John Rockefeller short biography. John Rockefeller - biography, information, personal life

John Davison Rockefeller is an American entrepreneur who made his fortune by starting from scratch. He founded the Standard Oil company, which took a leading position in the American economy and made its founder the richest man in the world.

Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, and when he was 16 years old, he and his family moved to Cleveland. He was not afraid of hard work, and, as a teenager at the age of 16, he looked for work in various small firms. His first job was as an assistant accountant for a small company, Hewitt & Tuttle, which was engaged in wholesale trade (buying goods for sale on a commission basis) and selling vegetables for export.

At the age of 20, Rockefeller, who was successful in his job, decided to start a business with another business partner, wholesaler of hay, meat and other goods. At the end of the first year of operation of his company, its gross profits totaled $450,000. Rockefeller was very careful and thoughtful, trying in every possible way to avoid unnecessary risks, but in the early 1860s he noticed that there was an opportunity to open an oil business due to increasing demand for oil. And in 1863 he opened his first oil refinery near Cleveland. Less than 10 years later, Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, had almost complete control of all the country's oil refineries.

Standard Oil

As the oil business moved east toward Pennsylvania, Rockefeller followed. By the beginning of the 1880s. he dominated the oil business throughout the country, and his company had a net worth of $55 million. Standard's leadership position was due to the fact that it was closely associated with (or owned) almost every aspect of the business. Under Rockefeller's leadership, the company created its own pipeline system to transport products. She had her own carriages for transportation, and she also bought thousands of hectares of forest for fuel.

In 1882, Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Trust, a trust company that would serve as a model for the creation of other types of monopolies. Naturally, Rockefeller was appointed head of this company.
But while Rockefeller's power and wealth grew, his public reputation deteriorated. In the early 1800s, the government began enforcing antitrust laws, paving the way for the Sherman Act, which went into effect in 1890.

In 1895, 56-year-old Rockefeller retired from daily involvement in the affairs of Standard Oil and focused on charitable activities. But the new leadership could do little to quell attacks on Rockefeller and his business.

In 1904, Ida Tarbell wrote The History of Standard Oil, a damning book that told the story of Standard Oil's ruthless business practices. In 1911, the corporation was disbanded under the influence of the Sherman Anti-Monopoly Act.

Subsequent years

John Davison Rockefeller contributed a lot of money to charity. In total, he donated $530 million to various causes. His money helped found the University of Chicago, also known as the Rockefeller Institute of Medicine (later The Rockefeller University) in New York, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

His wife Laura and Rockefeller had five children, including their daughter Alice, who died in infancy.
Rockefeller died May 23, 1937, Ormond Beach, Florida. However, his legacy lives on to this day: Rockefeller is considered one of America's leading businessmen, whose achievements influenced the formation of the nation as it is today.

How often have you heard the expression:

I'm not Rockefeller!

Today I would like to present to your attention the biography of one of the richest people in the world.

This figure is shrouded in mystery and mysticism. Many legends and fabulous wealth are associated with this name. His business partners called him “The Devil” for his hard work, dedication and piety.

They even scared small children with his name.

And Rockefeller himself throughout his life was proud not of his fortune and position, but of his impeccable morals.

Full name - John Davidson Rockefeller Sr. was born 8th July 1839 in New York State, USA.

His upbringing was mainly carried out by his mother, who was a terribly devout Baptist, so from childhood she instilled in John the idea that he needed to work hard and constantly save.

John Davidson Rockefeller. Biography

One of the most famous American businessmen. The founder of the huge oil empire Standard Oil Company, the Rockefeller Foundation and many other companies.

Founder of charitable foundations that financed science and education. At one time, his fortune accounted for 1.53% of the income of the American economy.

There are different kinds of records in the world - record weight, record speed, record height, record depth. But if the column “record thickness of a wallet” were added to the table of world records, then the Rockefeller family of American billionaires would be in one of the first, if not the first place in the world.

88 billion dollars are controlled by the five Rockefeller brothers, who now head this fantastically rich family.

These $88 billion are held in armored vaults in deep concrete vaults carved into the bedrock of Manhattan Island, on which New York City is located.

It was there that the central headquarters of the Rockefeller brothers' empire settled. These cellars are truly a miracle of modern technology. Imagine several floors underground, long galleries from which there are entrances to a thick, multi-layered steel chamber.

These cells are closed with 52-ton steel doors with remote control. In these concrete compartments, protected by sophisticated electronic systems, the encrypted key to which is known only to two or three people, countless treasures are stored.

The Rockefeller office is located on Wall Street. When choosing the location of their headquarters, the Rockefellers decided to outsmart fashion.

On the one hand, they did not want to lag behind it and erect for themselves such a modern miracle - the 70th skyscraper made of steel and glass.

On the other hand, they didn't want to leave Wall Street. The solution was found in the fact that on a nearby street, very close to Wall Street, they bought a vast plot of land, where they erected a skyscraper in which the main bank of the Rockefeller empire, Chase Manhattan Bank, was located.

In this 70th skyscraper, the total length of the corridors of which is no longer measured in meters, but in kilometers, thousands of people working at the Rockefeller headquarters sit in hundreds of rooms, offices and halls where computers are located.

American province of the beginning of the last century: hastily put together towns - houses made of pine boards, sawmills, mills, churches.

The Rockefellers moved to the New World in the 18th century and gradually moved north to Michigan. Things are piled into a creaking ox-cart, Rockefeller's grandfather holds the reins, his wife and children follow behind, swallowing road dust.

They settled in Richford, New York, where John Rockefeller would be born in 1839.

The tough, rational, unforgiving god of the Huguenots, who does not forgive sinners and weaklings, rested on his grandfather and father. Godfrey Rockefeller, a sweet and warm-hearted man, failed to make his way in life. Besides, he (here the strong-willed grandmother Lucy pursed her lips contemptuously) was not a fool to drink.

And William Avery Rockefeller, the father of the future multi-billionaire, collected in himself every conceivable vice - a libertine, a horse thief, a charlatan, a deceiver, a bigamist, a liar... (But he did not take a drop of alcohol into his mouth and even founded the first temperance society in the town.)

Business was part of John's family upbringing. As a child, he would buy a pound of candy, divide it into small piles, and sell it to his sisters for a small markup. And at the age of seven he raised turkeys and sold them to his neighbors. He lent the $50 he earned from this to a neighbor at 7% per annum.

To those around him, John seemed absent-minded and thoughtful, as if he was not living in the real world, but was floating in the clouds. In fact, this opinion was wrong; the boy was distinguished by his tenacious grip, good memory and composure. Playing checkers, he tormented his opponents, thinking through each move for half an hour.

He became a “devil” as a child. His dry, skin-covered face, eyes devoid of shine and thin pale lips greatly frightened those around him.

However, the boy’s outward sternness and calmness were only in public. In fact, he was quite sensitive and emotional, he just seemed to hide all his feelings in the farthest pocket of his soul. Few people knew what John really was like. When his sister died, he ran into the backyard and lay on the ground for several hours until evening.

Even as he grew up, Rockefeller did not become the indifferent monster that others tried to portray him as.

One day he found out that his former classmate (whom he had always liked, but because of his highly moral nature he did not dare to start a relationship with her) had become a widow and assigned her a personal pension.

But it’s difficult to say what he really was like, since almost all his feelings and desires were subordinated to one goal - to become rich. Not many people managed to penetrate his soul.

Father of a future billionaire

William Rockefeller, the great-grandfather of the five brothers who head the family today and the father of John D. Rockefeller Sr., was the most vulgar horse thief and petty swindler.

According to sources, “his social bearing and abstinence from wine (drunkenness was one of the few vices from which William Rockefeller was free) became the reason that the daughter of a wealthy farmer, Eliza Davison, decided to become Mrs. Rockefeller.

The girl’s parents did not want this marriage, since the groom had a reputation in the area as a man of dishonesty, a stealer of girls’ hearts and a card player.”

Officially, William Rockefeller was involved in the medicine trade. However, he was not an ordinary pharmacist, had no special education and sold charlatan drugs, collaborating with various kinds of healers and hoaxers.

William traveled throughout the northeastern part of the United States selling worthless medicinal potions, posing as a “botanical doctor,” a “famous cancer specialist,” or an impoverished deaf-mute.

IN 1849, When John Rockefeller William’s son was 10 years old, the family urgently had to change their place of residence, and the move resembled an escape. The reason, as the documents show, was quite colorful - William Rockefeller was accused of horse theft.

William appeared in the city separately from his family - a handsome man with a light brown beard, in a brand new frock coat and - an unprecedented thing in Richford! - carefully ironed trousers.

On his chest was a sign that said “I am deaf and dumb.” Thanks to her, William, nicknamed Big Bill, soon knew the ins and outs of every townsman.

A lush beard and creases in her trousers pierced the heart of country girl Eliza Davison. She exclaimed:

I would marry this man if he weren't deaf and dumb! and the “crippled man” standing modestly nearby realized that a good deal could be done here.

Bill's ears worked no worse than radars that had not yet been invented; he heard that his father was giving a five hundred dollar dowry for Eliza two days earlier - they soon got married, and two years later John Rockefeller was born.

In addition to the craving for sobriety, God rewarded William with extraordinary charm: Eliza did not part with him, even realizing that her fiancé could hear everything perfectly well, and on occasion he would use foul language no worse than a drunken lumberjack. She did not leave her husband even when he brought his mistress Nancy Brown into the house, and she - in turn with Eliza - began to give birth to William's children.

Bill went to work at night. He disappeared in the darkness, without explaining where he was going or why, and returned a few months later at dawn - Eliza woke up from the sound of a pebble hitting the window glass.

She ran out of the house, threw back the bolt, opened the gate, and her husband rode into the yard - on a new horse, in a new suit, and sometimes with diamonds on his fingers. The handsome man made good money: he took prizes at shooting competitions, and smartly traded in glass: “The best emeralds in the world from Golconda!” and successfully posed as a famous herbal doctor. Neighbors called him Bill the Devil: some considered William a professional gambler, others considered him a bandit.

But it was not possible to settle in a new place. Again, under the cover of darkness, they had to flee due to a new scandal. After several years of wandering life, the Rockefeller family finally settled in Cleveland, but not because Big Bill - that was the name of William Rockefeller among horse dealers - had settled down.

It’s just that one fine day in 1855 he left for an unknown destination, marrying a certain Margaret, a very young girl who knew him only as Dr. William Livingston.

During the nearly fifty years of his second marriage, as Rockefeller biographer Ron Chernow has discovered, William Rockefeller periodically intruded into his son's life, but Margaret Elien Levingston only learned in the last years of her life that her husband was the father of the richest man in the world.

The beginning of the life of John Davidson Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. born in 1839, and died in 1937 (as written above), having lived ninety-eight years. One of the biographers of the Rockefeller family says that even at the age when boys are usually interested in wooden horses, John Rockefeller - the founder of the family millions - showed completely different inclinations.

A seven-year-old boy begged his mother for a blue porcelain dish that stood on the fireplace and began to put in it the coppers he received for candy and entertainment. His peers bought sweets and rode the carousel, and pale, scrofulous Johnny, avoiding other children, could spend hours admiring his wealth, tenderly fingering the coins with sweaty fingers.

But perhaps the biographer has gone too far? Unknown. However, here is evidence from Rockefeller himself. In his memoirs he recalled:

One of my early challenges was digging my neighbor's potatoes for several days. He was a very enterprising and prosperous farmer. I was probably about 12 years old at the time. And the farmer gave me a few coins every day.

I put these small amounts into a piggy bank and soon realized that the same money that I could earn by digging potatoes for a hundred days in a row, I could get without lifting a finger if I put $50 in the bank. This discovery made me think that it would be nice to make money my slaves, and not vice versa.

Bill prospered, but Eliza and the children lived from hand to mouth and worked tirelessly. She was not sure whether her husband would return again, and she ran the household, saving every cent.

Half-starved sons, dressed in old clothes, ran to school in the morning, then went to work in the fields, and then crammed their lessons. Honest poverty and hard work reigned at home, but Bill lived in sin and felt great.

Vice did not want to be punished: Rockefeller Sr. began to get rich. He started logging, bought one hundred acres of land, a smokehouse, expanded the house... Little John, a lover of soul-saving reading, music and church services, looked at his father and studied.

From the outside, John looked distracted: it seemed as if the child was constantly struggling with some insoluble problem. The impression was deceptive - the boy was distinguished by a tenacious memory, a death grip and unshakable calm: when playing checkers, he tormented his partners, thinking about each move for half an hour, and never lost.

You don't think I'm playing to lose, do you?

The stern face of John Davison Rockefeller, covered with dry skin, and his eyes, devoid of a boyish shine, truly frightened those around him. He never knew how to enjoy life. Making profit was his favorite pastime and the only science he mastered.

One of the three sisters somehow sourly remarked:

If oatmeal falls from the sky, Johnny will be the first to run for the bowl.

At the age of seven, Johnny raised a flock of turkeys on his own. Which he immediately...sold for fifty dollars to a neighboring farmer. Without thinking for a long time, he lent the money to another neighbor... At seven percent per annum. He had never played any games more appropriate for his tender age.

John was a very practical young man: he knew how to take advantage even of the weaknesses of his relatives. The grandfather was weak-willed, friendly and talkative, and the child eradicated complacency and talkativeness from himself once and for all - he decided that these qualities were characteristic of losers.

His mother was distinguished by hard work, devotion to duty and an iron will - having matured, John would work from dawn to the first stars, forcibly restraining himself from Sunday accounting classes. And the brilliant schemer William Rockefeller had a tender, almost sensual love for money: he loved to pour banknotes onto his desk and bury his hands in them, and one day he came out to the children, waving a tablecloth made of banknotes... His passion was passed on to his son.

John Rockefeller became neither a libertine nor a bigamist; unlike his father, he was never sued for rape, but nevertheless he learned a lot from his father.

WITH early childhood he was engaged in business: he bought a pound of candy, divided it into small piles and sold it at a markup to his own sisters, caught wild turkeys and raised them for sale. The future billionaire carefully put the proceeds into a piggy bank - he soon began lending it to his father at a reasonable interest rate. Few people knew the other, human side of his nature.

John Davison Rockefeller hid the feelings inherent in people in the farthest pocket and buttoned it up. Meanwhile, he was a sensitive boy: when his sister died, John ran into the backyard, threw himself on the ground and lay there all day.

And having matured, Rockefeller did not become such a monster as he was portrayed: he once asked about a classmate whom he once liked (he just liked him - he was a highly moral young man); Upon learning that she was widowed and in poverty, the owner of Standard Oil immediately granted her a pension.

It is almost impossible to judge what he really was like: Rockefeller subordinated all his thoughts, all his feelings, all his desires to one great goal - to be sure to get rich.

He turned himself into the ideal business machine, an apparatus for producing business ideas, exploiting subordinates and suppressing competitors. Everything that could interfere with this was discarded: John Davison had to either die from overwork or become a rich man.

And the fact that he turned into not just a wealthy man, but the richest man in the world, Rockefeller owed to his brilliant intuition and uncanny business sense - qualities that even his own mother, who knew John like the back of her hand, could not discern.

A quiet boy receives a secondary education - meanwhile, his father seduces another maid, ends up on trial for defrauding creditors and abandons his family.

William Rockefeller leaves for another woman, changes his last name and hides from his wife, sons and those to whom he owed money. They won't see him again - John Davison Rockefeller won't go to his father's funeral.

John Rockefeller's school friend was Mark Hanna, a man who later succeeded in business and founded a company that is now one of the most powerful in the northwestern United States.

Hannah is a very quick and resourceful person. But even he was amazed by the financial fanaticism of young Rockefeller. Later, Hannah, recalling his youth and his childhood friend, said: “ John in those years showed common sense in everything, except for one thing - he was clearly obsessed with money».

John Rockefeller himself said that when he, while serving as a cashier at a trading company, first received a $4,000 banknote, he simply could not work all day. Every five minutes he got up from behind the desk and, opening the safe, admired the banknote, turned it over in his hands, looked at it, as in childhood, when he caressed the coppers lying on a porcelain dish.

He turns sixteen and leaves for Cleveland: a decently dressed young man goes around large firms and asks the owners to meet. This goes on six days a week for six weeks in a row - John Rockefeller is looking for a job as an accountant.

The heat is unbearable, but a young man in a tight black suit and dark tie stubbornly walks from one office to another - he does not want to return to the Rockefeller farm. On September 26, Hewitt and Tuttle hired him as an assistant accountant - Rockefeller would celebrate this day as his second birth.

The fact that he was given his first salary only four months later had no of the slightest significance- he was allowed into the shining world of business, and he cheerfully walked towards the treasured hundred thousand dollars. John Rockefeller behaved as a lover might behave. The quiet accountant seemed to be in a state of erotic frenzy.

In a fit of passion, he wildly shouts into the ear of a peacefully working colleague:

I'm doomed to become rich!

The poor fellow jumps to the side, and just in time - the jubilant cry is repeated two more times. Rockefeller he doesn’t drink (even coffee!) and doesn’t smoke, doesn’t go to dances or the theater, but he gets acute pleasure from the sight of a check for four thousand dollars - he always takes it out of the safe and examines it again and again.

The girls invite him on dates, and the young clerk replies that he can only meet them in church: he feels like God’s chosen one, and the temptations of the flesh do not bother him.

Rockefeller knows that God blesses the righteous, and turns his life into a constant feat - he comes to work at 6.30 in the morning, and leaves so late that he has to promise himself to finish his accounting no later than ten in the evening. And God gives him what he wanted.

Rockefeller was lucky - the southern states declared secession from the Union and the civil war began. The federal government needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms and rifles, millions of cartridges, mountains of dried meat, sugar, tobacco and biscuits.

The golden age of speculation had arrived, and Rockefeller, who became co-owner of a brokerage firm with a starting capital of four thousand dollars, made good money.

And then he came across a real one gold mine. In the evening, in all the houses, from the palaces of Vanderbilt and Carnegie to the shacks of Chinese emigrants, kerosene lamps were lit, and kerosene, as you know, is made from oil.

Rockefeller's companion Maurice Clark said:

John believed in only two things on earth - the Baptist creed and oil.

At night he dreamed of oil wells gaping in the ground. Having completed a profitable deal, a gloomy man in a black suit jumped around the office, sang and hugged the secretaries.

John began his career in 1855 as an accountant in a Cleveland trading firm at the age of 16. He, like Morgan, was of military age when the Civil War broke out in the United States. And both bought their way out of military service for $300 (in the North of the country this was a common practice for those with means).

In 1858, John left the firm to open a partnership called Clark & ​​Rockefeller, a small grocery firm typical of the small business era.

On Saturdays he always worked in the office, arguing with his partner, who invited him to the lake to fish. Five years later, while still a grocer, Rockefeller invested four thousand dollars in the young, fast-growing Cleveland refinery. Back in 1863, the oil business was considered the industrial equivalent of the Wild West.

In the late 1960s, the Pennsylvania Railroad attempted to monopolize the transportation of crude oil from the producing areas by supporting the interests of the New York and Philadelphia refineries located along its tracks. Most Cleveland refiners panicked, fearing that their access to crude would be cut off.

Rockefeller, on the other hand, took advantage of the situation by negotiating with two railroads that continued to focus on Cleveland companies - “ New York Central's Lake Shore " And " Jay Gould's Erie Railroad " Together with his partner Henry Flagler, they negotiated secret discounts of 30 to 75 percent off officially published railroad rates, and in return promised huge volumes of scheduled freight.

This resilient, predictable business has enabled carriers to achieve significant productivity gains. As a result, the Pennsylvania Railroad ceased to pose a threat to other transport companies.

Although Rockefeller was already the world's largest oil refiner, he could not provide the necessary volumes of shipments he had promised in exchange for concessions on railroad rates.

Then he began to coordinate his deliveries with those of other Cleveland oil workers. His tendency to replace competition with coordination intensified as high profits and low start-up costs lured many new players into the oil refining business.

By 1870, distillation capacity had increased to three times the volume of crude oil produced. As a result, Rockefeller estimates that 90% of processors lost money...

Establishment of Standard Oil Company

The world's first oil field (Titusville, Pennsylvania, USA) was discovered by Colonel Edwin Drake in 1856 and so far it remained the only one. Demobilization after the Civil War gave the business what it had hitherto lacked: an army of hardy young men determined to make a fortune for themselves.

In 1870, John Rockefeller founded his company in Cleveland. Standard Oil Company" During this time, Titusville and its surrounding towns reeked of crude oil and were swarming with people trying to make money from it; hundreds of drilling rigs were installed, almost all of them made by different companies.

Because crude oil is essentially worthless without refinement, hundreds of refineries have sprung up at the other end of the pipeline (and indeed, there were 240 automakers under Henry Ford, of which three remain—Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors).

In Cleveland, Rockefeller's Standard Oil was just one of 26 refineries struggling to survive in a very shaky, single-supplier market.

In the 1960s, the price of crude oil fluctuated from 13 dollars per barrel to 10 cents. In fact, Rockefeller was not the first to appreciate the economic potential of the new industry. The resulting kerosene could heat houses and light the streets of rapidly growing cities.

In a business sense, oil was not even a key part of the oil refining industry. Extracted from the same deposit, and the only one, it was naturally homogeneous in its physical properties. Therefore, “black gold” always cost the same.

All cleaning processes were also carried out in the same way. Impurities were removed so that the crude oil could be used industrially. There was no added value component that formed the price of various finished products. The critical cost differential in such a marginal industry was created by transportation.

The cheaper it cost the refiner to deliver oil from the field to the refinery and from the refinery to the market and consumer, the greater the margin with which he could play.

Or, the more expensive he made transportation for his competitors, the less freedom he had to play on margins. To the devout and analytical nature of John D. Rockefeller, such formulas were virtually scriptural: solve the transportation puzzle in your favor, and you could bring order to one of America's most chaotic free markets. Otherwise, oil will always be an unacceptably unsustainable industry.

The oil business was in disarray and was getting worse every day, he would explain later. – someone had to take a firm stand

For a cunning and insidious nature Rockefeller these formulas became a life principle. Solve the transport puzzle and you can crush your competitors and dictate the terms of their surrender.

Rockefeller did both with success. In early 1872, having entered into an alliance called the South Improvement Company, Rockefeller entered into a pact with three railroad companies (Pennsylvania, New York Central and Erie): they received the lion's share of all oil shipments.

In exchange, Standard Oil was given preferential railroad rates while its refining competitors were crushed with punitive prices. In addition to his enormous price advantages, Rockefeller received detailed information about his competitors' shipments from the shippers and carriers union (South Improvement Company), which greatly assisted in undermining their prices.

The pact was secret, but it was not possible to keep it secret for long. As information leaked into Western Pennsylvania, mobs of distillers armed with torches took to the streets of Titusville, Franklin, Oil City, and other oil-producing towns, destroying railroad tracks and attacking Standard Oil cars. Less than two months later, the courts declared the secret Rockefeller pact illegal.

But he had already managed to collect the loot. In less than six weeks, Standard Oil acquired the businesses of 22 of its 26 competitors. This brutal operation went down in history as the Cleveland Massacre.

The sellers clearly understood that they would have gone bankrupt anyway due to the huge advantage Rockefeller in transportation costs, which is why they agreed to part with their factories. By mid-1872 " Standard oil" took over the entire oil business in Cleveland, which became the largest oil refining center in the country.

However, the industry's ups and downs, which put pressure on profitability, offended Rockefeller's sense of order. Some new organizational plan was needed.

Pittsburgh oil workers rejected his proposal to voluntarily limit production. Rockefeller then decided to control fluctuations in the prices of crude oil sold for refining. However, to his displeasure, oil producers were unable to agree on how to stabilize prices.

True love sweeps away all barriers: John Rockefeller was crazy about money, and it came to him in droves. When he felt that they could be scared away, he became gentle and insinuating; when force was required, he fought for them, without thinking about the consequences.

The company is gaining momentum

Ultimately, billionaire John Rockefeller concluded that the only possible solution was to seize control of the nation's oil refining capacity.

So, once Standard Oil got its money's worth, the Cleveland acquisitions were quickly followed by others. The onset of the Great Depression, which followed the panic in the stock market on September 18, 1873, also helped a lot. And nothing could stop Standard Oil, which began buying competitors outside of Cleveland.

Rockefeller had his own method. He provided business managers with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with his accounting books. No more and no less.

Once they realized that his production was very efficient and he could sell products below their own cost and still make a profit, they stopped resisting joining. According to the terms of registration, " Standard oil» (Ohio, USA) could not have assets outside of her home state.

But it was difficult to stop John D. Rockefeller with such trifles. He simply told the acquired companies to continue operating under the old names and not make any written reference to affiliation.

At a secret meeting in 1874, Rockefeller gained control of the leading oil refineries in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And his new allies, in turn, began to buy up their local competitors. Within two years, the number of Pittsburgh recyclers dropped from 22 to one.

Over the next few years, Standard Oil consolidated covert control over all major oil refining centers, including New York, West Virginia, and Baltimore, as well as refineries near Pennsylvania's oil-producing regions.

In 1877, the company accounted for nearly 90 percent of the production of refined petroleum products in the United States.

In total, Rockefeller bought 53 oil refineries, of which he closed 32, retaining the most efficient ones. As a result, the company's assets grew even more. Thanks to additional savings due to increased volume " Standard oil» was able to cut the cost of refining oil by two-thirds, from one and a half to one-half cents per gallon. As the company's revenues grew, so did its market share.

Caricature – Standard Oil Company

I have ways to create money that you have no idea about. Rockefeller warned one of the Clevelanders who was trying to resist his onslaught

To the main qualities inherited from the father - to low cunning and intrigue, John D. Rockefeller added cruelty and callousness. Once he categorically told his wife that

A person who succeeds in life must sometimes go against the grain

and proved this axiom every day by his business transactions.

You may not fear that your arm will be cut off, he warned another competitor, but your body will suffer.

When threats didn't work, Rockefeller falsified deals. If this did not help, then he simply bought people, or at least their votes, and at the same time the support of newspapers.

One senator from Ohio received $44,000 as a “lobbying fee,” that is, for discrediting the state attorney general who was interfering with Standard Oil. According to Rockefeller's reports, this was generally common practice.

At the time of the 1872 “cutting,” Rockefeller controlled ten percent of the nation's oil refining industry.

By the beginning of the 80s of the 19th century " Standard oil" distilled 90 percent of the world's oil and John D. Rockefeller quickly became rich. There remained, however, two more variables that did not fall under the company's reliable control. In order for oil to be refined, it had to be delivered from somewhere, and in order for it to have economic value, it had to be sold somewhere.

Until Rockefeller controlled both ends of the process, he could not completely dominate the industry and maximize profits. It's time for the octopus to grow new tentacles.

To ensure supply, the company went back through the production of tanks, railcars and pipelines, all the way to its own oil exploration and production.

Standard Oil expanded its monopoly power by aggressively investing in oil transportation. The railroads, intimidated by geologists' predictions of rapid depletion of the nation's oil fields, were slow to spend huge amounts of money to increase traffic.

Then Rockefeller undertook to modernize the Weehawken terminal of the Erie Railroad, New Jersey, for these purposes.

As a result, Standard Oil received preferential tariffs and valuable information about the cargoes of other refiners, securing the right to block the transportation of competitors' oil. When railroads refused to invest in newfangled tank cars to replace oil drums, the company created its own fleet.

As a result, Rockefeller received additional advantages in relation to weaker market participants. Finally, as pipelines became increasingly important in the oil business, Standard Oil created its own network and bought a stake in another pipeline company.

Soon, Rockefeller's oil pipeline firms and their obvious competitors formed a cartel to increase production and fix prices.

The fight continues

Having stabilized supplies, Standard Oil turned to distribution and sales. Traditionally, oil was sold to the market by independent middlemen who could knock as much as five cents off the price of a gallon of kerosene.

For Rockefeller, this was both an unforgivable loss and an ineffective way to control and increase sales.

We had to develop sales methods much more advanced than those that existed then, Rockefeller would say much later. “We needed to sell two, or three, or four gallons of oil where previously one was sold, and therefore we could not rely on existing distribution channels.

To begin with, Rockefeller put independent operators out of business and replaced them with his own delivery and sales services: now he had enough influence to control the industry. In specially built vans, his employees delivered oil to department stores and markets throughout the country.

Where population density was high, wagons sold oil even in spills, breaking the line between wholesale and retail trade and further strengthening the population's belief that all oil was Standard Oil.

By the end of the century, the company not only controlled nearly all of American oil refining, but also produced a third of America's crude oil, operated the nation's second-largest steel mill, and operated a fleet of thousands of railroad cars, barges, and ships. By then it had also penetrated the coal and iron ore industries.

“By the 1990s, vertical integration was over,” writes Jerry Useem in his review of Rockefeller's organizational methods in the May 1999 issue of INC magazine.

Oil now flowed from a Standard Oil well, traveled through a Standard Oil pipeline, was refined at a Standard Oil refinery, loaded into tanks, and even sold to the end consumer by a Standard Oil sales agent.

By tailoring every step of the process, Standard Oil was no longer dependent on uncooperative suppliers, incompetent distributors, or other vagaries of the market.

Rockefeller achieved order and perhaps they helped him with this. From that moment on, money began to pour into the businessman’s bins.

Over the next few decades, Rockefeller amassed the largest fortune in the world. When most Americans were happy to earn two dollars a day, Rockefeller was earning almost two dollars a second, more than $50 million a year.

John D. Rockefeller was not the only man of his era to gobble up competitors and build a vertically integrated corporation with brilliant product control. Trusts, monopolies, “octopuses” were everywhere.

Rockefeller only managed his affairs more efficiently, actually independently inventing a modern management organization to manage his vast enterprise. Of course, he relied on advanced technology.

By 1885, when Standard Oil moved into its new corporate headquarters at 26 Broadway in Manhattan, the telegraph had arrived. This was a revolutionary turn in the national communications network.

A century later, with the advent of the Internet, the same revolution will occur in the communications system. Sitting behind a glass table at Standard Oil headquarters, Rockefeller could maintain contact with the entire enterprise, communicating every hour or even earlier. The dangers of micromanagement loomed.

But the genius Rockefeller did not succumb to this temptation. The businessman did not try to manage his empire single-handedly, relying on his own individuality or cultivating fear.

Other robber barons tried all three approaches, but Rockefeller ran Standard Oil by committee. The production committee oversaw production, the purchasing committee oversaw purchases. Today this approach is an axiom of any management.

A century ago, Rockefeller's committee system was an audacious creation, designed specifically to effectively control an audacious, cobbled-together enterprise.

Rockefeller biographer Ron Chernow notes that even in executive committee meetings, where the boss's word was the ultimate truth, he made a point of sitting in the middle, not at the head of the table.

“Having created an empire of incomprehensible complexity,” writes Chernow, “Rockefeller was smart enough to merge his personality into the organization.” At the same time, John D. realized that he had revealed something new to the world. Business historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. called Rockefeller "a new subspecies of economic man - the salaried manager."

According to the Brookings Institution, between 1880 and 1920—the period during which Rockefeller was ascending to his full dominance and global dominance—the number of professional managers in the United States grew more than sixfold, from 161,000 to more than a million.

To meet the growing demand for the profession, in 1898 the University of Chicago and the University of California gave birth to a new branch of education - the Faculty of Business. By the beginning of the new century, business faculties also appeared at New York and Darmouth universities.

The Harvard University Business Department began operating in 1908.

At the end of his life, Rockefeller said that Standard Oil became “the founder of a whole system of economic administration. It has revolutionized the way business is done around the world.” Without a doubt, the tycoon was right, but in his old age he deliberately cleaned up many dubious aspects of his history.

In a remarkable series of interviews conducted with him between 1917 and 1920. By New York journalist William Inglis, Rockefeller offered a detailed refutation of virtually every charge leveled against him and Standard Oil by critics and especially Ida Tarbell.

Whether these interviews were intended for publication - they did not air until 60 years after his death - or were simply meant to ease Rockefeller's conscience and prepare him for a meeting with his creator is unclear.

In any case, the history presented in these stories contradicts the facts. And it was no coincidence that when Nelson Rockefeller asked his grandfather for an interview for his thesis, in which he wanted to rehabilitate “ Mephistopheles Cleveland", John D. replied that he would prefer not to do so.

Apparently, it would not be easy for him to lie to his grandson, who was born on the same day as him.

Rockefeller liked to point out that the law applied to him and his business, so to speak, after the fact. The secret railroad deal that led to the Cleveland Massacre was not illegal at the time, although the courts soon ruled against such actions.

Railroad chargebacks became illegal only when the Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887, and the trade restraint combinations that served as the basis for vertically integrated trusts remained completely legal until the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

In fact, both Rockefeller and Standard Oil often operated on the edge or even just outside the law. While collecting material for a biography of the tycoon, Ron Chernow found in his correspondence numerous evidence that he simply gave bribes to politicians in order to influence the outcome of legislation.

Thus, the $250,000 spent in 1896 on the McKinley campaign is only the most innocuous example of a practice that Rockefeller appears to have regarded as a necessary business expense. Neither the Interstate Commerce Commission nor the Sherman Antitrust Act influenced the businessman's behavior.

Rather, Rockefeller redoubled his efforts to circumvent the legal obstacles raised in front of his company, and found powerful assistants even less concerned about legal niceties and ethics than he was.

They were Henry Flagler and John D. Archibald. The muckrakers, Henry Dimarest Lloyd and Aida Tarbell, collected a staggering amount of evidence of illegal and dubious activities by Rockefeller and " Standard oil».

However, it was not until 1906 (a year after Aida Tarbell finished publishing her articles in McClure's) that the tycoon hired his first publicist to help improve his public image. Rockefeller may have initially underestimated the extent of the hatred against him, the power of the press, and Roosevelt's determination to turn him into his political capital.

Easily buying political figures, Rockefeller could not imagine how else he could deal with them. For the most part, he ignored the storm because he saw himself in the service of a higher interest: cleaning up business inefficiencies was an endeavor that pleased not only the economy, but also the country and God.

By the time the law finally reached John D., Roosevelt had resigned from office, handing over power to William Howard Taft.

On May 15, 1911, after collecting 23 volumes of testimony totaling 12,000 pages over 21 years and convening 11 separate trials, the last of which involved 444 witnesses, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Standard Oil Trust was indeed a monopoly and subject to fragmentation.

The news found Rockefeller on the golf course. His only reaction to what happened was to advise his golf partners to buy shares of Standard Oil. This is some of the wisest advice John D. ever gave. Standard Oil was broken up into 34 separate companies, including the parent companies of such modern industry leaders as ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, Conoco, Inc., ARCO, BP America and Cheesebrough Ponds.

Rockefeller retained control of each of them.

In 1911, when the final meeting of the Supreme Court took place, Rockefeller was “worth” approximately $300 million.

Two years later, as a result of the execution of the “sentence” by the federal government, its “value” jumped to $900 million. Losing the antitrust trial turned out to be the greatest highlight of Rockefeller's career. By that time, oil had a new purpose: the automobile.

Not only did the Supreme Court's decision make John D. Rockefeller even richer, it didn't make him repentant. When approximately twenty thousand strikers were being evicted from company-owned homes near a Rockefeller-controlled coal mine in 1913, the state police intervened, shot the strikers and set fire to the tent camp where they had taken refuge.

Dozens of women and children died in the fire - it was the shameful "Ludlow massacre". Like his father, Rockefeller Jr. blamed the bloodshed on the strikers who “recklessly” insisted on their right to a union.

$900 million in 1913 is equivalent to more than $13 billion today. However, as Ron Chernow points out, comparing these numbers is only a one-sided approach to the problem.

The entire 1913 federal budget was $715 million, nearly $200 million less than Rockefeller's net worth as a citizen. The federal debt then stood at $1.2 billion. Rockefeller could pay off three-quarters of it.

Personal life

He turned twenty-five, and his acquaintances thought that he was forever betrothed to accounting. But there is always a place for a miracle in life - one girl has been waiting for John Rockefeller for nine years.

Laura Celestia Spelman was born into a wealthy and respected family. She read a lot, tried her hand at literary editing and was a match for Rockefeller in all respects. Laura was a typical Puritan: dancing and theater seemed to her the personification of vice, but in church she rested her soul.

The future Mrs. Rockefeller preferred black to all colors. They met at school: he confessed his love to her - she replied that first he needed to achieve something in life, to find Good work, become a wealthy person.

From the outside, this story seems immensely sad, but in reality everything was different. By this time, the bony boy had turned into a tall, fit and very charming young man, and Laura (the family called her Setti) had become a pretty girl. She was well versed in music (three hours of daily piano lessons!). Rockefeller also played music well (his exercises infuriated Eliza, who was busy with housework).

In addition, John Rockefeller did not manage to freeze himself completely - Setty knew that he could be very kind person. Rockefeller paid $118 for the diamond engagement ring - for him it was a real feat.

He did not repeat it: the wedding was modest, the house into which the young people moved after honeymoon, Rockefeller rented it cheaply, they had no servants.

By this time, he owned the largest oil refinery in Cleveland, the bride's parents were wealthy and respected people in the city, but no news about the wedding appeared in the newspapers - he did not like it when people talked about him. Subordinates and competitors were afraid of Rockefeller like fire, and his wife considered him the kindest person.

At 9:15 sharp, he showed up at Standard Oil, which was gradually turning into one of the largest companies in the country. A tall figure, a pale, clean-shaven face, an umbrella and gloves in his hands, a white silk hat on his head, black onyx cufflinks with the letter “R” engraved on them peeking out from the cuffs.

Rockefeller quietly greets his subordinates, inquires about their health, and slips through the door of his office like a black shadow. He never raises his voice, never gets nervous, never changes his face - it’s impossible to piss him off. One day, an enraged contractor burst into his home and yelled for half an hour without a break.

All this time, Rockefeller sat with his head buried in the table, and when the angry, red as a lobster fat man was exhausted, he raised his calm face and quietly said:

Sorry, please, I didn't catch what you were talking about. Is it possible to repeat it?

He dined at a once and for all set time: when the milk and cookies were eaten, the owner of Standard Oil made a tour of his property.

Rockefeller walked with a silent, measured gait - he always covered a certain distance in the same time. Rockefeller appeared in front of his clerks' desks like a jack-in-the-box, smiled sweetly, asked how work was going, and people were horrified.

Rockefeller was a good boss - he paid a salary higher than anyone else, awarded excellent pensions, issued sick leave - but he dealt mercilessly with those who contradicted him. He always had a kind word for his subordinates, and yet they were mortally afraid of him.

The horror he inspired was mystical in nature - his own secretary claimed that he had never seen Rockefeller enter and leave the company building. Apparently, he used secret doors and secret corridors (ill-wishers said that the millionaire flew into his office through the chimney).

The scarecrow and his house: spartan furnishings, quiet voices, taciturn, well-drilled children. Only its inhabitants knew how friendly they lived here.

The owner of Standard Oil taught children music, swam with them, and skated with them. If one of the little ones whined at night, Rockefeller immediately woke up and rushed to his bed. He never quarreled with his wife and took touching care of his mother.

Eliza grew old, began to get sick, and when the next attack occurred, Rockefeller would drop everything, go to her and sit by her bedside until her mother felt better.

But the two children of his brother, who had gone to the civil war, died almost of starvation, and when he returned, he took their bodies from the family crypt:

I don't want them lying in the soil of this monster!

And in business he was completely ruthless. It was rumored that Rockefeller's capital was five million dollars. This was not true - in the eighties of the 19th century, his company was valued at $18,000,000 (the modern equivalent is $265,000,000).

Rockefeller became one of the twenty richest and most powerful people in the country and began an offensive against competitors: he entered into an agreement with the railroad kings, and they raised transportation tariffs.

Small oil companies went bankrupt, large capitalists transferred their stakes to Rockefeller. He soon became a monopolist in the oil market and was able to set his own, prohibitive prices for oil, which at the beginning of the twentieth century became a strategic commodity.

The race has begun. The great powers built more and more huge battleships, fuel for which was fuel oil extracted from oil.

Standard Oil turned into a transnational company, its interests spread throughout the globe, Rockefeller's fortune was estimated in tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars. At the turn of the century, he was recognized as the richest man in the world.

Newspapers wrote that Rockefeller's fortune was close to eight and a half billion dollars. His monopoly was called " the greatest, wisest and most dishonest that ever existed».

Rockefeller knew that by becoming rich, he was fulfilling God's destiny - in the Protestant ethic, wealth was seen as a blessing from above.

His employees recalled how, during one of the meetings where they talked about the gloomy prospects of the company (it was about the fact that electric lighting would soon replace kerosene), Rockefeller raised his hand to the sky and solemnly said:

The Lord will take care!

And he took care - the First World War began, and all military fleets switched to oil. According to the Protestant faith, wealth is not a privilege, but a duty - part of what Rockefeller earned, he began to give away.

Charity

When John Davison started, his fortune was in the thousands of dollars, and all the money went into business. Now that he had hundreds of millions, it was time for charitable charity.

Fifty thousand letters came to Rockefeller a month asking for help; whenever possible, he answered them and sent checks to people.

He helped found the University of Chicago, established scholarships, paid pensions - all this was paid for by the consumer, whom Rockefeller forced to pay for kerosene and gasoline as much as Standard Oil needed.

Half of America dreamed of extracting more money from John Davison Rockefeller. The other half was ready to lynch him. Rockefeller was getting old. The passions seething around him got on his nerves. Sometimes he sighed:

Wealth is either a great blessing or a curse.

"Standard Oil" Rockefeller seemed to be a kind of branch of the divine office, which sucks the blessings of the Almighty from the ground in the form of oil and distributes them among people. At one of his anniversaries, Rockefeller chanted in an inspired tenor: “God bless us all, God bless Standard Oil.”

Raising children was also a duty. They were to inherit a huge fortune, and this was a great responsibility.

Rockefeller knew that God's gift could not be wasted, and he did his best to teach his children to work, modesty and unpretentiousness.

John Rockefeller Jr. later said that as a child, money seemed like a mysterious substance to him:

They were omnipresent and invisible. We knew there was a lot of money, but we also knew it was unaffordable.

For someone who was dressed in girls' dresses until the age of eight (the Rockefellers wore trousers and sweaters one after the other, and they didn't have a second boy), the future billionaire put it extremely mildly.

John Rockefeller Sr. created a model of the house market economy: he appointed daughter Laura " general director” and told the children to keep detailed accounting books. Each child received two cents for killing a fly, ten cents for sharpening one pencil, and five cents for an hour of music lessons.

A day of abstinence from candy cost two cents, each subsequent day was worth ten cents. Each of the children had their own bed in the garden - ten weeds pulled out cost one penny.

Rockefeller Jr. earned fifteen cents an hour for chopping wood, and one of the daughters received money for walking around the house in the evenings and turning off the lights. For being late for breakfast, the little Rockefellers were fined one cent, they received one piece of cheese a day, and on Sundays they were not allowed to read anything except the Bible.

Setti wore dresses patched with her own hands and was in no way inferior to her husband: the generous Rockefeller was about to buy a bicycle for the children, but his wife said that there was no need for extra bicycles in the house:

Having one bike for four, they will learn to share with each other

The results of such upbringing were quite contradictory. Rockefeller Jr. almost withered away. When the boy grew up and there was talk about university, it turned out that he was constantly ill and also suffered from various nervous disorders.

It was winter outside, but John immediately sent his son to a country house. The sick boy uprooted stumps, burned bushes and chopped wood for the stove - during the day he worked until he sweated, and at night he shivered from the cold. John survived, graduated from university (he had no pocket money, and he constantly “snapped” a few dollars from his friends) and entered the family business.

His father broke his will. The heir forever remained his shadow, suffering from this and nevertheless resignedly fulfilling his duty. He suffered from the fact that he was a less talented businessman than his father, that for four years he was afraid to explain himself to his beloved girl, that journalists wrote nasty things about his dear dad.

Johnny Jr. was saved by his marriage to Abby Aldrich, a cheerful and charming girl, the daughter of a senator from the state of New York, her father was a well-known bon vivant. Rockefeller was about to have a non-alcoholic wedding, but the bride's father said that he would rather shoot himself. The champagne flowed like a river, and the pious Setti, being ill, did not come to this sinful act.

Abby taught John Jr. to enjoy life. He served his time at work and hurried home - stock market reports made him despondent, but he flourished among children. (However, John raised his offspring the same way he was raised. The unfortunate grandchildren of John Davison Rockefeller received ten cents for every mouse they caught).

There were also more significant costs of upbringing: John's sister Bessie Rockefeller went crazy and spent most of her life in bed. (She decided that her family was ruined and spent her time patching up old dresses.) At times the true state of affairs dawned on her, and the poor woman joyfully informed the nurses that now she again had money for guests. And Edith Rockefeller became a legendary reel.

At the age of 21 she was admitted to the hospital with nervous disorder, and then married a man who upset dad - Harold McCormick refused to swear on the Bible that he would never drink or pick up cards in his life. The McCormicks were also millionaires; they also raised their children strictly and taught them to help the poor.

Harold and Edith turned out to be a wonderful couple. They squandered more than tens of millions - Edith traced the Rockefeller family tree from the French aristocrats La Rochefoucauld, acquired a coat of arms, antique furniture, a collection of diamonds and eclipsed the wasteful Vanderbilts with her spending.

She constantly lacked money and was forced to live in debt, but at one of the balls the noble lady appeared in a dress made of silver of the highest standard. She preferred not to meet with her father - apparently, Edith Rockefeller was ashamed of him.

Rockefeller's personal qualities

Contemporaries said with surprise and fear that everything human was alien to John D. Rockefeller. He trusted no one, forgave no one anything, and was equally merciless towards his competitors and his closest assistants.

His right hand was John D. Archibald, the second man in the company after the owner. But even this influential businessman was in awe of his patron. For example, for many years, Archibald submitted a written oath to John D. Rockefeller every Saturday stating that he had not touched alcoholic beverages in the past week.

His stinginess was legendary (as were Andrew Carnegie, Paul Getty, Aristotle Onassis, Warren Buffett and many others).

In the early 1870s, John D. Rockefeller at the Standard Oil plant inspected a machine that soldered caps to five-gallon kerosene cans intended for export. The future billionaire asked the employee in charge there how many drops of solder were used for each cap.

Hearing that it was forty, he first asked to plant several caps of 38 drops. These canisters developed a leak. The canisters sealed with 39 drops turned out to be fine. According to Rockefeller's calculations, this saved $2,500 in the first year of operation, and with the growth of kerosene exports, profits increased to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you follow the path of total cost reduction, then keep in mind that this habit may also affect your personal life. John D. Rockefeller spent a lot of time studying invoices from the grocer and somehow reduced his supplier's fee from $3,000 to $500, threatening to sue him.

At that time his annual income exceeded 50 million dollars after taxes. A keen golfer, he insisted on using old balls whenever players went near the water. Expressing his dissatisfaction with the fact that people are not afraid of losing their new balls in such circumstances, he quietly tossed:

They must be very rich!

Ascetic in appearance, with an egg-shaped bare skull, tiny eyes, huge bat-like ears and a lipless mouth, Rockefeller always spoke in a quiet and even voice, usually showing neither anger nor joy.

One day, an angry contractor burst into his office and began to furiously abuse the tycoon. The billionaire sat calmly at his desk, not looking up at the man until he was exhausted. Then he turned in his swivel chair and said calmly:

I didn't get the point of what you were talking about. Could you repeat this again?

It seemed that nothing could excite him, unbalance him, and his main concern was his accounting books. But it only seemed so. There was something that worried the tycoon even more than dollars. This “something” was his own person.

Two fears darkened the life of John D. Rockefeller: the fear of losing even one dollar out of the millions obtained through all sorts of fraud and fear for his own health.

The latter eventually prevailed. Fifty-five years old John Rockefeller earned all the standard “gentleman’s kit” of a businessman - a stomach ulcer and frayed nerves. At the insistence of doctors, he transferred all matters related to the management of the company to his eldest son - John D. Rockefeller II, and he focused entirely on treatment.

Aged 18 years John Rockefeller set a goal for himself - to become the richest man in the world at any cost. And he achieved it.

At the age of 55, another goal was set - to live to be a hundred years old. And this goal was almost achieved.

Taking care of your health

When John D. Rockefeller left active business, his main goal was to acquire healthy body and spirit, long life and respect from loved ones.

But can money give all this? It turned out that they can! That's how he did it.

So Rockefeller:

Every Sunday I attended a service at the Baptist church, where I took notes in order to better assimilate principles that could be applied in everyday life. Slept eight hours a night and took a short break every day nap. With the help of rest, he got rid of fatigue that was harmful to his health.

I took a bath or shower every day. Maintained a clean and neat appearance. He moved to Florida, where the climate was more conducive to good health and longevity. He led a harmonious, well-balanced life.

Daily practice of his favorite game - golf - provided the necessary exposure to fresh air and sun. He did not forget about indoor games, reading and other beneficial activities.

He ate slowly, moderately and chewed everything thoroughly - at this time the saliva in his mouth was thoroughly mixed with the crushed food. This mixture was very well absorbed. In addition, food was swallowed at room temperature.

The stomach was protected from food that was too hot or too cold, which could overcool or burn the walls of the esophagus. I didn’t forget about vitamins for the mind and spirit. Before each meal, a prayer was said.

During dinner, Rockefeller made it a habit to ask his secretary, one of his guests, or family members to read the Bible, a sermon, inspirational poems, or articles from newspapers, magazines, and books. Hired full-time physician Hamilton Fix Biggar.

Dr. Biggar was paid to make John D. feel healthy, happy, and active. He achieved this by motivating his patient to maintain a cheerful and optimistic mood. From the moment of retirement, he, strictly following the doctors’ orders, lived for no less than another 42 years and died on May 23, 1937 of a heart attack, at the age of ninety-seven years. Having survived 43 of his doctors.

The new head of the dynasty, John D. Rockefeller II, turned out to be a worthy son of his father. He possessed arrogance, cruelty, tenacity, resourcefulness, and shamelessness. John Rockefeller Jr. turned his dad's million-dollar business into a multi-billion dollar business.

The key with which he opened the door to enormous wealth was military supplies. The First World War brought the Rockefeller family $500 million in net profits.

The Second World War proved to be an even more profitable venture. Tank and aircraft engines required rivers of gasoline. It was produced around the clock at Rockefeller factories

But a strange thing: it was at this moment that the price of gasoline began to increase rapidly. At first, by a few cents per gallon. Then more and more. It was precisely when gasoline and other petroleum fuels for the planes, ships, tanks on which American soldiers fought against the fascist hordes were needed like air for life, the prices for petroleum products, the lion's share of which were produced in America by Rockefeller factories, grew day by day.

To all attempts to reason with them and appeal to their patriotism, the Rockefellers answered: if you need our products, pay. The result was $2 billion in net profits generated during the war years.

But please do not think that everything told here is just history. It is worth delving into today's statements of the Rockefeller companies, in the budget items of the American military department, and the same picture is revealed. Times change, but the morals of the Rockefellers remain unchanged.

Who are they, the Rockefellers today?

The family is headed by five brothers-grandsons of the founder of the family business:

John D. Rockefeller III, 65; Nelson, 63; Lawrence, 61; Winthrop, 59, born three years after Winthrop David; as well as the younger brother of John Rockefeller II's first wife, Abby, 85-year-old Winthrop Aldrich.

The Kaykut estate is the residence of four generations of Rockefellers

The fourth and fifth generations of this family are very numerous - there are several dozen sons and grandsons of five brothers. But the business is run by five brothers and their uncle; there was a time when the rich advertised their wealth in every possible way.

The current Rockefellers have luxurious palaces, yachts, and jewelry. But, unlike in previous times, they try not to show it all off. Moreover, they hide, trying to appear before their compatriots as such innocent sheep, no different from mere mortals. The reason for this disguise is fear.

Fear that has settled in the hearts of millionaires since October 1917. One of the official biographers of the Rockefeller family in a recently published book is touched:

They could have guests ride on white horses and serve champagne in glass slippers, but they don't.

I will give another biography of the Rockefeller family:

Bearing in mind that they are rich people, what is probably most striking is some of their habits. Lawrence and John D. Rockefeller III, for example, stop what they're doing in the morning to eat just milk and cookies, just as their father did before they were born.

In fact, all Rockefellers from birth to death are surrounded by truly royal luxury. John Rockefeller Jr., who convinced his fellow citizens of the need for humility and expectation of “God’s grace,” has so far created heaven on earth for his five sons and daughters. In winter, the young Rockefellers lived in New York in a nine-story family mansion.

They had their own clinic, special colleges, swimming pools, tennis courts, concert and exhibition halls.

David has led the Rockefeller family since 2004

Father Rockefeller's 3,000-acre estate includes riding arenas, a velodrome, a home theater worth half a million dollars, ponds for yachting, and more. The equipment of just one game room, in which brilliant naughty girls frolicked, cost the child-loving oil king 520 thousand dollars.

When the youngest of the brothers grew up, each received at his disposal city mansions, summer villas and other real estate necessary for social life. Now everyone has so many houses for personal use that they often confuse their own addresses.

True, this circumstance is not advertised. But reporters tell how the eldest of the brothers teaches his offspring to save. The billionaire gives each of the children 10 cents as a weekly allowance for expenses, journalists are touched.

As for David, who heads the family's financial business, according to the American monopoly press, his only hobby is collecting beetles.

David has 40 thousand of them, newspapers report that David Rockefeller always carries a bottle with him for caught insects. The fact that during the break between the two bugs he slammed, the tycoon manages to send thousands of people around the world, the press, of course, does not spread. Unprofitable! Dozens of palaces and villas owned by the Rockefellers are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Only one of the family's mansions is served by about 350 servants.

The Rockefeller family discovered long ago that government power in America could be used to increase their income.

Even the founder of the family business, John Rockefeller Sr., realized that a person obedient to his will in the government of the country could bring more income than several oil wells combined.

The first victim of the “discovery” was his eldest son and heir, John Rockefeller II. When choosing a wife for him, old Rockefeller settled on the daughter of one of the most influential political figures in America at the beginning of this century, Senator Nelson Aldrich, who for a long period enjoyed almost the same influence in Washington as the presidents of the country.

Without fear of falling into exaggeration, we can say that in Washington in the last 30-40 years there has not been a government administration that did not include a significant number of direct proteges of the Rockefeller family.

The foreign policy department receives special attention. At the head of the State Department, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is called in America, people from the Rockefeller house have been firmly established for many years.

One of the darkest figures of post-war Washington is John Foster Dulles, the same Dulles who acquired the dubious glory of being the founder of the Cold War against the peoples of socialist countries. He was not only a legal consultant, attorney and lawyer for the Rockefeller family, but also one of the directors of the Rockefeller oil company Standard Oil.

Dulles came to the State Department directly from the post of chairman of the so-called “Rockefeller Foundation,” an organization that plays a prominent role in all the affairs of this family. Dulles' successor as Foreign Secretary, Christian Herter, was also closely associated with the Rockefeller companies.

But for some time now, even this no longer fully satisfies the family of oil magnates. This, albeit very real, but still indirect access to the levers of government is not enough for them. In recent years, the Rockefeller clan has made several attempts to seize key positions in the government apparatus.

During election campaign In 1964, one of the five brothers, Winthrop Rockefeller, set out to become governor of Arkansas. Seizing the governor's seat in a rich and very promising state from an economic point of view promised considerable benefits for the Rockefellers, and therefore the brothers spared no expense in financing Winthrop's election campaign.

True, Winthrop Rockefeller, a newcomer to the political field, failed to sit in the governor’s chair the first time. But the failure did not discourage him.

In November 1966, after spending several million dollars, Winthrop Rockefeller achieved his goal and moved into the governor's palace in the capital of Arkansas. A representative of the fourth generation of Rockefellers, John Rockefeller IV, in the fall of 1966, took the post of congressman in the Virginia State Legislature.

Nelson, one of Rockefeller Jr.'s sons and born on the same day as his famous grandfather, would be Governor of New York, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, and Vice President of the United States, appointed by Gerald Ford after the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Another heir to the famous family - Winthrop (I repeat) - was the governor of Arkansas and an outstanding businessman, as well as the chairman of the board of Colonial Williamsburg, formed with the direct participation of his father. Lawrence, recognized defender natural resources, donated the lands on which the Virgin Islands National Park was then created.

John D. Rockefeller III led the Rockefeller Foundation, which amassed one of the world's largest collections of Oriental art, and also financed the Lincoln Center for the Fine Arts in New York. David was chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art (another project of the Rockefeller family).

Over the past decades, the helm of American power has invariably been “Rockefeller people” - John Dulles, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, Sigmund Brzezinski.

The Rockefeller brothers divided their “spheres of influence” in the government apparatus “in a family-like manner”: Nelson and John were “friends” with the State Department, Lawrence with the Pentagon, and David with the Treasury Department. The brothers never skimped on paying for “friendly services.”

Not long ago it became known that Henry Kissinger, for example, when appointing him to the post of assistant for national security received a “gift” of 50 thousand dollars from the Rockefellers.

Other individuals received “gifts” in the amount of 120 thousand, 40 thousand, 75 thousand, 230 thousand. John D. Rockefeller Sr. became a legend, making huge capital serve people.

Even as a teenager, he donated money to the Baptist Church. Having become immensely rich, John gave away money almost as fast as he earned it.

According to the most conservative estimates, during his life, Rockefeller and the foundations named after him donated more than $530 million to charitable causes - a fortune then and an even greater fortune in terms of today.

The University of Chicago alone received $35 million from him. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, by simply distributing tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, eradicated ankylostomiasis, which one historian called the “microbe of laziness,” in the southern United States.

And the Institute for Medical Research, opened with his money, the first institute in the world created exclusively for medical research (now Rockefeller University), helped to resist much more serious diseases.

In all the places where the aged Rockefeller appeared, he handed out handfuls of five- and ten-cent coins from his pockets to everyone around him. And he always took a supply of them with him.

A billionaire once estimated that if he had kept all the money he gave away throughout his life, he would have been three times richer. But the question is academic at best: for John D. Rockefeller, receiving and giving were two sides of the same gold coin.

P.S. After studying Rockefeller's biography, I saw that there was a lot to learn from this man. Agree!

And in conclusion, I suggest watching a video about Rockefeller:

A symbol of the American dream, a multimillionaire who earned fabulous wealth, Rockefeller was a very mysterious and controversial figure. Unmercenary and philanthropist, at the same time a cunning and cruel businessman, whose name was used by the wives of ordinary hard workers to frighten their children. The article introduces the reader to a fascinating life's path John Rockefeller.

Childhood

In the summer of 1939, little John Rockefeller was born into a working-class Protestant-Baptist farming family. The family was large and poor. The constant lack of money forced me to save on everything. John's mother devoted more time to raising the children, who instilled in them religiosity and hard work.

The father of the Rockefeller family moved from forestry to sales. Working as a traveling salesman allowed him to earn more. So entrepreneurship became their family craft. Lessons and conversations with his father helped John with early years shape commercial thinking.

John Davidson Rockefeller began to show entrepreneurial talents at the age of five. He resold the purchased candies with a small markup per handful. He was engaged in raising turkeys, from the sale of which he earned fifty dollars. Then he invested it profitably: he lent it to a neighbor at interest. Rockefeller developed the habit of keeping track of his income and expenses as a child.

John Rockefeller was distinguished from his peers by his calm character, leisurely and sometimes absent-mindedness. According to the recollections of one of the adults, “he was a very quiet and thoughtful boy.” Behind the external slowness hid a good reaction, excellent memory and composure. Their strong qualities he demonstrated more than once during games. In checkers battles, he often won victories, keeping his opponent in suspense and exhausting him throughout the game.

Youth

In the eyes of those around him, Rockefeller John Davison looked like a strange teenager: a thin face with thin lips and impassive eyes, the look of which not everyone could withstand when communicating. Rockefeller’s lack of emotion, dispassion and firmness of character always frightened people, for which his competitors later nicknamed him “the devil.” Beneath the stern exterior was a kind-hearted and sensitive man.

Having already become rich, John Rockefeller once heard about the difficult fate of his former classmate, whom he once really liked. To help a widowed and poor woman, he provided her with a pension from his income.

John Davidson Rockefeller went to school late, at age 13, but did not graduate from school or college. Lack of degrees has never been a barrier for many millionaires. His only education was accounting courses. The training took three months, after which the 16-year-old teenager went in search of work in Cleveland, where his family had moved. He joined Hewitt and Tuttle as a clerk. A company engaged in the sale of real estate and transportation turned out to be good place hired work, but the first and last for John.

An economic mindset and innate responsibility helped the young clerk rise to the rank of accountant within two years. Rockefeller John Davison reacted outwardly calmly to the $8 increase in wages, but deep down he believed that this was an inflated and undeserved salary. Then he bought a diary and began to track his finances. The notebook was with him throughout his life and became one of the symbols of his success.

Independence and first business

Businessman Maurice Clark invited 18-year-old Rockefeller to the business. To become an equal partner, John Davidson Rockefeller invested his savings and borrowed money. The new company sold hay, grain, meat and a variety of goods. The civil war that broke out in the United States in 1861 required constant supplies of provisions to the warring parties. After receiving the loan, the scope of activity of the Clark and Rockefeller trading company was expanded. Supplies of flour, meat and other goods continued in large volumes.

John D. Rockefeller met the end of the war at the epicenter of the oil rush. The deposit was discovered near Cleveland. Active distillation of oil became part of the business partners' activities in 1863, when the plant was built. After two years, John offered Maurice to buy out his share for 72 thousand dollars, since he wanted to do only the oil business. So he became the sole owner of the well.

The fateful meeting for Rockefeller and the appearance of a new ally, S. Andrews, a chemist, contributed to a reorientation from oil production to sales. An oil company based on John's experience and rules, long years increased income.

From pawns to market kings

The year 1870 saw the opening of Rockefeller's oil company, Standard Oil, outpacing its competitors. Together with friend and business partner Henry Flagler, John Rockefeller bought out numerous individual refining and oil production firms to form a trust.

Competitors were left with no choice: join the trust or go bankrupt. At the same time, John did not disdain dirty methods, such as unfair competition and industrial espionage. Rockefeller had many tricks in his arsenal. The use of front companies, which were actually part of Standard Oil, made it possible to enter the local market of a competitor and cause a sharp drop in prices, forcing it to conduct unprofitable activities and go bankrupt. In addition, such opportunities made it possible to “slow down” oil supplies to an unwilling refiner. John acquired bankrupt companies for next to nothing.

Rockefeller concluded contracts with all suppliers, bought oil in huge volumes, leaving other companies without raw materials. It is noteworthy that many oil entrepreneurs did not know that the neighboring companies putting pressure on them were part of Standard Oil, since the strictest secrecy was observed. In 1879, the trust took control of 90% of the oil market.

Spy Games

During the “war” to control the market, Standard Oil collected information using an agent network. Fake employees came to work at competing enterprises, collected data for months, and looked for the “weak spots” of the business. Rockefeller met with his spies in different time, prepared dossiers on oil managers. The schedule was planned in a special way: partners, competitors and other visitors did not overlap. Encrypted telegrams flew between the agents and the head office.

Data on the main companies of competitors and all buyers of petroleum products in the United States flocked into a large archive. Part of the file cabinet included even small firms, grocers, who purchased kerosene for heating from the Rockefeller company.

Only the pedantic John Rockefeller could have planned and waged such an aggressive war, whose biography contains the following fact: when he was informed of complete victory over his competitors, the millionaire was not at all surprised, because he considered success inevitable.

Antimonopoly law

Knowledge of accounting greatly helped the newly-made millionaire, who tracked almost every barrel. When 95% of the market gathered under the auspices of Rockefeller, he raised prices for petroleum products and received gigantic dividends. All this would come to an end with the adoption of antitrust legislation.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1890 and monopolies were supposed to become a thing of the past. But John successfully bypassed him for more than twenty years. After 1911, the Standard Oil empire had to be divided into 34 enterprises, in each of which he retained a share. Some of them are still operating successfully in the USA. Thus, the Rockefeller trust became the founder of all major oil production corporations in America.

In addition to oil, the billionaire had logistics, banking and agricultural businesses. But in his old age, after 1897, he transferred control to his partners and became involved in charity and other activities.

Rockefeller - philanthropist

The story of John Rockefeller is truly unique. His fabulous profits accounted for more than 2% of the US gross domestic product, but even more amazing was his generosity. Donations by the end of his life amounted to more than half a billion dollars. Everyone has long forgotten about his former glory as a treacherous businessman; he became known as a philanthropist.

John Rockefeller's rules of life included mandatory assistance to the church. Being a pious man, he believed that good deeds should be done quietly. Throughout his life, he donated 10% of his income to the Baptist community. During 1905, the church received from him at least one hundred million dollars.

In 1982, John helped found the University of Chicago, to which he allocated 80 million. Three years later, the New York Rockefeller Institute of Medicine opened. In addition, the billionaire owes its appearance to the Museum of Modern Art, the General Council for Education, several monasteries and Charitable Foundation. Those in need still receive assistance transferred from companies through the Rockefeller Foundation.

Billionaire Family

Rockefeller met his wife in his youth. Laura Celestina Spelman was a teacher. The pious and practical girl reminded Rockefeller of his mother in many ways. The wedding took place in 1864. She became his friend for many years and an assistant in difficult moments of his life. The billionaire always highly valued his wife's advice. “Without her instructions, I would have remained poor,” John Rockefeller used to say. The memoirs do not tell what kind of poverty he had in mind, material or spiritual.

Rockefeller was a strict and fair father. Children were brought up in work, order and modesty. Like other kids, they were rewarded for good deeds and punished for bad ones. For example, after cleaning the garden, you were allowed to take a walk, and if you were late you could lose candy. On the plot, each child had his own bed, where they had to weed.

In order to instill in children the desire to work and earn money, Rockefeller introduced small monetary incentives and fines for them. The kids could receive a reward for almost anything: working in the garden, helping their parents, playing music, or abstaining from sweets.

Rockefeller John Davison Jr. took over his father's business in 1917 and managed to leave a significant mark on history. He inherited almost 0.5 billion dollars. John Rockefeller Jr. spent the resulting capital wisely. He allocated a significant amount for charitable purposes. He invested in the communications industry, on the construction of the Rockefeller Center, and spent up to 10 million free of charge on the construction of the UN headquarters. If it were not for this donation, the UN building in New York might not have appeared. The remaining six children received 250 million from their father. The construction of the famous Empire State Building was also carried out by Rockefeller John Davison Jr.

How much did Rockefeller earn?

By 1917, the income of the Rockefeller empire amounted to a billion dollars. Taking into account inflation and the realities of today, such profits would amount to hundreds of billions; so far no one has surpassed John.

He came to the end of his life with shares in each subsidiary of Standard Oil. There were more than thirty of them, and the total volume they occupied in oil sales in America reached 80%. Back in 1903, the oil concern consisted of 400 companies, 90,000 pipeline miles, 10,000 tank cars for railway transportation, and tankers and steamships numbered in the dozens!

John himself owned 16 railway companies, 6 metallurgical companies, 9 financial institutions, 6 shipping companies, 9 real estate firms and 3 orange orchards. In addition, he was the owner of villas, land and several houses, even a personal golf course. Enormous wealth created opportunities for lobbying his interests in political circles, which John Rockefeller skillfully used. The biography of the millionaire contains the fact: he always knew how to establish connections and a good relationship not only with ordinary people, but also with politicians and senior officials. Rumors that Rockefeller manipulated the White House and the US Treasury followed him for years.

Secret of success

Success in life depends on many factors. Rockefeller had the toughness, acumen necessary for an entrepreneur, determination, hard work and self-confidence. But the real guiding star in life for him was the family, faith and religious values ​​that his mother raised in him. They helped John survive in the brutal oil business with its uncontrolled rampant crime: explosions, blackmail and robbery. Thanks to the unpretentiousness of a believer, Rockefeller knew how to save and always had funds for business investments.

He was not as proud of his fabulous wealth as he was of his honesty and moral values. The paradox is that the billionaire was cruel and ruthless towards his competitors. It was John Rockefeller who always knew how to knock out an opponent. Books can tell the story of how he set up a clash between transport corporations in order to, as a result of a profitable deal, reduce the cost of oil transportation by up to 1.5 times.

Rockefeller's sharp mind and mentality helped him achieve success. He owns such sayings as:

• “If you work all day, you don't have time to get rich.”
• “Earn a reputation and it will work for you.”
• “Success depends on the decisions of the individual himself.”
• “Philanthropy is beneficial if it helps you become independent.”
• “The ability to win people over is a commodity that I am willing to purchase at a price higher than anything else in the world.”

John Davison Rockefeller is the richest man in the world in the history of mankind.

The future billionaire was born on July 8, 1839 in Richford, New York. Both parents, William Avery Rockefeller and Louise Selianto, were members of the Baptist Church. The family raised six children, of whom John was the second oldest. William worked as a traveling salesman and from childhood instilled in his children the ability to trade. To do this, his father paid John to do household chores. During periods when William was away, his mother, who did not work anywhere and was only involved in housework, had to save, and Louise instilled this ability in her offspring.

The world's first billionaire John Rockefeller

Little John showed commercial savvy from an early age - he sold sweets to his sisters, which he bought in bulk. And at the age of 7, the boy joined his neighbors on a farm, where he earned his first money by picking potatoes and raising turkeys. From the very first days of his working life, Rockefeller kept a ledger where he carefully entered income and expenses.

Young John gave the impression of a quiet, thoughtful boy to those around him. The lean and unemotional child thought for a long time and was in no hurry to make a decision. But in fact, John was a very sensitive boy, and was experiencing the loss of his sister, who died as an infant. After the girl's death, John lay prone on the grass away from home for 12 hours.

Rockefeller did not like to study at school, although teachers noted the boy’s tenacious memory and ability to think logically. During his student years, John started a moneylending business. Rockefeller realized that by lending small amounts at low interest rates, he could make money easily. The boy did not want to become a slave to money and work for a salary day and night; John decided to make money his own slaves and make it work for himself. After leaving school, John became a student at a commercial college, so the young businessman took a three-month accounting course, where he mastered the necessary basics of managing money.

Business

In 1855, John got his first and only hired job at Hewitt & Tuttle in the accounting department. The young man started with a salary of $17, but after a few months the young man received a raise to $25. A year later, Rockefeller was appointed manager of the company. John began to receive a salary 20 times more than the accounting salary. But the ambitious young man was not satisfied with this amount, since the previous manager was paid much more and, without working even a year, John quits to start his own business.

In order to become a partner of a businessman from Great Britain, Rockefeller had to borrow $1,200 from his own father at 10% per annum. Having collected the necessary $2,000, Rockefeller became a partner and owner of shares in the company Clark and Rochester. The company traded agricultural products. Rockefeller quickly won the trust of his partners with his business acumen, intuition and sincerity. The young man began managing the financial affairs of the enterprise.

In the second half of the 19th century, the development of a new market area began in America - the oil refining business, as kerosene lamps began to be popular in everyday life. John Davison Rockefeller invites practicing chemist Samuel Andrews to cooperate and makes the scientist a partner in the new company Andrews and Clark. Clark's previous partner did not want to participate in such a business, and John had to buy out a stake in the company and take over the management of the business.

At the age of 31, Rockefeller created the Standard Oil company, which was engaged in the full cycle of kerosene production, from oil production to the sale of finished products. A peculiarity of doing business was that John did not pay employees in cash. The businessman gave out incentives with shares of the enterprise. This approach allowed employees to work with greater responsibility, since now their well-being directly depended on the success of the company.

Rockefeller's business development proceeded at a rapid pace. Thanks to his entrepreneurship and ability to negotiate with influential people, John achieved reduced prices for freight transportation for his own company. railway. Compared to its competitors, Standard Oil's petroleum products were transported 2-3 times cheaper. Rockefeller thus forced other oil companies to sell production to Standard Oil. Thus, the enterprising businessman turned into a monopolist.

In 1890, the antitrust law of Senator Sherman was passed in the United States, which was directed against the activities of the Standard Oil company. Over the course of 20 years, Rockefeller was forced to split production into 34 controlled enterprises. In each of them, John secured the right to own a controlling stake. This division of business had a positive effect on the tycoon’s capital; Rockefeller increased his own income many times over.

State

John Rockefeller's annual income from the activities of Standard Oil was $3 million. At the time of his death, according to experts, the oil magnate's fortune was $1.4 billion. The company owned 70% of all the world's oil fields. In terms of the current dollar exchange rate, this is $318 billion or 1.5% of the GDP of the United States. Rockefeller owned 16 railroad companies, 6 steel mills, and 6 shipping companies. The businessman owned 9 banks and 9 real estate companies.

At the end of his life, Rockefeller surrounded himself with luxury, but did not advertise this to society. The tycoon's family owned orange groves, villas and mansions, land plot 273 hectares. John Rockefeller's favorite game was golf, so the billionaire had a playing field at his disposal for his personal use. The tycoon attributed his own well-being to discipline and maintaining the 12 golden rules of life, which John developed in his youth.

Charity

John Rockefeller attended a Protestant church from childhood and, as an exemplary Christian, from the very first earnings he began to donate tithes to the needs of the parish he visited. The oilman did not change his own habit until the end of his life. The tycoon donated $100 million. In addition to donating to the church, Rockefeller did a lot of charity work. John transferred sums of money to the University of Chicago and the New York Institute for Medical Research, of which John was the founder. At the beginning of the 20th century, Rockefeller created the Council for Universal Education and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Tycoon John Rockefeller in 1885

The oil tycoon wrote a number of biographical books, the first of which was the 1909 publication “Memoirs of People and Events.” In 1910, Rockefeller’s book “How I Made $500,000,000” about the history of enrichment was published. In 1913, the entrepreneur wrote the book “Memoirs”, in which he outlined all the interesting facts of his own biography.

Personal life

At the age of 25, John Rockefeller married teacher Laura Celestia Spelman from a wealthy family. The girl attracted the groom with her piety. The young people were united by a mutual feeling of love for each other and views on life and family well-being. Both were extremely economical and unpretentious in their desires.

The Rockefeller family had 4 daughters and the only heir was the son John D. Rockefeller Jr., who continued his father’s work. Even when Rockefeller purchased the Cleveland oil refinery, the family continued to live in rented housing and did not have servants. As the oil magnate himself wrote, John owes his commercial success to his wife.

After the death of his wife, John Rockefeller lived for a long time. The oilman fell in love with female company and gradually got used to wearing expensive suits. Rockefeller's favorite headdress was a straw hat, in which the elderly entrepreneur often posed for photographs.

John raised his children in an original way. Each child had a ledger in which monetary rewards and expenses were recorded. In the Rockefeller house there was a certain system of rewarding children for their work. John rewarded his daughters and son for their refusal of any benefits. For example, for a day without candy, a child was entitled to a sum of money.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. increased the fortunes of the family corporation many times over. And five grandchildren, the most famous of whom were Nelson, Winthrop and, participated in the political and economic life of the United States until the beginning of the 21st century.

Death

John Rockefeller had two dreams in life that did not come true: to live to be 100 years old and earn $100 thousand. But death overtook the entrepreneur at the age of 97, and his fortune amounted to $192 billion. John Rockefeller died on May 23, 1937 of a heart attack in Florida .

Quotes

Famous oil tycoon quotes:

He who works all day has no time to earn money;

Your well-being depends on your own decisions;

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

Rockefeller's 12 rules

1. Work less for people. The more you work for yourself, the faster you become poor. The word "work" has the root "slave".
2. The right way to save money is to take a step towards success. Buy products where it is cheaper or in bulk, prepare a list of what you need in advance, purchase products according to the list.
3. If you are poor, start doing business. If you don’t have a penny at all, then you should open a business right now, without delaying for a minute.
4. The path to success, the road to great wealth, passes through passive income.
5. Dream of earning at least $50,000 a month, and possibly more.
6. Money comes to you through other people. Communication and kindness make people rich. An unsociable person rarely becomes rich.
7. A poor environment, unsuccessful people drag you along with you into poverty and failure. You need to surround yourself with winners and optimists.
8. Don’t come up with an excuse for the possibility of postponing the first step towards achieving your goal - there is none.
9. Study the biographies and thoughts of the world's richest people who have achieved success. The life story of a successful person will help fulfill everyone’s desires - that’s the meaning of this quote.
10. Dreams are the most important thing in your life. The main thing is to dream and believe that dreams will come true. A person begins to die when he stops dreaming.
11. Help people not for money, but from pure heart. Donate 10% of profits to charity. That is, every person should help those in need. This is evidenced by the success story of John Rockefeller.
12. Create a business system and enjoy your earned money. The meaning of this quote is that a person should work in order to live happily, and not stupidly accumulate wealth.

The $900 million oil tycoon's career began as a $25-a-month courier. Having started working at the age of sixteen, John Davison Rockefeller - later the richest man in the world - three years later he opened his own company, and in 1862 he went into the oil business.

Having bought out the companies of almost all local competitors, he set his sights on creating a national oil company with a national supply network. The embodiment of his plan was Standard Oil, which in 1879 controlled 90% of the US oil refining industry.

In 1897, he retired from active management of the organization and remained president of Standard Oil until 1911, when the US government finally liquidated the company. Last years devoted his life to distributing the bulk of his enormous fortune.

Biography. John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 in Richford, Tioga County, New York. His parents were farmers, and John Rockefeller (the eldest son and second of six children) was expected to help farm the farm along with his siblings.

But even at a young age, John Rockefeller showed remarkable commercial ability. He bred and sold turkeys, and lent the proceeds at 7%.

When John Rockefeller was fourteen years old, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from high school and Folsom Commercial College, he got a job as a courier and assistant bookkeeper for the firm of Hewitt & Tuttle, which represented wholesale commission agents.

No one discussed the issue with the future employee wages, and the guy worked for free for almost three months. After that, he was given 50 dollars and the rate was set: 25 dollars a month.

Future billionaire John Rockefeller worked at Hewitt & Tuttle for three years and left after the firm refused to meet his salary demands - John wanted to be paid $800 a year. This time he decided to open his own company.

John Rockefeller is the richest man in the world

Way to success. Having borrowed $1,000 from his father at 10% interest per annum, John Rockefeller and his partner Morris Clark began to engage in agricultural products. He literally charmed the surrounding farmers, so that in the first year of operation (1859) the company's profit reached 500 thousand dollars.

At that time, the oil industry in Ohio was just beginning to gain momentum. Several oil refineries opened near Cleveland. John Rockefeller immediately realized the possibilities that lay ahead the new kind fuel, and wasted no time in opening the oil refining company Andrews, Clark and Co. in 1862.

He later sold his production commission rights to Clark, bought a partner's interest in Andrews, Clark and Co., and founded Rockefeller & Andrews.

By 1869, Rockefeller's company had already acquired a number of other small firms that worked in the same field, and became known as Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler. However, the oil refining industry as a whole was going through difficult times. Every day everything appeared more companies who want to engage in oil refining. Its price dropped so much that many companies went bankrupt.

But this did not scare John Rockefeller. In 1869, he decided to merge Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler with the Standard Oil Company of Ohio and became president of the company, which had a capital stock of $1 million.

John Rockefeller then continued the “combined” strategy that he had successfully implemented in the steel industry. He concluded that The best way ensure the survival of the company in the current conditions - distribute the risks associated with activities in an unstable area.

In order to achieve this goal, the most sensible thing was to acquire all competing companies - both local and all other US oil refining firms. By 1872, Standard Oil already owned all of Cleveland's oil refineries.

Standard Oil Trust's dominant position has drawn a torrent of criticism. In 1892, Ohio's chief prosecutor won a case to dissolve the trust.

From 1890, while the case continued in court, John Rockefeller was in a state of severe stress. He was completely bald, he didn't even have eyebrows left. It was rumored that he suffered from a nervous disorder.

However, the Standard Oil Company was largely unaffected: it was simply converted to the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), since under New Jersey law the parent company could own a number of other companies. Standard Oil Company controlled 75% of the US oil refining industry.

John Rockefeller was president of Standard Oil until 1911, when the US Supreme Court finally ordered the trust to be dissolved, declaring that the company had violated US antitrust laws. Thirty-eight organizations that formed a giant oil refining trust became independent entities.

During his lifetime, Rockefeller was often criticized, and all sorts of fables were written about him. For example, it was widely believed that he lived only on bread and milk. It was believed that he had a phenomenal capacity for work, that hard work did not tire him.

The entrepreneur himself insisted that he didn’t even know what he was talking about: “People stubbornly continue to think that I was a 100% workaholic who worked constantly, day and night, at any time of the year. In fact, as I approached the age of thirty-five, I became what would now be called a quitter. Never, since the time when I first crossed the threshold of my office, have I allowed work to absorb all my time and attention.”

John Rockefeller devoted his last years to charitable activities. He gave more than $35 million to the University of Chicago, founded the Medical Research Institute, the Foundation and the Sanitary Commission, which fought hookworm in the southern United States. At that time, his fortune was estimated at $900 million.

He died May 23, 1937, at his home in Ormond Beach. By that time, he had distributed almost all of his fortune, leaving only $26,410,837.

Summary. John D. Rockefeller is the founder of the modern oil refining industry. His business activities may not have been as visible as those who invented electric lighting or his Model T automobile. But without Standard Oil's cheap gasoline, neither the large-scale electrification of the country nor the mass marketing of automobiles would have occurred.

Realizing that one of the most important factors success - the professionalism of its employees, Rockefeller assembled a team of the most talented businessmen. He often said: “An organization is made up of people, not machines.”

Subsequently, he was unfairly accused of heading one of the most hated industries in the United States, where trusts are in charge. However, we must not forget that Standard Oil was founded at a difficult time for the industry and increased its influence over several decades.