John Davison Rockefeller also knows as Rockefeller was born July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York state. Rockefeller was an American business magnate and philanthropist. His parents were William Avery Rockefeller and his mother, Eliza Davison had a total of six children, and his father earned the nickname “Big Bill” for his personality. Bill calls himself a traveling “Botanic physician”. Bill didn’t embrace the whole morality idea, and when he wasn’t running around the country selling elixirs to cure diseases he was seeing his many girlfriends.
These types of vendors knowingly sold fake products to the people, promising that their so-called elixirs could cure practically anything. They were usually charismatic showmen who truly knew how to get people so excited about a product to the point where they were practically begging to give their money away. He got the name “Devil Bill” for his shady line of work.
He started a double life with a woman named Nancy Brown and had children with her. Young John at the time was raised by her mother. John D. Rockefeller’s father taught him to never trust anyone. Once in childhood, Big Bill opened his arms to catch John when he was still just a toddler, but when the boy jumped, his father stepped back, and let him fall on the floor to teach this lesson. Bill would also trick John and his children by making promises he never intended to keep, just so he could get them to do extra chores. Big Bill once said, “I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ’em sharp.”
John D. Rockefeller’s father taught him how to sell something not so good and make it sound great, while his mother taught him to save that cash and then invest it and turn it into more cash. This is how he became the richest person of all time if you compare what he had then to the economy at large. John Rockefeller was the oldest son in his family, he was the “man of the house” so he also had to earn money for his family. when his father was gone. As a child, he would help his mother raise turkeys in their backyard so that they could sell the meats in the market. He did odd jobs for their neighbors, and for the most part, were forced to fend for themselves without much help from his father.
By the time he was 12, he had saved $50 from selling turkeys and doing small jobs. The year was 1851. You might think $50 is not much to you, but if we look at the inflation calculator we are told that in 2020 that would be worth $1,675. Not bad for 12 years old boy. He decided to save his money, and never waste it on frivolous things.
Personal Life Of Rockefeller
Even though there’s much information out there about the financial success of John D. Rockefeller, he was a fiercely private person, and he tried his best to stay his family out of the newspapers. What we do know is that when he was 25 years old in 1864, he married a lady named Laura Spelman. She was a devout Christian who worked as a faculty teacher, and that they were considerably crazy with each other. He said of her, “Her judgment was always better than mine. Without her keen advice, I would be a poor man.”
He wrote her beautiful love letters when he had to travel for business. He once wrote “What a blessing that I have such a good and true wife. How much I would give for wings to reach you tonight.” All of this romance cause the creation of their children together; Elizabeth, Alice, Alta, Edith, and John Jr. Sadly, Alice died during infancy. Even though he was very busy, he always made time to be with his family. He was a loving father and a faithful husband who never took them without any consideration.
Where did Rockefeller get his education
The family moved to Strongsville, Ohio a couple of years later and John did his schooling in Cleveland’s Central High School, but he dropped out from high school for becoming a businessman Then he took a 10-week business course at Folsom’s Commercial College, where he studied bookkeeping, commercial history, banking, and currency exchange. All the time Rockefeller’s father was explaining to him how to sell anything and his mother was inculcating in him how to be smart with the money.
John Rockefeller First Job Experience
It’s not surprising then that John’s first job was as an accountant’s clerk, he has enough experience to get him a job as an assistant bookkeeper for local merchants called Hewett & Tuttle on September 25th, 1855, when he was just 16 years old, but always dressed like an aged man in dark suits and dark ties. He gained a lot of valuable experience at this job, but the only problem was that his bosses only paid him 50 cents a day. Even after inflation, that’s still only $13.36, which was nowhere near enough to make a full-time living.
Even though they weren’t paying him much, Rockefeller was always extremely proud of the day he got his first job. He made September 25th into his holiday called “job day”, and he celebrated the anniversary every year for the rest of his life.
John Rockefeller Business Career
Rockefeller had been friendly with the customers at Hewett & Tuttle. This gave him a great reputation around town. He was always paying close attention to how everything worked, and he eventually learned all of the tactics necessary to start his own business. Since everyone in town knew him, he managed to get a $4,000 loan, which is worth approximately $135,000 today. This was quite enough to start a business in goods like hay, meat, and grain.
He earns $450,000 profit in the first year of his business. He didn’t get to keep that money for himself, of course, because a lot of that had to go back into repaying the loan and business expenses. But this was a great start to what would be a long and prosperous career in business. John Rockefeller said, “God gave me the money”, and he did not apologize for it. In 1861, the United States broke out into Civil War, and Rockefeller felt very strongly about being an Abolitionist.
Rockefeller’s younger brother Frank became wounded in battle very early in the war. When John was drafted, he paid a professional soldier to go in his place. That way, he was ready to continue running his business and contribute to the war effort at an equivalent time. He said, “I wanted to go in the army and do my part, but it was simply out of the question. There was no one to take my place. We were in a new business, and if I had not stayed it must have stopped and with so many dependent on it.” Believe it or not, this was a common practice some time past, a minimum of for the lads who could afford to try to so. And by staying home, he was able to sell supplies to the war effort and make a profit from it.
The Standard Oil Company
In 1870, Rockefeller met a man named Henry M. Flagler who was interested in investing in Rockefeller’s Oil business. So, they incorporated The Standard Oil Company. With Flagler’s help, Rockefeller starts to buy up all of the smaller oil refineries in the Cleveland area so that he doesn’t have any competitors. Whenever any refinery refused to sell their company to him, Rockefeller would begin selling his oil at a loss, so that customers would horde to him, instead of the competition. This would put the small companies out of business.
Standard Oil began to spread to other states, and soon enough, they were refining 90% of America’s oil. He was now a millionaire. At this point, the company was so huge, one man couldn’t supervise the operations of the entire country. So he decided to allow the former heads of the oil companies he purchased to become his new board of trustees. This created a super squad of the smartest oil experts in the country, and he made himself the head of the so-called “trust.” This sounds typical for large companies today who put a CEO as the figurehead. But back then, this kind of empire was unheard of, and Rockefeller was setting the stage for other American businesses as a leading example on how to acquire wealth and power.
The Battle Of The Railways
In the 1800s, railroads were helping to aid America through the Industrial Revolution. For the primary time in history, large cargo could be shipped across the United State at record speeds. By the 1860s, the two biggest businesses in the United States were the railroads and oil. So it only made sense that Rockefeller wanted to be involved in both. He was plotting to create a railway trust, and do exactly what he had done with the oil businesses.
He was already cooperating with the Vanderbilt family, and he was going after the owners of various railways to purchase their stock and strike deals with the Presidents of each one. Rockefeller needed to be on good terms with railways because he needed them to transport his barrels of oil by train. Since he had such a massive quantity of product, he negotiated with the Pennsylvania Railway to get a discounted rate on shipping. At first, this was working out well, and The Pennsylvania Railway went on a spending spree to expand the railway.
Before long, the discount they gave Rockefeller was no longer enough to cover their costs, and it would potentially bankrupt the company. So they had to go back on their promise and raise the price. Instead of giving in, Rockefeller responded by laying his underground pipelines, and he reached out to work with other railroad companies. Now, The Pennsylvania Railway had lost its biggest client and primary source of income. In 1877, The Pennsylvania Railway started building their oil refinery, so that they could put their trains to good use.
After all, the oil industry was their bread and butter, whether it came from Rockefeller or not. Since Rockefeller felt entitled to control all of the oil, he was outraged. He stormed in to speak to the executives of the railway, saying, “Why, it is nothing less than piracy!” To make matters worse, the railroad employees began to strike across the nation, because they were not getting paid. This became referred to as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. They finally buckled under the pressure and sold their oil refinery to Rockefeller for $3.4 million.
Ten years later, in 1887, the United States Government would pass the Interstate Commerce Act, which forced regulations on the prices charged by railways. This clogs those companies from gouging the price for transportation. From an outsider’s perspective, people did not see a railway that broke a contract. They saw Rockefeller as the villain, instead. People believed that he had far much power. Everyone could see the writing on the wall If Rockefeller wasn’t stopped, he may take over the railway industry completely, and after that, there would be no stopping him from taking more, and more, until there was nothing left for anyone else.
The Public Outcry
The general public strongly disapproved of Rockefeller’s tactics, and they believed that he was shot of a shark gobbling up small businesses. It had already happened in the oil industry, and he was making moves in the railway industry. People were terrified that he would eventually become so rich and powerful person, he just might take over the world. Newspapers bashed Standard Oil, and political cartoons featured Rockefeller on a steady basis. Even President Teddy Roosevelt was very vocal about being “Antitrust” and promised Americans that he was going to do something to stop it.
The state of Ohio planned to create new Antitrust laws specifically to stop Rockefeller and Standard Oil from having a monopoly over the entire industry. Since it was only a state law at that point, Rockefeller was able to reincorporate in New Jersey in 1882 before they even had a chance to sue him. He opened his new headquarters on Broadway in New York City. Reincorporating in another state did not protect him for long, because in the year 1890, US Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which made it illegal in every state. Two years later, the Supreme Court declared that Standard Oil was violating this new law.
How Did Rockefeller Deal With Dissolving His Monopoly?
Well, He didn’t. He figured out a legal loophole, of course. The board of trustees divided up Standard Oil amongst themselves and created smaller companies so that- technically- they would no longer be considered a monopoly. In 1899, these new companies were all brought back under the gingham of Standard Oil. These are called “subsidiaries”, which is when a small company goes under the control of a larger corporation. Just a few examples of these smaller companies were BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron.
They’re all still around to this very day. At that time, there was a group of writers and journalists called the “muckrakers”, and they took it upon themselves to uncover corruption in American businesses. One such journalist, Ida Tarbell, wrote a book in 1904 called The History of the Standard Oil Company, where she went through the story of Rockefeller’s ruthless rise to power. She wrote, “Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the boardrooms of Wall Street banks.
They fought their way to control by discount and reduction, bribe, and blackmail, spying, and price-cutting, by ruthless the efficiency of a corporation.” Tarbell is remembered for being one of the most successful investigative journalists of her time, and many credit her and the other muckrakers with helping to dismantle the Rockefeller monopoly. But, of course, people in the general public did not realize that those new oil companies were not due to small businesses making a comeback. Rockefeller truly still drew the strings, and for him, a rose of another name was just as sweet.
Retirement, and Legacy Of Rockefeller
In 1897, John D. Rockefeller chose to take retirement from his position at Standard Oil and left the control of the business to his board of trustees and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. In 1911, Standard Oil was sued once more for violating the Antitrust Act, and that they were forced to separate up into dozens of various corporate entities. But he decided to take a position altogether of those new companies, and ironically, it only made his extra money on the stock exchange. Estimates of John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s true net worth vary anywhere from $500 to $600 Billion.
To put that into perspective, the founder of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos is the current richest man in the world today, and yet he is only worth $130 Billion. It’s probably not a coincidence that Bezos also practiced the same method that Rockefeller once did, by buying out smaller online bookstores during the expansion of Amazon.com. Now, most people try to vilify John D. Rockefeller, but he wasn’t all bad. He believed in the Christian tradition of “tithing”, so he had been giving a portion of his income to charity since he was 16 years old.
He gave $70 million towards the founding of the University of Chicago, and he also helped to fund the Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, which was an all-black women’s school. Rockefeller also gave away $550 million in charitable donations to scientific research, education, and the Baptist church. Rockefeller became documented in his later life for the practice of giving dimes to adults and nickels to children wherever he went. He even gave dimes as a playful gesture to wealthy men, like tire mogul Harvey Firestone. One of the simplest samples of his generosity also doubled as his legacy.
In the year 1930, Americans were suffering after a good Depression. John D. Rockefeller was already in his 90’s, so he decided to use an enormous chunk of his fortune to create the Rockefeller Center in New York City. It was called a “city within a city” because it had dining, shopping, apartments, and even a movie studio. The project created 40,000 new jobs during construction, and people were gainfully employed once all of the businesses inside of the Center were opened. The project was completed in 1933, and today, the Rockefeller Center has become an iconic part of Manhattan, especially during Christmas time.
John D. Rockefeller died just one year after the completion of his center, in 1934. He often told people that his goal was to live to be 100 years old, but he didn’t make it past 97. Perhaps the best way to summarize his life was a poem Rockefeller wrote himself, at age 86: “I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play I dropped the worry on the way And God was good to me every day”.
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