big business in the sense that you mean.
Home canning was very popular and they consistently bought out smaller companies.
Since they were privately owned, it's tricky to find specifics about value, but they were "found a university", "own a company town or two", "chairman of the federal reserve" levels of rich.
So actually a pretty good use of government.