Rockefeller, John Davison

ROCKEFELLER, JOHN DAVISON

The name Rockefeller has become synonymous with the idea of enormous personal wealth. In ordinary language one many hear the phrase "rich as Rockefeller," an enduring popular legacy for the man who built the largest fortune ever up to that time seen in the United States. John D. Rockefeller (1839–1932) created an oil empire that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution.

John Davison Rockefeller was born in 1839 in Richford, New York. His Baptist upbringing taught the young Rockefeller to be frugal, hard-working, and self-reliant. He despised waste and had a quiet disposition. Rockefeller's subdued character masked an aggressive ambition that would take him to the heights of success. In 1855, at age 16, he graduated from high school and began work as a bookkeeping clerk in Cleveland, Ohio. After four years Rockefeller left bookkeeping behind to start his own business in the new and rapidly growing oil industry.

As an entrepreneur, Rockefeller drew on the qualities instilled in him at childhood to run a successful and profitable business. He tried to save costs where possible and constantly reinvested his savings into his business. Rockefeller's business philosophy was akin to Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of the "survival of the fittest." He could be a ruthless businessman, using harsh and even unethical methods to succeed, often driving his competition out of business.

By the 1870s Rockefeller's oil business grew to include refineries, lubrication plants, pipelines, cooperage plants, and other enterprises. The wide reach of his investments created an unwieldy and complicated business that Rockefeller controlled with an iron fist.

Rockefeller delegated management of his oil properties to 40 allied firms that, in 1882, centralized his operations under the Standard Oil Trust. The Standard Oil Trust monopolized 90 percent of all oil business in the United States and extended its influence into other parts of the world as well. It stifled competition in the oil industry.

While Rockefeller's business grew, the oil industry expanded. Rockefeller's increasing control over this important industry caused the United States government to examine more closely the fairness of trade and competition in the industry. The Ohio Supreme Court first asserted the illegality of Rockefeller's Trust in 1892. In 1870 Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in part as a response against vast and powerful empires such as Rockefeller's. However it wasn't until 1911, under President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), that the United States Supreme Court prosecuted the Standard Oil Trust for violation of anti-trust laws and dissolved its practices as "a monopoly in restraint of trade." By the time the Supreme Court completed its case against the Standard Oil Trust, John Rockefeller had pulled away from active involvement in his company's practices. He turned his attention to business ventures in minerals and ore in northwestern United States, and he developed ore operations in Colorado, Washington, and Minnesota.

John Rockefeller was one of the most successful U.S. entrepreneurs. He amassed a fortune of close to $1 billion, an outrageous sum for his day. Despite his enormous wealth Rockefeller did not forget his early upbringing. He regularly contributed to charity and created the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the University of Chicago. John D. Rockefeller died at age 97 in Ormund Beach, Florida, on May 23, 1937.

See also: Petroleum Industry, Robber Barons, Standard Oil Company

FURTHER READING

Aiken, Edward N. Flager: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1991.

Carr, Albert H. John D. Rockefeller's Secret Weapon. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962.

Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.. New York: Random House, 1998.

Gitelman, Howard M. Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

Hawkes, David F. John D.: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers. New York: Harper and Row, 1980.