Titan: the Life of John D. Rockefeller
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Titan: The Life of 207 & 208 John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Reviewed by Robert Schmidt By Ron Chernow About the Author Ron Chernow won the National Book Award in 1990 for his first book, The House of Morgan, and his second book, The Warburgs, won the Eccles Prize as the Best Business Book of 1993. This biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Titan, was a national bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Other great biographies by Chernow include Alexander Hamilton, Grant, and Washington: A Life. I recommend them all! About the Book From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism. In the course of his nearly 98 years, Rockefeller was known as both a rapacious robber baron, whose Standard Oil Company rode roughshod over an industry, and a philanthropist who donated money lavishly to universities and medical centers. He was the terror of his competitors, the bogeyman of reformers, the delight of caricaturists—and an utter enigma. Drawing on unprecedented access to Rockefeller’s private papers, Chernow reconstructs his subjects’ troubled origins (his father was a swindler and a bigamist) and his single-minded pursuit of wealth. But he also uncovers the profound religiosity that drove him “to give all I could”; his devotion to his father; and the wry sense of humor that made him the country’s most colorful codger. Titan is a magnificent biography—balanced, revelatory, elegantly written. The Book’s ONE THING We study the lives of famous people who have impacted the world in order to better understand our own impact on the world. Every human being is a complex enigma containing both beauty and darkness. BLUE SKY LEADERSHIP CONSULTING | 210-219-9934 | [email protected] Blue Sky Leadership Consulting works with organizations to leverage Strategic Thinking and Execution Planning and we encompass many of the principles in these books into our Four DecisionsTM methodology and development of your company’s Growth Roadmap™. Need to grow top line revenue? Improve bottom-line profits? Build accountable and trusting teams? Improve cash flow? Develop leadership team members? Contact us for a free consultation Volume 6 Issue 38 Copyright 2019 |Blue Sky Leadership Consulting | All rights reserved Rockefeller Timeline “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.” - Ron Chernow Born July 8, 1839 Age Studied bookkeeping at Folsom’s Commercial College 1853 14 First job as a commission clerk Sep 26, 1855 16 Started his own commissioning firm with Maurice Clark 1858 19 Invested in first oil refinery 1863 24 Married Laura “Cettie” Spelman 1864 25 Borrowed money to buy control of the Cleveland Refinery 1865 26 Founded Standard Oil Company with his brother and several other partners 1870 31 Standard Oil Trust gained the monopoly In US oil industry w/ 90% of the nation’s refineries and pipelines 1882 43 JDR moves company headquarters to New York 1883 44 Sherman Antitrust Act 1890 51 JDR retires from Standard Oil 1895 56 The History of the Standard Oil Co published by Ida Tarbell 1904 65 US Supreme Court finds Standard Oil of New Jersey and forces it to break up into 34 different companies. 1911 71 Created the Rockefeller Foundation 1915 75 Died May 23, 1937 98 Volume 6 Book Review: TITAN P a g e 2 | 9 Issue 38 Family & Childhood “I am satisfied with my good American stock.” - John D Rockefeller, 1900 William Avery Rockefeller was the third of ten children born to Godfrey and Lucy Rockefeller in Granger, New York in 1810, and while it’s easy to date the birth of Rockefeller’s father, teams of reporters would exhaust themselves trying to establish the date of his death decades later. At the height of Rockefeller’s power as a businessman there began rumors that the family guarded an “embarrassing secret”, in fact Joseph Pulitzer offered an $8,000 reward for information about “Doc Bill Rockefeller”, John’s father. Bill, who was a traveling “herbal doctor”, or snake oil salesman, abandoned his family around 1855 when John was 16, but remained legally married to Eliza up to her death. He adopted the name William Levingston and married another woman, Margaret Allen, in Norwich, Ontario. He died in 1906 and his tomb was paid for by his second wife. John’s mother, Eliza Davison, was of prudent, strait-laced Baptist descent and was in many ways the antithesis of Big Bill Rockefeller. Despite the express opposition of her father, the two were married in 1837 in the home of one of Eliza’s friends. Shortly after the couple moved into their home near Richford, New York, Bill brought his former girlfriend, Nancy Brown, into the cramped house as a “housekeeper” and began having children alternately by wife and mistress. In 1838, Eliza gave birth to their first child, Lucy, followed a few months later by Nancy’s first illegitimate daughter, Clorinda. On July 8, 1839 the midwife was summoned again to deliver a boy, who came into the world in a bare front bedroom measuring eight by ten feet. This child would go on to amass a fortune valued at $409 billion (2018 dollars) that would easily place him as the wealthiest known person in modern history. As a percentage of the US GDP, no other American fortune- including those of Bill Gates or Sam Walton- would even come close. Several months after John’s birth, Nancy Brown gave birth to her second daughter, Cornelia, which meant that Bill, lord of his own harem, managed to sire four children under one roof in just two William & Eliza Rockefeller years. The fiercely moralistic John Davison Rockefeller (appropriately named after Eliza’s sober father) was sandwiched tightly between two illegitimate sisters, born into a situation steeped in sin. Eliza proved to be unexpectedly tolerant of Nancy and still loved her husband, but her brothers intervened and made Bill “put Nancy away”. After living for a while with her parents in nearby Harford Mills, Nancy married a man named Burlingame and furnished her two daughters with a respectable upbringing. Volume 6 Book Review: TITAN P a g e 3 | 9 Issue 38 It is impossible to know if John ever knew of the existence of his two illegitimate half-sisters since he closely guarded any information about his father’s dalliances. Rockefeller’s earliest memories always edited out his absentee father and inebriated grandfather while retaining the strong, enduring mother and grandmother. He continued to possess an unusual, self-protective capacity to suppress unpleasant memories and keep alive those things that fortified his resolve. Even as a boy John seemed a perfect specimen of homo economicus. He often bought candy by the pound, divided it into small portions, then sold it at a tidy profit to his siblings. His first business coup came at age seven when he shadowed a turkey hen into the woods, raided its nest, and raised the chicks for sale. Even as an old man Rockefeller said, “To this day, I enjoy the sight of a flock of turkeys, and never miss the opportunity of studying them.” Early Career “Oh how blessed the young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and a beginning in life. I shall never cease to be grateful for the three and a half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties to be overcome, all the way along.” - John D. Rockefeller to a grandson at age 95 Like innumerable young people before him, Rockefeller turned to the church for all-encompassing answers to intractable family problems. He possessed a sense of calling in both religion and business, with Christianity and capitalism forming the twin pillars of his life. While Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species began to chip away at many people’s faith after it was published in 1859, Rockefeller’s religion remained of the simple, undeviating sort. In preparation for a business career, John paid forty dollars for a three-month course of study at E. G. Folsom’s Commercial College, a chain college with branches in seven cities. The Cleveland branch occupied the top floor of the Rouse Building, the town’s premier office building, which overlooked the Public Square. It taught double-entry bookkeeping, clear penmanship, and the essentials of banking, exchange, and commercial law. Upon completion of these studies John began looking for a job as a bookkeeper, and on the morning of September 26, 1855 he walked into the offices of Hewitt & Tuttle, commission merchants and produce shippers. Henry B. Tuttle asked him to return after lunch to interview with the senior partner, Isaac L. Hewitt. After scrutinizing the boy’s penmanship, he declared, “We’ll give you a chance.” They told Rockefeller to hang up his coat and go straight to work, without any mention of wages. It was three months before John received his first humble, retroactive pay. For the rest of his life, he would honor September 26 as “Job Day” and celebrate it with more genuine gusto than his birthday. John D. Rockefeller In many ways, John D. Rockefeller exemplified the enterprising young businessman of his era. Thrifty, punctual, industrious, he was a fervent adherent in his early 20’s of the gospel of success. Though Rockefeller steadfastly denied stories of his boyhood obsession with money, he related the following story of his time at Hewitt and Tuttle: “I was a young man when I got my first look at a banknote of any size.