John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Industrialist / Philanthropist
• Born: 8 July 1839
• Birthplace: Richford, New York
• Died: 23 May 1937
• Best Known As: Standard Oil tycoon and big-time philanthropist
One of the richest Americans in history, John D. Rockefeller was the founder of the Standard Oil Company and, later, a philanthropist whose wealth bankrolled the Rockefeller Foundation. Hard-working and meticulous, Rockefeller started out small and then made his fortune via hard-nosed and sometimes controversial business tactics, which have since made him an entrepreneurial hero to some, a greedy fiend in the eyes of others. He started in the oil business, and by the end of the century the Standard Oil Trust controlled so many other interests that it fell afoul of anti-trust laws. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court called Standard Oil a monopoly and forced the Trust to separate into competing companies. By that time Rockefeller himself was no longer involved in running the business, having devoted himself completely to philanthropy since 1896. He gave away millions to schools, health organizations and civic projects through the Rockefeller Foundation, which endures today.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was in the family business only briefly before devoting himself to philanthropy with the Rockefeller Foundation... the elder Rockefeller's grandson, Nelson Rockefeller, was a four-time governor of New York and vice president of tJohn Davison Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937), American industrialist and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company, the University of Chicago, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

John D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, N.Y. His father owned farm property and traded in many goods, including lumber and patent medicines. His mother, a straitlaced puritanical woman, brought up her large family very strictly. The family moved west by degrees, reaching Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853, when it was beginning to grow into a city. John graduated from high school there and after three months of commercial college found his first job at the age of sixteen clerking in a produce commission house. In 1859, when he was nineteen, he started his first company with a young Englishman: Clark and Rockefeller. They grossed $450,000 in the first year of trading. Clark did the fieldwork; Rockefeller controlled office management, bookkeeping, and relationships with bankers.

Early Businesses


From the start Rockefeller revealed a genius for organization and method. The firm prospered during the Civil War. With the Pennsylvania oil strike (1859) and the building of a railroad to Cleveland, they branched out into oil refining with Samuel Andrews, who had technical knowledge of the field. Within two years Rockefeller became senior partner; Clark was bought out, and the firm Rockefeller and Andrews became Cleveland's largest refinery. A second refinery, the Standard Works, was opened in 1865 by another firm established by Rockefeller in his brother William's name; and a sales office was opened in New York City in 1866.

With financial help from S. V. Harkness and from a new partner, H. M. Flagler, who also secured favorable railroad freight rebates, Rockefeller survived the bitter competition in the oil industry. The Standard Oil Company, chartered in Ohio in 1870 by Rockefeller, his brother, Flagler, Harkness, and Andrews, had a capital of $1 million and paid a dividend of 40 percent a year later. Standard Oil controlled one-tenth of American refining, but competitive chaos remained. The chief bottleneck was the transporting of the oil. Out of this situation came the controversial South Improvement Company scheme of 1872 - a defensive alliance of Cleveland refiners to meet the bitter opposition of the oil producers of Pennsylvania. The sweeping freight rebate agreements in this scheme brought public opposition, and the plan was outlawed by the Pennsylvania Legislature. Meanwhile, a looser organization, a refiners' pool, also failed (1873).

Rockefeller still hoped to impose order on the oil industry. He bought out most of the Cleveland refineries, then acquired others in New York, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. He turned to new transportation methods, including the railroad tank car and the pipeline. By 1879 he was refining 90 percent of American oil, and Standard used its own tank car fleet, ships, docking facilities, barrel-making plants, draying services, depots, and warehouses. Strict economy and planning were enforced throughout. Rockefeller came through the Panic of 1873 still urging organization on the part of the refiners. As his control approached near-monopoly, he fought a war with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877, which created a refining company to try to break Rockefeller's control, but the bloody railroad strikes that year forced them to surrender to Standard Oil. Rockefeller's dream of order was near completion.

America's First Trust

By 1883, after winning control of the pipeline industry, Standard's monopoly was at a peak. Rockefeller created America's first great "trust" in 1882; since laws forbade one company's ownership of another's stock, ever since 1872 Standard had placed its acquisitions outside Ohio in the hands of Flagler as "trustee." All profits went to the Ohio company while the outside businesses remained nominally independent. In 1882 this was regularized. Nine trustees of the Standard Oil Trust received the stock of 40 businesses and gave the various shareholders trust certificates in return. The trust had a capital of about $70 million; it was the world's largest and richest industrial organization.

In the 1880s the nature of Rockefeller's business began to change; he moved beyond refining oil into producing crude oil itself and moved his wells westward with the new fields opening up. He pioneered in this by acquiring oil land in Ohio before it was certain that this sulfuric oil could be refined successfully; then he employed the scientist Herman Frasch, whose process (1886-1889) made these fields yield an enormous profit. Standard also expanded its marketing facilities and entered foreign markets in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. From 1885 a committee system of management was developed to control Standard Oil's enormous empire.

Attacking the Trust


Public opposition to Standard Oil grew with the emergence of the muckraking journalists; in particular, Henry Demarest Lloyd and Ida Tarbell published harsh exposés of the oil empire. Rockefeller was condemned for various alleged practices: railroad rebates (a system he did not invent and which many refiners used); price discrimination; industrial espionage and bribery; crushing smaller firms by unfair competition, such as cutting off their crude oil supplies or restricting their transport outlets. Standard Oil was investigated by the New York State Senate and by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1888. The rising tide of reform sentiment brought in the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). Two years later the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated Standard's original trust agreement. Rockefeller formally disbanded the organization; though the trustees handed in their trust certificates, in practice the organization remained unified, and the four presidents of the state firms (John D. Rockefeller for Standard of Ohio, William Rockefeller for New York, Flagler for New Jersey, and J.A. Moffett for Indiana) still met regularly to fix overall policy. In 1899 Standard was recreated legally under a new form as a "holding company;" this merger was dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911, long after Rockefeller himself had retired from active control in 1897.

Perhaps Rockefeller's most famous excursion outside the oil industry began in 1893, when he helped develop the Mesabi iron ore range of Minnesota. By 1896 his Consolidated Iron Mines owned a great fleet of ore boats and virtually controlled Great Lakes shipping. Rockefeller was now an iron ore magnate in his own right and had the power to dictate to the steel industry. He made an alliance with the steel king, Andrew Carnegie, in 1896: Rockefeller agreed not to enter steelmaking and Carnegie agreed not to touch transportation. In 1901 Rockefeller sold his ore holdings to the vast new merger created by Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, U.S. Steel. In that year his fortune passed the $200 million mark for the first time.
Philanthropic Endeavors

From his first employment as a clerk, Rockefeller sought to give away one-tenth of his earnings to charity. His benefactions grew with his income, and he also gave time and energy to philanthropic causes. At first he depended on the Baptist Church for advice; the Church wanted its own great university, and in 1892 the University of Chicago opened under the brilliant presidency of a man Rockefeller much admired, William Rainey Harper. The university was Rockefeller's first major philanthropic creation. He gave it over $80 million during his lifetime and left the university entirely independent under Harper. Rockefeller chose New York City for his Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), chartered in 1901. Among the institute's many achievements were yellow fever research, discovery of serums to combat pneumonia, advances in experimental physiology and surgery, and work on infantile paralysis. In 1902 he established the General Education Board.
The total of Rockefeller's lifetime philanthropies has been estimated at about $550 million. Eventually the amounts involved became so huge (his fortune reached $900 million by 1913) that he developed a staff of specialists to help him; out of this came the Rockefeller Foundation, chartered in 1913, "to promote the wellbeing of mankind throughout the world."


Rockefeller's personal life was fairly simple and frugal. He was a man of few passions who lived for his work, and his great talent was his organizing genius and drive for order, pursued with great single-mindedness and concentration. His life was absorbed by business and later by organized giving. In both areas he imposed order, efficiency, and planning with extraordinary success and sweeping vision. He died on May 23, 1937, in Ormond, Fla.
Further Reading
Rockefeller's Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909) remains interesting and important. The definitive life of Rockefeller is Allan Nevins, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller (2 vols., 1940; rev. ed. 1953). A sympathetic account is Jules Abels, The Rockefeller Billions (1965).

For general economic history see the readings in Peter d'A. Jones, The Robber Barons Revisited (1968). The history of Standard Oil of New Jersey is treated in R. W. and M. E. Hidy, History of Standard Oil Company: Pioneering in Big Business, 1882-1911, vol. 1 (1955), and Standard is considered comparatively in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of Industrial Enterprise (1962). Standard's history in California to 1919 is described in Gerald T. White, Formative Years in the Far West (1962). For a broader history see Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, The American Petroleum Industry (2 vols., 1959-
he Rockefeller, John D.
(1839-1937), industrialist and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the primary force behind the establishment of the Standard Oil Company and thus of the American petroleum industry.

Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, and moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where he finished high school in 1855. He began his business career as a bookkeeper-clerk in a commission house the same year. The first successful drilling for oil took place in western Pennsylvania in 1859, and Rockefeller realized that Cleveland was ideally suited to exploit this new resource. He built his first refinery in 1863 in partnership with others.
The early oil business was chaotic and hazardous, with barrel prices rising as high as $13.75 and falling as low as ten cents during the 1860s, but Rockefeller, a born executive, kept his firm consistently profitable and growing. In 1870 he, Henry Flagler, and others formed the Standard Oil Company, with Rockefeller owning 26.7 percent of the stock. Using such then-legal tactics as railroad rebates and predatory pricing, Standard Oil steadily increased its hold over the American oil industry until by 1880 it controlled fully 90 percent of it.

The corporate structure of this expanding enterprise had become unwieldy, and state corporation laws made it difficult to rationalize what had become a nationwide company. In 1882, Standard Oil's legal counsel devised the trust form of organization. Standard Oil thus became both the first and the largest of the "trusts," one of the great bogeymen of American politics ever since.
As such, it necessarily became a major target of reformers. Although he played the game hard, Rockefeller never operated outside the law or sought an absolute monopoly. Rather, he wanted Standard Oil to be large enough to enforce "order" in the oil business and prevent a return to the chaos that had marked the industry's early years. And despite Standard's near monopoly position, the price of oil and oil products fell drastically between 1870 and 1900. In 1883, Rockefeller moved the company's headquarters to New York.

Always active in the Baptist church, Rockefeller early began the practice of making substantial charitable contributions. As his resources grew, so did his philanthropy. He had largely retired from Standard Oil by 1897 and devoted much of his energy to looking for creative ways to give his money away. He was often guided by Baptist ministers and others, and he established an organization to investigate carefully before giving. Once he had made up his mind, however, he gave with wholly unprecedented generosity. In 1889 he gave $600,000 to establish the University of Chicago (the family would ultimately give it more than $80 million), and in the final decades of his long life he gave away an estimated $550 million to worthy causes. He also established the Rockefeller Institute, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation
United States from 1974-77 under Gerald Ford.
Rockefeller, John Davison, 1839–1937, American industrialist and philanthropist, b. Richford, N.Y. He moved (1853) with his family to a farm near Cleveland and at age 16 went to work as a bookkeeper. Frugal and industrious, Rockefeller became (1859) a partner in a produce business, and four years later, with his partners, he established an oil refinery, entering into an industry already thriving in Cleveland.

In 1870 he and his associates—including S. V. Harkness, H. M. Flagler, and his brother William—organized the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, capitalized at $1 million. By enforcing strict economy and efficiency, through mergers and agreements with competitors, by ruthlessly crushing weaker competitors, and by accumulating large capital reserves, Rockefeller soon dominated the American oil-refining industry. Rebate agreements, which he forced from the railroads, and the control of pipeline distribution of refined oil strengthened the near monopoly of the Standard Oil Company.

In 1882 the diverse holdings of the various members of Rockefeller's combination were tied together into the Standard Oil trust. Court action compelled the trust to dissolve 10 years later, but in a few years the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was chartered as a holding company, with a capitalization of $110 million. Rockefeller was also prominent in the affairs of railroads and banks, being second only to J. P. Morgan in the domain of finance. When the United States Steel Corporation was formed (1901), Rockefeller was one of the directors. In 1911 a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court required the holding company to dissolve and its directors to relinquish their control over the numerous subsidiaries. Rockefeller personally ruled over his enormous petroleum business until 1911, when he retired with a fabulous fortune.

Intensely religious, Rockefeller had an interest in philanthropy as deep as his interest in business. He gave generously to the Baptist Church, to the YMCA, and to the Anti-Saloon League. He also founded (1892) the Univ. of Chicago. The most prominent of the philanthropic enterprises to which he eventually turned over some $500 million were the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, founded (1901) in New York City and since 1965 known as Rockefeller Univ.; the General Education Board, organized (1902) to make gifts to various educational and research agencies; the Rockefeller Foundation, established (1913) to promote public health and to further the medical, natural, and social sciences; and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, founded (1918) in memory of his wife, for the furthering of child welfare and the social sciences. He wrote Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909).
Son and Grandsons

His son John Davison Rockefeller, Jr., 1874–1960, b. Cleveland, grad. Brown, 1897, took over active management of his father's interests in 1911 and engaged in numerous philanthropies. Riverside Church in New York City was built through his gifts. He also gave vast sums for religious projects, for scientific investigation, and for the restoration of historic monuments. Among his most notable philanthropies were the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, Va., and the donation of the site for the United Nations headquarters in New York City. He founded (1931) and helped plan Rockefeller Center in New York City, which the Rockefeller interests completed in 1939. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had six children, and his five sons all became famous in various fields of endeavor.
His eldest son, John Davison Rockefeller 3d, 1906–78, b. New York City, grad. Princeton, 1929, was active in the management of family interests as well as art collecting and the support of numerous civic and philanthropic ventures, such as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the United Negro College Fund, and the Population Council.
His second son was Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller.

Laurance Spellman Rockefeller, 1910–2004, b. New York City, grad. Princeton, 1932, was noted for his involvement in conservation and the protection of wildlife. He funded the expansion of Grand Teton National Park and promoted creation and expansion of numerous other national parks. An astute investor, he was the principal backer of Eddie Rickenbacker when the latter founded Eastern Airlines in the 1930s, and was subsequently an early underwriter of a number of successful companies.
Winthrop Rockefeller, 1912–73, b. New York City, attended (1931–34) Yale and then went into investment management. Interested in agriculture, he became the owner of a farm in Arkansas noted for its experiments in animal husbandry. A Republican, he served as governor of Arkansas from 1967 to 1970.


David Rockefeller, 1915–, b. New York City, grad. Harvard, 1936, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1940, joined what became the Chase Manhattan Bank in 1948 and headed it from 1969 until his retirement in 1981. He acted as spokesman for the U.S. business community on several occasions. His Memoirs were published in 2002.
Jay Rockefeller (John Davison Rockefeller 4th), 1937–, b. New York City, son of John D. Rockefeller 3d, was elected governor of West Virginia as a Democrat in 1976; reelected in 1980, he was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and reelected in 1990, 1996, and 2002. He has chaired the committee on veterans' affairs (1993–1995; 2001–3) and the select committee on intelligence (2007–).
Bibliography
See biographies of J. D. Rockefeller by A. Nevins (rev. ed. 1959), J. Abels (1965), and R. Chernow (1998); J. T. Flynn, God's Gold (1932, repr. 1971); W. Inglis, John D. Rockefeller Interview, 1917–1920 (1989); studies by D. Frost (1987) and J. Harr and P. Johnson (1988); biography of J. D. Rockefeller, Jr., by R. B. Fosdick (1956) and of Laurance Rockefeller by R. Winks (1997).

John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American industrialist and philanthropist. Rockefeller revolutionized the oil industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. Rockefeller had always believed since he was a child that his purpose in life was to make as much money as possible, and then use it wisely to improve the lot of mankind. In 1870, Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company and ran it until he retired in the late 1890s. He kept his stock and as gasoline grew in importance, his wealth soared and he became the world's richest man and first billionaire.
Standard Oil was convicted in Federal Court of monopolistic practices and broken up in 1911. Rockefeller spent the last forty years of his life in retirement. His fortune was used to create the modern systematic approach of targeted philanthropy with foundations that had a major impact on medicine, education, and scientific research. His foundations pioneered the development of medical research, and was instrumental in the eradication of hookworm and yellow fever. He was a devout Northern Baptist and supported many church-based institutions throughout his life.
Always avoiding the spotlight, Rockefeller was remembered for handing dimes to those he encountered in public. Married in 1864, Rockefeller outlived his wife Laura Celestia ("Cettie") Spelman. The Rockefellers had four daughters and one son (John D. Rockefeller, Jr.). "Junior" was largely entrusted with supervision of the foundations.

Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, second of six children to William Avery Rockefeller (November 13, 1810 - May 11, 1906) and Eliza Davison (September 12, 1813 - March 28, 1889). Genealogists trace his line back to Germany in the 1600s [1]. His father was a traveling salesman of dubious products, such as "cancer cures." He was also a philanderer and a bigamist. As William was frequently gone for extended periods, Eliza struggled to maintain a semblance of stability at home. Young Rockefeller's contemporaries described him as articulate, methodical, and discreet. [2]. When he was a boy, his family moved from Richford to Moravia and, in 1851, to Owego, where he attended Owego Academy. In 1853, his family bought a house in Strongsville, a town close to Cleveland, Ohio.
Even as a young boy, John knew how to make money. He would buy candies and later sell them to his brothers and school children for profit.

At fifteen, John entered Central High School in Cleveland. He joined the Erie Street Baptist Church[3], where he became a deacon at the age of nineteen and a trustee at the age of 21. He left high school in 1855, to take a business course at Folsom Mercantile College, completing the six-month course in three months.
The 16-year-old Rockefeller found employment as an apprentice bookkeeper at Hewitt & Tuttle, commission merchants and produce shippers, for 5 cents a day. His seriousness, diligence, and honesty led to steadily increasing responsibilities and pay over the next two years. In 1859 he left to form his own produce commission business with a partner, Maurice Clark. Clark & Rockefeller quickly became a successful firm, and its partners accumulated enough capital to invest in other Cleveland businesses. In 1863, they invested in an oil refinery with a chemist Samuel Andrews.

Beginnings in oil

In 1865, Rockefeller had become so involved in the oil business and was so confident that at about the same time Rockefeller's brother, William Rockefeller, started another refinery. In 1867, Rockefeller & Andrew absorbed this business, and Henry M. Flagler joined the partnership, forming Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler. In 1870, the two Rockefellers, Andrews, Flagler, and a silent partner, Stephen V. Harkness, formed the Standard Oil Company, with John D. Rockefeller as president.

Family

Rockefeller married Laura Celestia ("Cettie") Spelman (September 22,1839 - March 12,1915), on September 8, 1864 in Cleveland. The couple had four daughters and a son, John Jr. The eldest daughter, Bessie (1866-1906), married Charles Strong, a philosopher. The second daughter, Alice (1869-1870), died in infancy. Alta (1871-1962), married E. Parmalee Prentice, a lawyer. The youngest daughter, Edith (1872-1932), married Harold Fowler McCormick, a friend of John, Jr., and son of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical harvesting reaper. His only son and scion, John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960), married Abigail "Abby" Greene Aldrich, the daughter of Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, the most powerful leader in the United States Senate, and eventually inherited much of the family fortune and expanded his father's philanthropic work.

Standard Oil

Main article: Standard Oil

As a youth, Rockefeller allegedly said that his two great ambitions were to make $100,000 and to live 100 years. Rockefeller died on May 23, 1937, 26 months shy of his 100th birthday, at the Casements, his home in Ormond Beach, Florida. He was buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

Rockefeller had a long and controversial career in industry followed by a long career in philanthropy. His image is an amalgam of all of these experiences and the many ways he was viewed by his contemporaries. These contemporaries include his former competitors, many of whom were driven to ruin, but many others of whom sold out at a profit (or a profitable stake in Standard Oil, as Rockefeller often offered his shares as payment for a business), and quite a few of whom became very wealthy as managers as well as owners in Standard Oil. They also include politicians and writers, some of whom served Rockefeller's interests, and some of whom built their careers by fighting Rockefeller and the "robber barons."
Biographer Allan Nevins, answering Rockefeller's enemies, concluded:

“ The rise of the Standard Oil men to great wealth was not from poverty. It was not meteor-like, but accomplished over a quarter of a century by courageous venturing in a field so risky that most large capitalists avoided it, by arduous labors, and by more sagacious and farsighted planning than had been applied to any other American industry. The oil fortunes of 1894 were not larger than steel fortunes, banking fortunes, and railroad fortunes made in similar periods. But it is the assertion that the Standard magnates gained their wealth by appropriating "the property of others" that most challenges our attention. We have abundant evidence that Rockefeller's consistent policy was to offer fair terms to competitors and to buy them out, for cash, stock, or both, at fair appraisals; we have the statement of one impartial historian that Rockefeller was decidedly "more humane toward competitors" than Carnegie; we have the conclusion of another that his wealth was "the least tainted of all the great fortunes of his day."[7]
”
Biographer Ron Chernow wrote of Rockefeller:
“ What makes him problematic—and why he continues to inspire ambivalent reactions—-is that his good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad. Seldom has history produced such a contradictory figure."[8]
”
Notwithstanding these varied aspects of his public life, Rockefeller may ultimately be remembered simply for the raw size of his wealth. In 1902, an audit showed Rockefeller was worth about $200 million—compared to the total national wealth that year of $101 billion. His wealth grew significantly after as the demand for gasoline soared, eventually reaching about $900 million, including significant interests in banking, shipping, mining, railroads, and other industries. By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller's remaining fortune, largely tied up in permanent family trusts, was estimated at $1.4 billion. Rockefeller's net worth over the last decades of his life would easily place him among the very wealthiest persons in history. As a percentage of the United States economy, no other American fortune—including Bill Gates or Sam Walton—would even come close.

The Rockefeller wealth, distributed as it was through a system of foundations and trusts, continued to fund family philanthropic, commercial, and, eventually, political aspirations throughout the 20th century. Grandson David Rockefeller was a leading New York banker, serving for over 20 years as CEO of Chase Manhattan (now the retail financial services arm of JP Morgan Chase). Another grandson, Nelson A. Rockefeller, was Republican governor of New York and the 41st Vice President of the United States. A third grandson, Winthrop Rockefeller, served as Republican Governor of Arkansas. Great-grandson, John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV is currently a Democratic Senator from West Virginia, and another, Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, served ten years as Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas.

Rockefeller has passed into popular culture as the embodiment of wealth. Oysters Rockefeller was named for him because the dish was so 'rich'. The Rockefeller family was a major benefactor in funding the reconstruction effort in France after World War I. As a consequence, Rockefeller (along with the Rothschilds) was considered in that country the canonical billionaire—synonymous with extreme wealth. John D. Rockerduck is a Disney character popular in Europe who is a foil to other well-known rich duck, the avaricious Scrooge McDuck
• "I had no ambition to make a fortune; mere moneymaking has never been my goal. I had an ambition to build." - John D. Rockefeller.
• "Two men have been supreme in creating the modern world: Rockefeller and Bismarck. One in economics, the other in politics, refuted the liberal dream of universal happiness through individual competition, substituting monopoly and the corporate state, or at least movements toward them" - Bertrand Russell, Freedom Versus Organization, 1814 to 1914, as quoted in Ron Chernow, Titan, (1998), preface.
• "Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good." - Rockefeller in a letter in 1885, to one of his partners in the Standard Oil Trust.
• When asked once, "How much money is
enough money?" he replied, "Just a little bit more." - John D. Rockefeller.
• "Mr. Rockefeller your fortune is rolling up, rolling up like an avalanche! You must keep up with it! You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you and your children and your children's children" - Frederick T. Gates in 1906, quoted in the PBS documentary: American Experience, The Rockefellers (Part 1).
• "On one occasion, Rockefeller met in Pittsburgh with a group of refiners. After the meeting, several of the refiners went off to dinner. The talk centered on the taciturn, ungregarious, menacing man from Cleveland. 'I wonder how old he is,' a refiner said. Various other refiners offered their guesses. 'I've been watching him,' one finally said. 'He lets everybody else talk, while he sits back and says nothing. But he seems to remember everything, and when he does begin he puts everything in its proper place... I guess he's 140 years old - for he must have been 100 years old when he was born'" - Quoted from Daniel Yergin's book, The Prize, (1991), (p.47).
• "Let us prey." -- John D. Rockefeller.
• "Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty." -- John D. Rockefeller.

Children
• Elizabeth Rockefeller (1866–1906)
• Alice Rockefeller (July 14, 1869–August 20, 1870)
• Alta Rockefeller (1871–1962)
• Edith Rockefeller (1872–1932)
• John Davidson Rockefeller Jr (1874–1960)

Rockefeller family
The Rockefeller family, founded by John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) ("Senior") and his brother William Rockefeller (1841-1922), is an American industrial, banking, and philanthropic family of British-French-German-American origin that made the world's largest private fortune in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th century, primarily through the Standard Oil Company.[1] The family is also known for its long association with and financial interest in the Chase Manhattan Bank, now JP Morgan Chase.

Name and origin
The name is an Americanized version of the German and French Rokkenfelder or Rockenfeller, meaning from Rockenfeld. This indicates the latter origins of the family, which can be traced back to the villages of Ehlscheid, Segendorf and Fahr, (all suburbanised to Neuwied). These are neighbored to the small settlement of Rockenfeld - part of Neuwied's quarter Feldkirchen.[2] In Germany, the version Rockenfeller is known as a family name.


However, it is sometimes stated that the Rockefeller surname originated from the Roquefeuille, from the region of Limousin, France. If true, that may explain why they were located in the Midwest, where most of the French immigrants settled. This New France, which consisted of 15 states north of Louisiana, was home to more than 150,000 Frenchmen and women in 1803 when Louisiana was sold to the USA. In France, the version Roquefeuille is also known as a family name. Back in the 16th century, French nobles were Protestant and fled the absolutist Catholic regime to go to Germany. They dispersed throughout the German kingdoms and Switzerland. This is generally the favored version of historians to explain the ultimate roots of the Rockefeller name. The name may also come from the "Roquefeuil", a Catholic family from the region of Languedoc (France).

The earliest known ancestor is Goddart Rockenfeller (1590, Fahr).[3] The Rockefeller family is descended from Johann Peter Rockenfeller (1682–1763), grandson of Goddart, and Johann Thiel Rockenfeller (1695–1796), great-grandson of Goddart. Johann Peter immigrated to New Jersey from the German Palatinate in 1723 and acquired large landholdings.
His grandson, William, married a distant relative, Christina, the granddaughter of a cousin of Johann Peter. This marriage produced a son, Godfrey, who married Lucy Avery in 1806. Avery's ancestors were part of the Puritan tide from Devon, England to Massachusetts around 1630. Lucy Avery could justly claim descent from Edmund Ironside, the English king, crowned in 1016.
Godfrey and Lucy eventually shifted to the remote, backwater stagecoach stop of Richford, in the western part of New York State. Their son, William Avery Rockefeller (1810–1906) was a trader in salt and timber who adopted a vagabond life as a confidence man and was known as "Big Bill", who sired two illegitimate children to his housekeeper. He married up, to Eliza Davison in 1837; her father, John Davison, was relatively rich for the time. Their second child was John Davison Rockefeller, and their third William Rockefeller.[4]

Generational philanthropy

The members of the Rockefeller family are noted for their philanthropy; a Rockefeller Archive Center study in 2004 documents an incomplete list of 72 major institutions that the family has created and/or endowed up to the present day.[5] Historically, the major focus of their benefactions have been in the educational, health and conservation areas. However, through its principal philanthropic organisation, the Rockefeller Foundation (established in 1913), and more recently the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1940) and the Rockefeller Family Fund (1967), this focus extends outwards to encompass every major facet of American society.
Family leaders in both philanthropy and business have included John D. Sr., John D. Jr. ("Junior"), John D. 3rd, Laurance Rockefeller and David Rockefeller, who is the family's current patriarch. Several family members have held high public office, including Vice President of the United States (Nelson Rockefeller), United States Senator (Jay Rockefeller), state Governor (Nelson, Jay, and Winthrop Rockefeller), and Lieutenant Governor (Winthrop Paul Rockefeller). Another noted family member was Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson, an anthropologist who came to media attention after he was presumed killed in New Guinea in 1961.

The corporate, financial and personal affairs of the family - numbering around 150 blood relatives of John D. Rockefeller - are run from the family office, Room 5600, known officially as "Rockefeller Family and Associates". It comprises three floors of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center; all private family legal matters are handled by the family-associated New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Room 5600 is also the base of the current family historian, Peter J. Johnson, who assisted with David Rockefeller's Memoirs, published in 2002.

To distinguish the generations and facilitate communication, the fourth generation is generically known as "The Cousins" (24 in all, with 21 still living) and the younger family members are known as the "Fifth/Sixth" generation. Many if not all of these family members are involved in institutionalised philanthropic pursuits. Family links are solidified through the practice of ritualised family meetings - which started with the regular "brothers' meetings" held in Room 5600 or in their respective private residences, beginning in 1945. Family get-togethers are held today at the "Playhouse", in the Westchester County family estate of Pocantico, in June (the "cousins weekend") and December of each year (see Kykuit).

In addition to this is Senior and Junior's involvement in seven major housing developments: Forest Hill Estates in Cleveland, Ohio; the City Housing Corporation's efforts at Sunnyside Gardens in Queens (NY); Thomas Garden Apartments in the Bronx (NY); Paul Lawrence Dunbar Housing in Harlem; Lavoisier Apartments in Manhattan (NY); Van Tassel Apartments in Tarrytown, New York; and a development in Radburn, New Jersey.[6] A further project involved David Rockefeller in a major middle-income housing development when he was elected in 1947 as chairman of Morningside Heights Inc. in Manhattan by fourteen major institutions that were based in the area, including Columbia University. The result, in 1951, was the six-building apartment complex known as Morningside Gardens.[7]

Senior's donations led to the formation of the University of Chicago in 1889, the Nobel prize-winning University where the first American Nobel Prize in science was produced in 1907, and notable for the Chicago School of Economics.[8]. This was one instance of a long family and Rockefeller Foundation tradition of financially supporting Ivy League and other colleges and universities over the generations - seventy-five in total. This includes Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Columbia University, and Cornell University. This financial assistance extends overseas to the likes of London School of Economics and University College London, amongst many others.[9]
Senior (and Junior) also created the Rockefeller University in 1901; the General Education Board in 1902, which later (1923) evolved into the International Education Board; the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1910; the Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1913 (Junior); the International Health Commission in 1913; and the China Medical Board in 1915.

In the 1920s, the International Education Board granted important fellowships to pathbreakers in modern mathematics, such as S.Banach, B.L.van der Waerden and Andri Weil, which was a formative part of the gradual shift of world mathematics to the US over this period. To help promote cooperation between physics and mathematics Rockefeller funds also supported the erection of the new Mathematical Institute in Gottingen University between 1926 and 1929, while the rise of probability and mathematical statistics owes much to the creation of the Institute Henri Poincari in Paris by American philanthropy also around this time.[10]

Junior also financially supported numerous other major institutions, notable among them his ongoing support for the highly influential foreign policy think tank, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, established in 1921. In 1978 the Rockefeller Foundation initiated the founding of the high-powered financial advisory council called the Group of Thirty, as well as many grants to a myriad of universities, think tanks and other institutions.
Junior was also responsible for the creation and endowment of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which operates the restored historical town at Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the most extensive historic restorations ever undertaken in history.

Conservation
Beginning with Rockefeller Senior, the family has been a major force in land conservation. Over the generations, it has created more than 20 national parks and open spaces, including the Cloisters, Acadia National Park, Forest Hill Park, the Nature Conservancy, and Grand Teton National Park, amongst many others. Rockefeller Jr, and his son Laurance (and his son Larry) were particularly prominent in this area. Most of these efforts were accomplished without public fanfare.
The family was honored for its conservation efforts in November, 2005, by the National Audubon Society, one of America's largest and oldest conservation organizations, at which over 30 family members attended. At the event, the society's president, John Flicker, notably stated: "Cumulatively, no other family in America has made the contribution to conservation that the Rockefeller family has made".[11]

International politics/finance/economics

The family has been awarded the annual UNA-USA’s Global Leadership Award, along with other recipients over time, including Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg. Members of the Rockefeller family into the fourth generation (especially the prominent banker and statesman David Rockefeller, who is the present family patriarch) have been heavily involved in international politics, and have donated money, established or be
Historians studying the economic developments of the Gilded Age open themselves to questions about the proper methods of business that have never been comfortably resolved. The "second industrial revolution" surpassed the textile factories of England in bringing consumers large quantities of useful commodities at affordable prices, and producers had either to adapt to the new economy of mass production or sell to larger producers. In many cases, single figures all but eradicated the competition and exerted what some considered an undue influence over the market of a particular commodity.

One figure who thrived in this atmosphere was John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who outwitted his competitors in the oil refining business and obtained close to 90 percent of the American market, becoming the world's first billionaire in the process. Ron Chernow's thoughtful biography Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York, 1998), gives us an opportunity to discuss the issue of why monopolies are such a feared economic development, and if this fear is well-placed, how they affect consumers and other businesses.
Monopoly presents the economic theorist with a dilemma. In theory, the only way for a firm to become a monopoly, outside government sponsorship, is to win the loyalty of consumers by lowering prices and creating a more useful product than competitors. Would-be monopolists are a positive force in capitalistic systems because they have an incentive to bestow such benefits on consumers, in hope of later charging high, monopolistic prices. Paradoxically, if firms have a real chance at becoming a monopoly, the economy is in danger from monopolies that charge higher prices.

The ideal economic system for the consumer, then, would cajole producers into thinking that they have a chance at obtaining a monopoly without actually giving them the chance. This is, of course, unworkable, but the apologist for monopolies contends that a system with a real chance of monopoly is the best we can achieve in a less-than-ideal world. The danger of prospective competitors and substitute products would keep prices down, they claim, and that the benefits conferred in pursuit of monopoly outweigh the marginally higher prices that set in after the monopoly is achieved. Does history justify this economic theory? From the evidence given in Titan, what situation really existed in the paradigm case of Standard Oil? Did this situation warrant the antitrust case against it?


One way in which a business can confer benefits on consumers is to provide a superior product. Did Standard Oil fulfill the free market economist's promise of monopoly in this manner? Here, we must digress from Standard Oil to illustrate the role oil played in the economy of Standard Oil's time. Oil provided an affordable way to light people's homes in the evening. When refined into kerosene, it was the only "cheap illuminant that burned in a bright, clean, safe manner," by far better than blubber and lard (p. 73). Oil was also available in much larger quantities than earlier products, and therefore cheaper. Prior to kerosene lamps, most lamps consisted of whale blubber. The whaling industry had already hunted sperm whales close to extinction, and desperate whaling ships were pursuing them in icy waters. By the mid 1860s, whale-oil was unaffordable to most people, and to the extent that it could light homes, was an unsustainable source of light. The amount of oil one well could produce in a day exceeded the amount of whale oil collected from two to three years of whaling in the depleted oceans of the 1860s.[1]
Oil was also a far better lubricant than lard, which greased the gears of most engines and factories before the 1860s. Within five years of the development of the oil industry, oil replaced lard.[2] By the 1880s, oil refiners developed varieties of oil suited to different lubricating jobs, whereas the lubricant made from animal fat had been one and all-purpose.
Standard Oil, however, cannot receive the credit for this technological progress. John D. Rockefeller was mostly in the business of refining oil, rather than gathering crude oil from oil wells. Before the 1860s, kerosene was refined from coal, and the process by which kerosene was refined from oil was readily adapted from the coal refinery before Standard Oil was founded. Even the technology for the transportation of oil--pipelines and single iron tank cars--was established before Rockefeller's entry.


Rockefeller was unquestionably an able, hands-on businessperson. He oversaw every step of the production process in the early years. Chernow writes that "he was often seen at Kingsbury Run at 6:30 A.M., going into the cooper shop to roll out barrels, stack hoops, or cart out shavings, reflecting the thrift inculcated by his mother and his puritanical religious upbringing" (p. 79). He made small improvements to cut waste. For example, he hired chemists to increase the kerosene yield per barrel of oil. He also tried to make use of the by-products of oil, selling benzine, paraffin, and petroleum jelly, and at one point drawing up plans to convert sulfuric acid into fertilizer (p. 100). Rockefeller found that he could obtain better barrels, and at lower prices, by having Standard Oil produce them. Standard Oil could then make them for less than a dollar per barrel, down from $2.50 from external barrel suppliers (p. 100).
Nevertheless, Rockefeller's main advantage over other oil refiners was, at first, his ability to obtain loans, and later, his ability to obtain low rates from railroads. The confidence of bankers in Rockefeller enabled him to secure loans, develop a deep war chest, and buy out other Cleveland refineries. Local bankers trusted Rockefeller because of his strict adherence to Baptist morality, honest presentations of his business predicament, and outstanding credit history (p. 105). In addition, his brother William proved to be adept at securing loans from banks in New York City, where credit was more loose. By 1868, John D. Rockefeller's refining capacity was larger than the next three largest refineries combined.

He could then secure concessions from railroads by promising large, steady volumes of oil. He managed to promise sixty carloads daily, partly by arranging for shipments from other refiners. Railroads could load oil from warehouses (that Rockefeller provided) straight onto a train composed solely of oil tanks, instead of having a train composed of different types of freight cars stopping at random points to load oil from smaller refiners. Rockefeller also appeased his railroad customers by constructing the facilities for loading oil near the train stations, building and renting his own oil-tank cars, and assuming responsibility for accidents on railroad property (p. 113). Rockefeller's Cleveland-based victory over Pittsburgh refiners was fortuitous, as Pittsburgh refiners could not persuade obtuse railroad owners to grant discounts. The Pennsylvania Railroad charged high rates for Pittsburgh refiners to ship their oil to New York and Philadelphia, not realizing that over time, they were allowing competition in Cleveland to wipe out their Pittsburgh customers.
To some extent, Rockefeller's management resulted in lower prices for consumers, but a quantitative study of Standard Oil's impact on consumers is problematic due to its secret discounts p. (259). The cost of processing a gallon of crude oil dropped from 2.5 to 1.5 cents between 1880 and 1885, while between 1870 and 1890, the market price of Standard Oil dropped from 23.5 cents per gallon to 7.5 cents per gallon. Rockefeller's critics attribute this drop to a fall in crude oil prices, though Rockefeller claimed that this only accounted for half the drop (p. 258).


On top of this long-term drop, consumers indulged themselves in the occasional periods in which prices were cut to the bone to drive competitors out of business. Chernow estimates that Standard Oil charged unprofitably low prices in 9,000 out 37,000 towns where tank wagons distributed the oil (p. 259). According to economic theory, firms in a capitalist economy will not cut prices below cost for long time periods, for the price cuts will cut into profits. But this was just what Rockefeller did, because profits were not his only concern (p. 265). Rockefeller had an emotional need for stability, and he eliminated all significant competitors at a cost to his profits.
If the benefits to foreign consumers count, Standard Oil usually kept foreign prices depressed--subsidized by higher prices to American consumers--to maintain a market in Asian and European countries, in which competition from Russian oil at times captured the market from Standard Oil. In the 1870s, Standard Oil was providing free kerosene lamps to remote parts of the world, and teaching foreigners to use them, in order to build a global consumer base (p. 244).

The domestic price of oil declined during the long reign of John D. Rockefeller, but who knows whether prices would have become even lower if Rockefeller had not acquired such a large percentage of the oil market. By the time Standard Oil was founded in 1870, transient oil refiners overcrowded the oil refining business to the point where many refiners sold at a loss. Chernow writes that "With sky-high profits and ridiculously low start up costs, the field had soon grown overcrowded.... Rampant speculation had so overbuilt the industry that total refining capacity in 1870 was triple the amount of crude oil being pumped" (p. 130).

Contrary to neoclassical economic theory, these conditions did not discourage people from entering or remaining in the field. Chernow explains that "the oil market didn't correct itself...because refiners carried heavy bank debt and other fixed costs, and they discovered that, by operating at a loss, they could still service some debt" (p. 149). All oil refiners, including Rockefeller, risked bankruptcy while competing with firms selling below cost. Certainly, Rockefeller was able to lower his prices due to economies of scale, but had his competitors continued to sell at a loss, he may have been forced to reduce prices even more than he historically did. The virtual monopoly of Standard Oil was not in the interest of the lowest possible prices, unless the plethora of unprofitable oil operations would have driven it out of business before it could utilize economies of scale.
The whole point of Rockefeller's efforts to consolidate the oil-refining industry under his thumb was to sell at profitable prices and avoid the unprofitably low prices of the early oil industry. In the early oil industry, oil refiners obtained more investments when oil was more scarce and the price was high; French and German investors would not lend William Rockefeller money when news of abundant crude oil reached New York City Rockefeller's greatest nightmare was to "drown in a sea of cheap oil that would drag prices below their overhead costs".

Rockefeller's contemporaries resented him because he acquired a fortune by what it thought to be unfair, ruthless dealings with competitors and other businesses, some of which may have violated common law. The earliest episode that provoked a public outcry was the South Improvement Company (SIC), a "grand scale collusion such as American industry had never witnessed" (). Tom Scott, the overlord of the Pennsylvania Railroad, first proposed the secret cartel among Standard Oil and three major railroads (the Pennsylvania, New York Central, and Erie railroads), in which the railroads would not only give rebates to Standard Oil and a few other large refiners, but also raise rates for all other oil refiners. Additionally, the SIC oil refiners would receive "drawbacks," which were rebates on oil shipped by other refiners, and information about the prices charged by other oil refiners, which would allow Rockefeller to underprice them. Chernow exclaims "On shipments from Pennsylvania to Cleveland, for instance, Standard Oil would receive a forty-cent rebate on every barrel it shipped, plus another forty cents for every barrel shipped to Cleveland by competitors!"
Rockefeller could obtain this bargain by agreeing not to ship oil on other railroads or waterways, and use their railroads consistently. The lure of a large, predictable customer was irresistible.

While rumors of this conspiracy circulated in the oil industry, Rockefeller acquired 22 out of 26 of his Cleveland competitors (Rockefeller did not directly allude to the SIC in his negotiations, but these acquisitions would not have taken place so quickly without the rumors. Chernow writes that "The threat of the SIC, critics alleged, was the invisible club that he had waved over Cleveland refiners, forcing them to submit to his domination" Rockefeller's most significant competitor, James Clark, later told critic Ida Tarbell that fear of the SIC caused him to sell to Rockefeller (With the exception of Clark, Rockefeller bought these competitors at prices equivalent to only a quarter of their original construction costs.
Had the plan succeeded, the rebates may have enabled Rockefeller to sell oil at lower prices. Historians have no way of knowing, since the public retaliated against the SIC as the news soon leaked out. In nonviolent protest, many oil drillers signed a pledge not to sell oil to Standard Oil and other conspirators printed on blacklists. Thousands of people held public demonstrations, and vandals attacked Standard oil barrels and oil cars. So great was the public opinion against Standard Oil that people would not (or could not, due to fear for their safety) purchase it, and Rockefeller laid off 90% of his workers in 1872 .

After the SIC led to the "Cleveland Massacre," Rockefeller started a similar cartel called the National Refiner's Association, which differed by being open to all interested parties. Rockefeller designed the association this way because the secrecy and exclusivity of the SIC aroused so much protest .
Competition thwarted this cartel when members reneged on the deal, exceeding their quotas. Moreover, "free riders" outside the cartel benefitted from higher prices without restraining their own output. The National Refiner's Association was soon dissolved. Though Standard Oil later recovered and prospered, these events surely revealed to future entrepreneurs that they could not join cartels and trusts at no risk. Competitors and consumers checked outrageous price agreements while the law turned its head the other way.

Having tried other paths to restricting overproduction, Rockefeller started what Chernow calls an "unrelenting campaign of national consolidation," buying out competitors nationally as he had done in Cleveland). When industries refused to sell, Rockefeller engaged in predatory pricing in the local areas subject to competition. He required that grocers and hardware merchants sell only Standard Oil, or else he would drive them out of business with his own retail tank wagons

Rockefeller could also dictate the business of railroads, since he could delay shipment of the lubricating grease they needed to run their trains. He had the railroads thwart his competitors by cutting off transportation for non-customers, agreeing not to ship products by or to businesses that did not buy Standard Oil, or raising rates for problem customers
Rockefeller's effort to eliminate intermediaries and market Standard Oil directly to retailers by tank wagons won resentment from thousands of small retailers. Rockefeller forced these people to sell only Standard Oil. If they did not comply, Standard Oil would either sell oil door-to-door or open its own general store to drive them out of business. His station managers had to command at least 85% of the local oil trade, and it was understood that they were to spy on other distributors to make sure they were not selling competitors' oil. Incidentally, the direct control over retail probably benefitted consumers, as intermediaries had increased the price of each gallon by three to five cents for their own profit, and often mixed inferior kerosene with Standard Oil kerosene.

Rockefeller succeeded in his campaign of consolidation by 1877, when he controlled the oil markets of Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, and Baltimore, forming a total of 90% of the market. By the time Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, it faced competition from various companies in Texas and Russia, but these competitors would not have existed if political reasons did not preclude Rockefeller from eliminating them. In Texas, state antitrust laws and popular animosity toward Rockefeller made the making or selling of Standard Oil difficult, making room for new companies like Texaco. Foreign governments were simply beyond the reach of Rockefeller to obtain protection.

Chernow notes some of the disincentives that unregulated capitalism offered against Rockefeller's techniques, calling them "expensive extravagances that accompanied the creation of the monopoly" ). Some of the competitors Rockefeller bought out started up new oil firms, and many refiners entered the business just so that Rockefeller would buy them out. Rockefeller started hiring the original competitors as managers at wages above their value to him, paying them not to produce. Expensive skeleton crews were maintained on plants that were producing little or no oil. Rockefeller also bought shares in newspapers to disseminate Standard Oil's version of current events, and hired critics to work for Standard Oil to silence them

The market was inadequate to prevent Standard Oil from acquiring 90 percent of the oil refining industry. Costs such as the skeleton crews, selling below cost, and buying out competitors did not prevent Rockefeller from obtaining monopoly; although they did cost him money, he still had reduced the oil refining market to token competition by 1877. Sometimes, as with Oil Creek refineries in Pennsylvania, firms that Rockefeller bought would take on a name other than Standard Oil, so that they did not arouse hatred of Rockefeller among the workers or consumers of this oil. Consumers who thought they were buying a different brand of oil in protest were often buying Standard Oil
Part of the reason critics saw need for regulation was, ironically, other government regulations that worked in Standard Oil's favor. Rockefeller resorted using government to weed out competitors, in the late 1870's. His many attempts to bribe legislators to root out competition are too numerous to be labeled as exceptions. In 1879, Standard Oil had a near monopoly in the new method of oil transport - pipelines. A serious competitor emerged in Pennsylvania with the Tidewater Pipe Line Company. When the usual tactics failed, Standard Oil bought exclusive charters, or rights to build pipelines, in states where Tidewater planned to develop a pipeline. Not only did Standard Oil take advantage of exclusive charters, but it also lobbied and bribed legislators to continue the practice of them. Chernow writes "During the Tidewater battle, Standard lobbied hard to perpetuate the system that allowed state legislatures to grant exclusive pipeline charters...to foster the impression of a popular groundswell against the bill, he hired lawyers to pose as incensed farmers and landowners in favor of the status quo...."


The combination of predatory pricing and state charters ultimately led Tidewater to make a pact with Standard Oil, restricting its activities to 11.5 percent of the pipeline business and leaving the rest of the market to Standard Oil. In mixed economies, people may fear a monopolist because a person with so much control over the market has the opportunity to use the regulatory power of the state for his or her own benefit.

Even if Standard Oil were clearly, on balance, good for society, the reaction of politicians would be that its business practices were "still wrong." In 1890, during the debate over the Sherman Act, Representative William Mason argued that "trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the 'trusts' which have destroyed honest men from legitimate business enterprise" (Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 1st session, House, June 20, 1890, p. 4100). Later in the debate, Senator George F. Edmunds argues that although "the oil trust has reduced the price of oil immensely, that does not alter the wrong of the principle of any trust"

The popular sentiment against Standard Oil that made the antitrust case politically fruitful was produced by sensational news stories that presented business history as a tale of "good-guys" versus "bad-guys." Ida Tarbell's reports in McClure's Magazine and Henry Demarest Lloyd's Wealth Against Commonwealth mobilized public opinion against Rockefeller, who was unofficially retired by the twentieth century. Historians still cite these works as evidence of Standard Oil's depravity.

Apart from the aforementioned stories of unfair business practices, the most noticed parts of both works were the ad hominem attacks on Rockefeller and other high officials of Standard Oil. Lloyd's work was so vitriolic that he did not refer to Rockefeller or Standard Oil by name to avoid libel prosecution. Wealth Against Commonwealth pronounced blatant falsehoods, accusing Standard Oil of routinely keeping prices high and making secret arrangements with European competitors. Chernow writes that Lloyd "filled notebooks with flaming diatribes against . . . a cruel, selfish, carnivorous, short-sighted herd" and "ennobled any businessman, however greedy or inept, who opposed Rockefeller" The book's inflammatory character made its influence all the more seminal among politicians, becoming "the bible of Washington trustbusters," and the final straw that motivated Ida Tarbell to launch her attacks on Standard Oil

Ida Tarbell had watched Rockefeller put her father and other independent oil refiners out of business in her hometown of Titusville. Her motive was not to indict Rockefeller for his impact on consumers at large, then, but on other oil refiners. Chernow writes that "It revolted Ida that the trust could turn proud, independent entrepreneurs into beaten men taking orders from distant bosses" (p. 436). Contrary to the stories of "Miss Tarbarrel," as Rockefeller referred to her, the independent refiners engaged in anti-competitive agreements when they could, and many small oil producers--who Rockefeller eventually bought out along with the refiners--also resorted to violence rather than competition, destroying pumps and wells. Chernow writes "The producers terrorized each other, meting out nocturnal punishment...by setting their wells ablaze or smashing their pumping engines with sledgehammers. The producing end of the industry was populated by thousands of free booting, high-spirited speculators who were far harder to organize than the more sober refiners...."

Tarbell revived an inaccurate story that Rockefeller had defrauded Mrs. Fred M. Backus, an elderly widow who sold her Cleveland lubricating plant in 1878. Backus' factory was highly inefficient and headed toward bankruptcy, but Rockefeller had offered $79,000 for it (out of goodwill toward an old acquaintance), which was at least twice the cost of constructing a better factory (447). Backus estimated the factory's price at $150,000, and was furious at Rockefeller during the whole episode. Far from being an impoverished victim of capitalism, she was worth $300,000 at her death (p. 447). Chernow writes that the story's "Dickensian ring" caused it to spread like wildfire in the press and McClure's readership of 375,000--including President Roosevelt (
.
Tarbell issued memorable diatribes against Rockefeller's personality and presence. She described him as a "living mummy" and a citizen whose churchgoing habits were only a "hypocritical facade brilliantly created by the predatory businessman" (p. 453). She completed her portrait with his physical appearance as an elderly man: "The disease which in the last three or four years has swept Mr. Rockefeller's head bare of hair, stripped away even eyelashes and eyebrows, has revealed all the strength of his great head.... The big cheeks are puffy, bulging unpleasantly under the eyes, and the skin which covers them has a curiously unhealthy pallor. It is this puffiness, this unclean flesh, which repels, as the thin slit of a mouth terrifies..."

Tarbell had also included "dirt" on Rockefeller's family, including his bitter and paranoid brother Frank, who called John a "monster," even though he depended on him for loans to finance his prodigal spending habits (p. 455). Most devastating to Rockefeller himself was the publication of the activities of his utterly depraved father, "Doc" William Avery Rockefeller, a lifelong con artist who employed the name Dr. William Levingston ever since he left his first wife for an unsuspecting younger woman.
The public was aggravated by Rockefeller's refusal to answer to the writers' charges. Standard Oil had no public relations department, and Rockefeller thought that he should not dignify the charges with a response, believing the public furor would subside. He greatly underestimated the growing influence of the press during the Progressive Era.

President Roosevelt initiated the campaign to break up Standard Oil. Roosevelt was not against trusts per se, but trusts "which gouged consumers." He favored maintaining trusts "which offered fair prices and good service" (p. 433). The price of Standard Oil fell during the nineteenth century, but the new boss, John Archbold, had increased prices during Roosevelt's time. When Roosevelt gained momentum in 1903 - by informing reporters that Rockefeller used his connections in Congress to fight the Elkins Act (which strengthened penalties against railroad rebates)--he zeroed in on the prey.

The breakup of Standard Oil may have been in the interest of lower oil prices. John Archbold raised the price of Standard Oil to increase average dividends to larger figures than Rockefeller would have permitted, keeping the twenty five-year average at 13.86%, whereas Rockefeller's average had been 8%. It was under Archbold's leadership that Standard Oil was broken up in 1911. Presidents Roosevelt and Taft claimed that they were not against trusts in and of themselves, but trusts that used their competitive advantages to raise prices. Would the antitrust case discourage future "titans" from doing their best work in industry? Rockefeller himself was imbued with missionary zeal, and would have been likely to expand his business as far as possible, even with constant pressure from antitrust laws.

Ron Chernow's Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., shows that in the case of Standard Oil, the Gilded Age's most notorious monopoly, the benefits conferred on consumers in pursuit of monopoly were ambiguous. However, net economic benefits to consumers were far from the minds of journalists and politicians, who used inappropriate criteria to excite popular agitation against Standard Oil. At best, politicians and intellectuals measured the plight of businesses displaced or harassed by Standard Oil against the success of Standard Oil, rather than measuring the plight against the advantages of a non-antitrust policy to the public. Standard Oil was and is judged not on the basis of whether it was, on balance, good for society, but whether it adhered to a moral obligation to refrain from eliminating competition.