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Rockefeller Essay, Research Paper

John Davison Rockefeller (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was the guiding force behind

the creation and development of the Standard Oil Company, which grew to dominate

the oil industry and became one of the first big trusts in the United States, thus

engendering much controversy and opposition regarding its business practices and form

of organization. Rockefeller also was one of the first major philanthropists in the U.S.,

establishing several important foundations and donating a total of $540 million to

charitable purposes.

Rockefeller was born on farm at Richford, in Tioga County, New York, on July 8, 1839,

the second of the six children of William A. and Eliza (Davison) Rockefeller. The family

lived in modest circumstances. When he was a boy, the family moved to Moravia and

later to Owego, New York, before going west to Ohio in 1853. The Rockefellers bought

a house in Strongsville, near Cleveland, and John entered Central High School in

Cleveland. While he was a student he rented a room in the city and joined the Erie

Street Baptist Church, this later became the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. Active in its

affairs, he became a trustee of the church at the age of 21.

He left high school in 1855 to take a business course at Folsom Mercantile College. He

completed the six-month course in three months and, after looking for a job for six

weeks, was employed as assistant bookkeeper by Hewitt & Tuttle, a small firm of

commission merchants and produce shippers. Rockefeller was not paid until after he had

worked there three months, when Hewitt gave him $50 ($3.57 a week) and told him

that his salary was being increased to $25 a month. A few months later he became the

cashier and bookkeeper.

In 1859, with $1,000 he had saved and another $1,000 borrowed from his father.

Rockefeller formed a partnership in the commission business with another young man,

Maurice B. Clark. In that same year the first oil well was drilled at Titusville in western

Pennsylvania, giving rise to the petroleum industry. Cleveland soon became a major

refining center of the booming new industry, and in 1863 Rockefeller and Clark entered

the oil business as refiners. Together with a new partner, Samuel Andrews, who had

some refining experience, they built and operated an oil refinery under the company

name of Andrews, Clark & Co. The firm also continued in the commission business but in

1865 the partners, now five in number, disagreed about the management of their

business affairs and decided to sell the refinery to whoever amongst them bid the

highest. Rockefeller bought it for $72,500, sold out his other interests and, with

Andrews, formed Rockefeller & Andrews.

THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY

Rockefeller?s stake in the oil industry increased as the industry itself expanded, spurred

by the rapidly spreading use of kerosene for lighting. In 1870 he organized The

Standard Oil Company along with his brother William, Andrews, Henry M. Flagler, S.V.

Harkness, and others. It had a capital of $1 million.

By 1872 Standard Oil had purchased and thus controlled nearly all the refining firms in

Cleveland, plus two refineries in the New York City area. Before long the company was

refining 29,000 barrels of crude oil a day and had its own cooper shop manufacturing

wooden barrels. The company also had storage tanks with a capacity of several

hundred thousand barrels of oil, warehouses for refined oil, and plants for the

manufacture of paints and glue.

Standard prospered and, in 1882, all its properties were merged in the Standard Oil

Trust, which was in effect one great company. It had an initial capital of $70 million.

There were originally forty-two certificate holders, or owners, in the trust.

After ten years the trust was dissolved by a court decision in Ohio. The companies that

had made up the trust later joined in the formation of the Standard Oil Company (New

Jersey), since New Jersey had adopted a law that permitted a parent company to own

the stock of other companies. It is estimated that Standard Oil owned three-fourths of

the petroleum business in the U.S. in the 1890s.

In addition to being the head of Standard, Rockefeller owned iron mines and timberland

and invested in numerous companies in manufacturing, transportation, and other

industries. Although he held the title of president of Standard Oil until 1911, Rockefeller

retired from active leadership of the company in 1896. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court

found the Standard Oil trust to be in violation of the anti-trust laws and ordered the

dissolution of the parent New Jersey corporation. The thirty-eight companies which it

then controlled were separated into individual firms. In his biography, Study in Power,

John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist, the historian Allan Nevins reports

that Rockefeller at that time owned 244,500 of the company?s total of 983,383

outstanding shares.

PHILANTHROPY

Rockefeller was 57 years old in 1896 when he decided that others should take over the

day-to-day leadership of Standard Oil. He now focused his efforts on philanthropy,

giving away the bulk of his fortune in ways designed to do the most good as

determined by careful study, experience and the help of expert advisers.

From the time he had begun earning money as a boy, he had been giving a share of his

income to his church and

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