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DIXON 1916-2011

PUTTIN’ ON THE BY MIKE FIELD

WHEN JOHN D. ROCKEFELLERrwas a youngiAmertican historz y. man, a minister once offered him the following And certainly, he was the richest: When guidance: “Earn all you can. Give all you can.” Forbes compiled its list of the richest men in It was advice that Rockefeller followed the history, Rockefeller easily topped the charts rest of his long life. In his earning, throughout with an amassed wealth equal to $338 billion the latter half of the 1800s, he created the mod - in today’s dollars. By way of comparison, con - ern business. Through his giving, he sider that Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and revolutionized philanthropy. Together, those computer pioneer, comes in 31st on the list two industries in countless ways with a measly $54 billion or so. shaped America in the 20th In these matters it’s important to century. keep all the zeros in those figures in Oil tycoon J. Paul Getty Rockefeller their proper perspective. On Sept. famously had this succinct 29, 1916, gave advice for how to become easily topped front-page coverage to a run-up in wealthy: “Rise early. Work late. the charts with the price of oil stocks sparked by a Strike oil.” John D. Rockefeller 10-cents-a-barrel increase in the amassed his wealth—at one an amassed price of crude petroleum. Five years point his net worth was estimat - wealth equal to earlier the Supreme Court had ed to be equal to roughly 2 per - ruled that was effec - cent of the country’s GNP— $338 billion in tively a monopoly made illegal without ever striking a gusher. under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In fact, even though his name is today’s dollars. The Court ordered the company forever associated with , broken up into 34 smaller compa - it was only later in his career nies, many of which are familiar that Rockefeller owned oil wells. His initial names today: Conoco, , Chevron, foray into the industry was through petroleum , and others. refining, a straightforward industrial process Rockefeller, as the holder of 25 percent of that has fixed costs and relatively restrained all Standard Oil stock, was given the same per - and predictable profits. From the start, he was centage of stock in each of the new companies. content to let others take the big risks (and Anyone who thought the court decision was a potentially make the big fortunes) drilling for form of financial punishment aimed at Standard oil. Rockefeller’s particular genius was in inno - Oil’s founder clearly missed this fine print. Now, vating new technologies and new business tech - in 1916, trading at a combined price (when you niques that enabled him to consolidate the added the value of the stock of each of the 34 business and eventually create a monopoly— companies) of more than $2,000 a share, the the Standard Oil Trust—that helped make him stock prices made Rockefeller the world’s first (depending on whom you asked) the most billionaire. This was at a time when a first-class respected, or the most reviled, businessman in stamp cost 2 cents, and even more tellingly, the

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THE STORY OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER’S GETTING AND GIVING AND HOW IT CHANGED AMERICA

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John D. Rockefeller in a 1917 portrait by John Singer Sargent; Standard Oil Refinery No. 1 in , Ohio, 1899; a political cartoon from 1904 demonstrates American fears about the Standard Oil Company's vast and growing power over the American government.

NO ONE QUITE KNEW WHAT TO MAKE OF ONE MAN HAVING THAT MUCH MONEY. MANY WERE OUTRAGED.

entire federal government budget was also noted that now the combined stock a tenth of all he earned—to his Baptist only about $710 million. No wonder value of all the Standard Oil spin-off church. His two main ambitions as a then that the expression “rich as companies was equal to twice the entire youth, he once confided, were to earn Rockefeller” came into everyday use for debt of the . $100,000 and to live to be 100. In the describing extreme wealth. All in all, it was an impressive end, he nearly achieved both. No one quite knew what to make achievement for a man born to modest As a boy, Rockefeller and his family of one man having that much money. circumstances who started out his busi - moved to Cleveland, where he graduat - Many were outraged. Even the staid ness career as a wholesale greengrocer. ed from high school and then briefly Gray Lady herself, the usually reserved Born on July 8, 1839, the second of studied bookkeeping. Starting his own New York Times , struck a tone halfway six children in a small town not far wholesale produce company with a between breathless excitement and from Ithaca, N.Y., young Rockefeller business partner in 1859, Rockefeller stern moral disapprobation on the day displayed a sobriety and seriousness at was ideally situated at the confluence of following its announcement of an early age—in direct contrast to the two important discoveries. Rockefeller’s billionaire status. notorious dalliances and escapades that The first was made by Pennsylvania Apparently that story only stoked the earned his father the nickname “Devil businessman Samuel Martin Kier. In flames of the Wall Street feeding frenzy, Bill.” His mother, Eliza, was a devout 1851, he developed a method of heating causing stocks to race even further Baptist and instilled in her son a dedi - and distilling the crude petroleum oil ahead, and adding a cool eight mil to cation to hard work and charitable giv - that had been seeping into area salt Rockefeller’s wealth: ROCKEFELLER ing. From his first days he gave a por - wells; Kier produced a clear com - GETS $8,028,000 IN DAY shouted the tion of all his earnings to charity and by bustible liquid that he sold under the Times’ front page headline. The paper the age of 20 he was tithing—donating name of “Carbon Oil” —today com -

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monly known as kerosene. It was a purchased 22 of 26 competitors in his tion to eliminating competitors, timely discovery, as the last of the whal - hometown—and he worked tirelessly Standard also eliminated many of the ing grounds were being depopulated to improve efficiency and economy in resellers and middlemen that inflated and the price of whale oil was skyrock - his refineries. The size of his operation the final cost of kerosene. eting; people needed something to fuel enabled him to demand, and receive, To further increase efficiency, the their lamps. substantial discounts and kickbacks corporation standardized product, con - Then, in the summer of the same on the railroad shipping costs of his tainers and shipping. Moreover, year Rockefeller opened his business, kerosene, which he then used to under - Standard Oil was agile enough to with - Edwin Drake drilled 70 feet into the cut his competitors. stand the invention of the electric light ground in a Pennsylvania farmstead and the steady decline for kerosene and produced the world’s first oil well. used for lamps that resulted. Around (Until the discovery of oil in in this time a former waste product of the 1901, Pennsylvania would produce half distillation process——took on the world’s oil supply.) new importance, and Standard was Need and resource and technology quick to capitalize on the nation’s had all come together to create a new growing thirst for it. As the years industry and John D. Rockefeller, advanced, the value of Standard Oil showing the innate business savvy that stock—and Rockefeller’s millions— was to define his entire life, was quick seemed to multiply endlessly. to recognize the opportunity. In 1863, And yet, probably owing to his Rockefeller and his business partners strict evangelical Baptist upbringing, built an oil refinery in Cleveland’s Rockefeller was noticeably lacking in industrial area, near the railroad tracks the usual millionaire vices. He did not that would enable them to ship the new drink, smoke, dance or, apparently, commodity kerosene all over the keep mistresses. Always physically United States. Within two years he was active and a keen sportsman, near the able to buy out his partners for $72,500 age of 60 he stumbled into golf and at auction; it was, he later recounted, thereafter played nearly every day for “the day that determined my career.” the rest of his life. He lived, dressed, ate It was around this time that and recreated as you would expect of a Rockefeller began life as a family man. Rockefeller was a man with a multi-millionaire; but unlike the great He married Laura Celestia Spelman in vision, but surprisingly, it may not have robber barons of his age, he did not 1864 (about whom he would later say, been as simple as wanting to be the collect yachts or castles or Renaissance “Her judgment was always better than richest man in the world. He set his paintings. When he retired from the mine. Without her keen advice, I mind on greater accomplishments. “I daily management of his business would be a poor man.”) The two would had no ambition to make a fortune,” he around the turn of the century (he was go on to have five children: four later recalled. “Mere moneymaking has in his 50s at the time), rather than col - daughters and a son, John D. never been my goal. I had an ambition lecting great works, he set about doing Rockefeller Jr. to build.” And build he did. By the end them, turning his sharp analytical As a businessman, Rockefeller had of the 1870s, Standard Oil was refining mind to charitable giving with the a keen instinct and a laser-like focus more than nine-tenths of the oil in the same relentless efficiency and effective - on bringing what he saw as order and United States and Rockefeller was ness with which he had built his com - rationality to a wildly chaotic evolving already a millionaire. panies. In the process he transformed industry. He believed deeply in the Despite its immense size (it was the the concept of charity from merely giv - value of what he did, saying often that world’s largest and wealthiest corpora - ing alms to the modern philanthropic the purpose of his company was to tion), Standard Oil was a remarkably ideal of investing in a better tomorrow. provide “the poor man’s light.” In 1870 efficient organization and was surpris - In 1909, Rockefeller wrote a short he formed Standard Oil of Ohio, and ingly quick to satisfy customers and treatise describing his own evolving rapidly built it to the largest and most adjust to new market realities. understanding of charity. In The profitable refinery in the state. Never Rockefeller was proud of the fact that Difficult Art of Giving , he recounts how afraid to borrow money or drive a hard under Standard’s monopolistic prac - initially he followed “the haphazard bargain, he bought up competitors at tices (which he portrayed as merely fashion of giving here and there as every opportunity—in one four-month bringing rationality and efficiency to appeals presented themselves.” But with period in 1872, in what came to be the marketplace), the consumer price increasing wealth came a growing known as the “Cleveland Massacre,” he of kerosene fell by 90 percent. In addi - understanding that carefully targeted

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giving—like good investing—is sure to best minds and ideas: initially Baptist mate or easily summarize the power of bring the highest returns. “We have clergyman Frederick T. Gates, who Rockefeller’s philanthropy. He gave sought, so far as we could,” he wrote, guided the transformation of the away more than $540 million (roughly “to make investments in such a way as University of from a small $7 billion in today’s dollars) during his will tend to multiply, to cheapen, and Baptist college to a pre-eminent lifetime, creating important entities like to diffuse as universally as possible research university with the aid of Spelman College (which bears his wife’s the comforts of life.” Four years later, Rockefeller money; later Raymond maiden name), Peking Union Medical in 1913, he established the Rockefeller Fosdick and George Vincent helped College in China and the Johns Foundation with the explicit intent plan Rockefeller Foundation benefac - Hopkins University School of Public of developing systematic methods of tions, particularly in the areas of higher Health. He is widely recognized as the philanthropy. education and medicine, where much greatest lay benefactor of medicine in In his philanthropy, like in building of the foundation’s funds, energies and history and—although he personally the Standard Oil petroleum empire, original ideas ultimately had such preferred homeopathic remedies—was John D. Rockefeller was an astute judge transformative effect. singularly responsible for the advance of character and eager to enlist the very It is nearly impossible to overesti - of modern medical science. Rockefeller achieved his early ambition of making $100,000 many times over; only in his desire to see 100 did he fall short, though he sur - vived well into his 90s. As an old man he remained mentally and physically fit until almost the very end, focusing on his golf and giving. When he was 91 he played six holes in 25 strokes. John D. Rockefeller died on May 23, 1937—less than two months shy of his 98th birthday. The family wealth was placed in a series of complex trusts, the terms of which were kept private and aroused considerable curiosity and speculation over the years. A little light was shone into the family fortune when grandson Nelson Rockefeller was appointed by newly ascendant President Gerald Ford to take the role of vice president. At his confirmation hearings, Rockefeller gave Senators and the American public a look at the complex web of the family finances, saying, “If you’re thinking of colossal economic power, it doesn’t exist. We have investments, but not control.” Today, John D. Rockefeller’s wealth—and the deeply ingrained tra - dition of family giving—continues to improve and enrich the lives of count - less people. No less than the Carnegie Corp., another great charitable institu - tion begun by a 19th-century industri - alist, lent this praise to the Rockefeller legacy: “The contributions of the are staggering in their extraordinary range and in the scope of their contribution to humankind.”

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