John Rockefeller. Business and private life

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 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, on a quick fix knocked 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 oxcart, Rockefeller's grandfather holds the reins, his wife and children trail 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 my 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: while 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 sparkle, 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 to 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 turkey poults 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 thoughts, all feelings, all 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: “ In those years, John 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 note, 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 did not matter in the slightest - he was allowed into the shining world of business, and he cheerfully walked towards the coveted 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 constantly 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 stumbled upon a real gold mine. In the evening, all houses, from the palaces of Vanderbilt and Carnegie to the shacks of Chinese emigrants, caught fire. kerosene lamps, 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 increased 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 Civil War gave the business what it had hitherto lacked: an army of seasoned 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.

Since crude oil is essentially worthless without refinement, hundreds of refineries have sprung up at the other end of the pipeline (and this is true. Under Henry Ford, there were 240 automakers, 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 at that, 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 determined the price of the 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 competitors' shipments from the shippers and carriers union (South Improvement Company), which greatly helped 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 kind was needed new plan organizations.

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 came to the conclusion that the only possible solution– seize control of oil refining capacities on a national scale.

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. Railways, intimidated by geologists' predictions about the rapid depletion of national oil fields, were in no hurry to spend huge amounts of money on increasing traffic volumes.

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 apparent 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 we sold one, 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, vans sold oil even during a spill, breaking the line between wholesale and retail trade and further strengthening the population in the idea that all oil is Standard Oil.

By the end of the century, the company not only controlled nearly all of America's 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 90s vertical integration was finished,” writes Jerry Useem in his review of Rockefeller’s organizational methods in the May 1999 issue of INC magazine.

Oil now flowed from the Standard Oil well, traveled through the Standard Oil pipeline, was refined at the Standard Oil refinery, loaded into tanks, and even sold to the end consumer by the 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 person of his era, gobbling up competitors and building 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, the Rockefeller committee system was a daring creation, designed specifically to effectively control a daring, 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.

Harvard University's business department began operating in 1908.

At the end of his life, Rockefeller said that Standard Oil had become the "progenitor the whole system 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 is 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 strong assistants who were 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 actions 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 politicians, Rockefeller could not imagine how else to 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.

May 15, 1911, having collected 23 volumes of testimony over 21 years with a total volume of 12 thousand pages and convened 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 should be broken up.

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. The loss of the antitrust case turned into the greatest rise of Rockefeller's career. By that time, oil had a new purpose: the automobile.

Not only did the Supreme Court decision make John D. Rockefeller even richer, it did not make him repentant. When approximately twenty thousand strikers were 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 herself in literary editing and was a good 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, find a good job, 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) became 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 a 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 newlyweds moved after their honeymoon was rented cheaply by Rockefeller, 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 feared 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 imperturbable face and quietly said:

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

He dined 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 something for his subordinates. kind word, 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 has become a transnational company, its interests spread throughout 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 viewed 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 began world war, and all navies 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 another, and they did not 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 among children he flourished. (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 hospitalized with a nervous breakdown, and then married a man who upset her 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 man was John D. Archibald, the second-in-command in the company after his master. 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 old 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:

Attended a Baptist church service every Sunday, where he took notes to better understand principles that could be applied in everyday life. I slept eight hours a night and took a short nap every day. 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 stay at fresh air and the 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.

Let me 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 leading financial business family, then, according to the American monopoly press, his only hobby is collecting beetles.

David has 40 thousand of them; David Rockefeller, newspapers report, 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 state power in America can be used to increase your 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 fame of the founder of " 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, although very real, but still indirect access to leverage, is not enough for them public administration. In recent years, the Rockefeller clan has made several attempts to seize key positions in the government apparatus.

During the 1964 election campaign, 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, a recognized conservationist, donated the land on which the National Park Virgin Islands.

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 fine arts 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, received a “gift” of 50 thousand dollars from the Rockefellers when he was appointed to the post of national security assistant.

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 quickly 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:

John Davison Rockefeller. Born July 8, 1839 in Richford, New York - died May 23, 1937 in Ormond Beach, Florida. American entrepreneur, philanthropist, first dollar billionaire in human history.

Founded the company in 1870 Standard Oil and managed it until his official retirement in 1897. Standard Oil was founded in Ohio as a partnership of John Rockefeller, his brother William Rockefeller, Henry Flager, Jabez Bostwick, chemist Samuel Andrews and one non-voting partner, Stephen Harkens. As the demand for kerosene and gasoline soared, Rockefeller's wealth also increased, and he became the richest man in the world at one time, with a net worth of $1.4 billion (1937 nominal) or 1.54% of US GDP at the time of his death. Taking into account inflation The New York Times estimates his wealth to be around $192 billion. in 2006 equivalent.

Rockefeller was one of the US philanthropists, the founder of the Rockefeller Foundation, who donated large amounts for medical research, education, in particular, for the fight against yellow fever. He also founded the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller University. He was a practicing Baptist and donated part of his income to support church institutions throughout his life. He was noted as a hardworking, purposeful and devout Christian, for which his partners called him “Deacon”. He always preached healthy image life and complete cessation of alcohol and smoking. He had four daughters and one son, who inherited the management of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Rockefeller was the second child of six children in a family of Protestants William Avery Rockefeller (October 13, 1810 - May 11, 1906) and Louise Selyanto (September 12, 1813 - March 28, 1889).

He was born in Richford, New York. His father was first a lumberjack, and then a traveling merchant who called himself a “botanical doctor” and sold various elixirs and was rarely at home. According to the recollections of neighbors, John's father was considered a strange man, trying to avoid hard physical labor, although he had a good sense of humor. By nature William was risky person, which helped him build up the small capital that allowed him to buy a plot of land for $3,100. However, risk-taking coexisted with foresight, so part of the capital was invested in various enterprises.

Eliza, John's mother, was a homemaker, a very devout Baptist, and often in poverty because her husband was constantly away for long periods of time and she constantly had to save on everything. She tried not to pay attention to reports of her husband's oddities and adultery.

Rockefeller recalled that from an early age his father told him about the enterprises in which he participated, explained the principles of doing business, he wrote about his father: “He often bargained with me and bought various services from me. He taught me how to buy and sell. My father was simply “training” me to get rich!”

When John was seven years old, he began feeding turkeys for sale and earned extra money by digging potatoes for his neighbors. He recorded all the results of his commercial activities in his little book.

With his first salary, Rockefeller acquires a good ledger. In it he writes down all his income and expenses, paying attention to even the smallest details. He treated this book with special awe and respect, keeping it for the rest of his life. As well as the memory of your first working day, as an understanding of your first step on the path to becoming.

He invested all the money he earned in a porcelain piggy bank, and already at the age of 13 he lent $50 to a farmer he knew at the rate of 7.5% per annum.

His father's upbringing was continued by his mother, from whom he learned hard work and discipline. Since the family was large, and William Rockefeller’s enterprises did not always end successfully, she often had to save.

At the age of 13, John went to school in Richford. In his autobiography, he wrote that it was difficult for him to study and he had to study hard to complete his lessons. Rockefeller successfully graduated from high school and entered Cleveland College, where he taught accounting and the basics of commerce, but soon came to the conclusion that three-month accounting courses and a thirst for activity would bring much more than years of college, so he left it.

In 1853, the Rockefeller family moved to Cleveland. Since John Rockefeller was one of the eldest children in the family, already at the age of 16 he went to look for work. By that time, he already knew mathematics quite well, and completed a three-month course in accounting in Cleveland. After six weeks of searching, he was hired as an assistant accountant by Hewitt & Tuttle, a small real estate and shipping company, and soon rose to the position of accountant. He quickly established himself as a competent professional, and as soon as the manager of Hewitt & Tuttle left his post, Rockefeller was immediately appointed in his place. At the same time, the salary was set at $600 dollars, while his predecessor received $2000, because of this Rockefeller left the company, and this was his only hired job in his biography.

Just at this time, the English entrepreneur John Morris Clark was looking for a partner with a capital of $2000 to create a joint business. At that time, Rockefeller had saved up $800, he borrowed the remaining amount from his father at 10% per annum, and on April 27, 1857, he became a junior partner in the Clark and Rochester company, the company traded in hay, grain, meat and other goods. During these years, the southern states announced their secession from the Union and the Civil War began, the federal authorities had a need for supplies big army, and to complete large-scale food supply orders, the starting capital of $4,000 was not enough; the company needed a loan. Despite the fact that the company was young, Rockefeller managed to make a positive impression on the bank director with his sincerity, and he agreed to provide the company with a loan.

In 1864, Rockefeller married teacher Laura Celestina Spelman, whom I met while still a student. Although she was pious, she also had a practical mind. Rockefeller noted: “Without her advice, I would have remained poor.”.

In the late 1850s and early 1860s, kerosene lamps became widespread and demand for the raw material for kerosene, oil, increased. At this time, Rockefeller met the chemist Samuel Andrews, who worked on oil refining and was convinced of the promise of kerosene as a means of lighting. Rockefeller was interested in a message about an oil field discovered by Edwin Drake in 1859. Common interests united Andrews and Rockefeller and they founded on a parity basis with Clark's company new company Andrews and Clark Oil Processing. The partners established the Flats oil refinery in Cleveland. Transported oil and finished products by rail.

The Standard Oil Company was founded in 1870. Rockefeller began searching for oil; already at the beginning of his activity, he noticed that the entire oil business was organized inefficiently and chaotic, and focused on putting things in order. The first step was to create the company's charter. In order to motivate employees, Rockefeller initially decided to refuse wages, rewarding them with shares, he believed that thanks to this they would work more actively, because they would consider themselves part of the company, since their final income would depend on the success of the business.

The business began to generate income, and Rockefeller began to gradually buy up other oil companies one by one, small enterprises that were not too expensive. This strategy did not sit well with many Americans. Rockefeller negotiated with railroad companies to regulate transportation prices, so Standard Oil received lower prices than its competitors: it paid 10 cents for transporting a barrel of oil, while its competitors paid 35 cents, with a difference of 25 cents per barrel for Rockefeller's company also received income. Competitors could not resist him; Rockefeller forced them to choose: unite with him or go bankrupt. Most of them chose to join Standard Oil in exchange for a share of shares.

By 1880, thanks to numerous small and medium-sized mergers, 95% of America's oil production was in Rockefeller's hands. After becoming a monopoly, Standard Oil raised prices and became the largest company in the world at the time. Ten years later, the Sherman Anti-Monopoly Act required the division of Standard Oil. After that Rockefeller split the business into 34 small companies and in all of them he retained a controlling stake and at the same time increased capital. Practically all major American oil companies descended from Standard Oil, including ExxonMobil, Chevron.

Standard Oil brought Rockefeller $3 million annually, he owned sixteen railroad and six steel companies, nine real estate firms, six shipping companies, nine banks and three orange groves.

Rockefeller's name became a symbol of wealth: he lived in great comfort, but did not flaunt his wealth like other millionaires on New York's 5th Avenue. He had a villa and 700-acre (283 ha) plot of land on the outskirts of Cleveland, as well as houses in New York, Florida and a personal golf course in New Jersey. But most of all he loved the Pocantico Hills villa near New York. Rockefeller wanted to live to be a hundred years old, but did not live three years - on May 23, 1937, he died of a heart attack at the age of 97.

John Rockefeller Family:

John Rockefeller Sr.'s five grandchildren continued the tradition of philanthropy and political involvement. The most famous of them was Nelson Rockefeller, Vice President of the United States from 1974-1977. John Rockefeller Jr.'s youngest son, David Rockefeller, was the head of Manhattan Bank from 1969-1980.

They say that part of Rockefeller's success belongs to his wife. Few could compete with John in his tight-fistedness and stinginess, in his coldness and prudence. But his wife Laura Spelman was able to outdo him. They understood each other perfectly, and she gave him a lot of thoughtful, reasonable advice during his work in business. Modern researchers all say that Spelman was such a perfect character match for Rockefeller that it was amazing. They were able to live without spills for more than sixty years.

It would be very strange if the “Success Stories” section did not include the name of such a person as John Davison Rockefeller, who is known, first of all, for becoming the first person in the history of planet Earth whose fortune exceeded one billion dollars.

It is very remarkable that the story of his success began in a small provincial town in North America and this man owes his success solely to his talent and perseverance.

John was born in Richford, New York, into a Protestant family. His father, William Avery Rockefeller, was first a lumberjack, and then became a traveling salesman who supplied residents of the surrounding area with miraculous elixirs and potions. Dad was rarely at home and devoted a lot of time to trading, alcohol and riotous women. But in his memoirs, John speaks of his parent as good father, which in free time devoted a lot of time to his son and, in particular, taught him how to trade. William, as they would say now, arranged some kind of training for his son, buying and selling his son’s various services. John subsequently appreciated these lessons. And from communicating with his father, he gained the firm conviction that alcohol and tobacco are a vice, and this is very bad. And looking at how his mother suffered from her husband’s frequent infidelities, he decided as a child that he would never do this.

The neighbors considered Father John a very strange man who did not want to work, but simply, a quitter. However, William managed to save some money and buy a plot of land and invest some funds in various enterprises. He willingly shared with his son his knowledge about the principles of business management and the fundamental criteria for achieving success.

John's mother, Eliza Davison, ran the entire household (there were six children in the family. John is the second child in the family), was very sensitive to religion and resignedly accepted the hardships of life: regular lack of money (her husband was often absent from home, which required strict savings) and cheating spouse.

John later said that he began to engage in commerce from early childhood. Many people find it disgusting that the future millionaire bought candy in the store and then sold it individually to his sisters. Profiting from your relatives is disgusting?! It all depends on what angle you look at it from. Do you also think the boy’s actions are terrible? Then try answering the following questions:

• Are candies a necessity?
• the girls had money (they bought candy from John) and what stopped them from buying candy in the shop themselves?
• The shop sold sweets not by piece, but by weight. The girls, buying one candy at a time, spent less money than if they bought these sweets in a store, which means they believed that they were making a good deal. If both parties believe that they have received the expected benefit, then what is immoral?

So, even in early childhood, not from books, but from his own practical experience, John understood what the laws of surplus value are and how they work. I believe it is very important for a future success story to understand how money works.

At seven summer age he began to breed and feed turkeys for sale, and helped his neighbors (not for free) dig potatoes.

And what’s remarkable is that he recorded all the results of his commercial activities in a notebook. Stingy boy? Business is not possible without accounting and planning. Little John knew what is a revelation for many today's businessmen - success is not possible without accounting and planning.

The boy kept everything he managed to earn in a porcelain piggy bank, which allowed him to take up lending at the age of thirteen - it was at this age that he issued his first loan to a farmer he knew. Fifty dollars at 7.5 percent interest. Expensive? But the farmer took it, which means he thought it was profitable for him. Money shouldn’t just lie there – it should work and make a profit. This is one of the rules of success. Money must work.

If you want a success story, don't go to school

In the same year, when he issued the first loan in his life, he went to school for the first time. Many years later, recalling this period of his life, John wrote that it was very difficult for him to study, and completing his lessons simply required titanic work. But the boy had a goal and he successfully completed school and went to college with the goal of mastering the basics accounting and commerce. But, as often happens with extraordinary people, he quickly realized that education does not bring him closer to success, but turns him into a diligent employee who will work for other people all his life.

He is finishing a three-month accounting course and is looking for a job.

Just at this time, the Rockefeller family moved to Cleveland. John spends a month and a half looking for a job and eventually becomes an assistant accountant in a small company that deals with real estate and organizing shipping. Hardworking and punctual, he attracts the attention of the owners of the company, and when the chief accountant leaves the company, the owners offer Rockefeller to take this place. But the predecessor received $2,000 a year, but John is offered only 600. And he leaves the company. If you don't value your work, then others won't value it either. This is another rule for achieving success - value your work and do not allow others to devalue it. If you don't do this, you won't have any success or success story. This was the first and last work, when John worked “for his uncle.”

It so happened that it was at this time that a businessman from England, John Maurice Clark, was looking for a partner with a capital of at least $2,000 to create and run a joint business. U young Rockefeller, at that time, there was a gold reserve of $800. The missing amount had to be borrowed from dad Rockefeller at 10% (!!! Remember the interest that John announced to a farmer he knew) per annum.

And on April 27, a historical event occurs - John Davison Rockefeller becomes a junior partner in the Clark and Rochester enterprise. The newly created company sells hay, pork, grain... It sells everything they buy.
And then something happens that can be called a gift of fate - the Civil War in the United States begins. I understand your indignation - how can you call war a gift?! But let me remind you that we are talking about a success story. For the business of a young company, the beginning of the war opened up great opportunities: war requires not only blood and lives, it takes everything. And hay, and pork, and cartridges... Everything.

The company's capital was clearly not enough for such a business, and John persuades the bank manager to issue an unsecured loan. How did this happen? History and young Rockefeller do not talk about the motives that pushed the hand and pen of the bank leader. There is an opinion that Rockefeller was so sincere and convincing that the bank manager could not resist. Have you ever received a loan from a bank? Have you ever seen a sentimental bank manager? Or maybe in those distant times people worked as bank managers?!

As a junior partner and businessman, John Rockefeller decided to marry Laura Celestina Spelman, a simple teacher whom he met during his student days. Like all women of that time, Laura was overly pious and at the same time unusually practical. Many years later, Rockefeller said that if it weren’t for my wife’s advice, I would have remained poor. Was it true? Of course it was! Laura may not have understood business, but a like-minded wife is not just the secret to success. This is a rocket that will carry anyone a normal man to the very pinnacle of success and to several lines in the history, if not of civilization, then of business for sure.

Where did success stories begin?

The world was entering the age of oil. Kerosene lamps were already burning and the great minds of the world were developing their engines internal combustion. Civilization slowly but surely walked towards the twentieth century - the age of motors.

It was during this period that John met the chemist Samuel Andrews, who was passionate about the problems of oil distillation and was confident in the enormous prospects of the emerging industry. In those days, the conversation was only about the possibilities of kerosene lighting of rooms and streets. A huge number of people, cities and towns... A huge market that no one has controlled yet.

At this time, a message appeared in the press about a “fresh” oil field discovered by Edwin Drake. The offer was risky, but very tempting. Rockefeller teamed up with Andrews, and then both of them, now as partners, turned to Clark. As a result, the oil refining company Andrews and Clark was established to build an oil refinery, which the partners named "Flats". They decided to transport oil by rail.

For the Rockefeller success story, oil and railroads are keywords. And the point is not that oil was transported by rail. There are 12 golden rules on how to become your first billionaire. I present to your attention rule No. 13, which the author did not like to talk about.

In the new company, Rockefeller led the search for oil fields. The work is difficult and not always rewarding. During this period, John thought that there were a huge number of small enterprises scattered throughout the country that were engaged in oil production and refining. Terrible chaos in the market. But if all these small enterprises were united under one sign and roof... It was with this idea that John Rockefeller came to his partners. This historical fact.

And now main recipe in a success story from John Rockefeller - read carefully!

Under the laws of that time, corporations were not allowed to own property outside the state where the company was incorporated. And this was a big problem - potential investors are not interested in investing small amounts of money in a huge number of objects. The investment object becomes much more attractive if the property can be merged.

And Rockefeller figured out how to circumvent the laws. The business plan (if you can call it that) for the future company was prepared very carefully: they even thought through the issue that employees should not receive salaries in money, they would be given shares - this, according to Rockefeller, was supposed to make them work harder and more productively.

The thoroughness of the plan is evidenced by the following historical fact: barrels were required to transport oil. Barrels could be bought for $2.50, but the partners opened their own production, which allowed them to get the same barrels for $1. For a small enterprise, the price of a barrel was not significant. However, the partners were planning a business in which hundreds of thousands of barrels were needed.

The next point in the plan was the organization of transportation of oil and refined products. Rockefeller carefully studied all transport companies operating in the region, their competitive advantages and weaknesses. A separate plan was drawn up, which involved the creation conflict situations among transport workers and using the consequences of these conflicts for their own purposes. Rockefeller created problems for transport workers, and then helped solve them.

Even before the Standard Oil Company was created, the implementation of this plan reduced the cost of transporting one barrel of oil from $2.4 to $1.65. This “small” advantage, multiplied by tens of thousands of barrels, became the key to a very great success future super company.

A number of secret agreements between the Rockefeller company and transport workers emerged: low price for Rockefeller and a high price for any other company. Under such conditions, competitors had no chance of success. Employees of competing oil production and oil refining companies were bribed.

In 1870, the Standard Oil Company was incorporated with a capital stock of $1 million. And in this new company, John Rockefeller's share was 27%. And from that moment on, a real war began between oil producers and refiners, behind the scenes of which Standard Oil was hiding, which organized this war.

As mentioned above, in those days oil was transported in wooden barrels on open railway platforms. The oil evaporated and the buyer received only part of the sent cargo - the most valuable volatile fractions of oil evaporated.

The Rockefeller group secretly owned the Union Tanker Car Company, and transport company there was a patent for sealed metal tank cars (oil is still transported in such containers today). The transport company allocated such cars to Standard Oil's competitors, and John Rockefeller monitored competitors' deliveries, their volumes and consumers. And as soon as a competitor began to invest money in the development of its business, received loans and expanded its sales market, the order followed - not to allocate cars. Competitors went bankrupt, and Standard Oil bought bankrupt companies at a meager price. Rockefeller used this tactic to expand his business for many years. The competitors could not even imagine who organized their bankruptcy and who is the real owner of the transport company.

Just because of the collusion between Standard Oil and the transportation industry, the state treasury lost more than fifty million dollars annually. The independent oil producing companies that remained afloat turned to the state administration with a proposal to build a pipeline. State authorities supported the idea and construction began in 1878. The pipe could destroy the monopoly that Rockefeller had created for so many years.

Standard Oil's response to the decision to build the Riverside pipeline was to recruit gangs who attacked construction workers and blew up already assembled sections of the pipeline. The oil pipeline was still completed. In response, the Rockefeller company built four such pipelines and announced a meager fee for pumping oil. A rival pipeline went bankrupt and was bought, again for rock bottom, by Standard Oil. It is clear that as soon as the competitor was eliminated, prices for oil transportation increased significantly.

Why were the authorities silent? He did not remain silent. A Pennsylvania grand jury returned an indictment against Rockefeller and Flagler for organizing gangster attacks. A demand for the arrest of John Rockefeller was sent to New York. However, for unknown reasons (ha ha), this judicial act was not executed.

Success - in all its glory

This is where the real success began. Rockefeller negotiated with transport workers throughout the country and bought up small oil producing and refining companies. The competitors had little choice: go bankrupt or transfer the property to the Rockefeller empire for a share of shares. Thus, by 1880, John had more than 95% of all oil production and refining in his hands. North America. Having become a monopolist, Rockefeller raised oil prices.

Ten years later, the Sherman Anti-Monopoly Act required Standard Oil to be broken up into a number of small and independent companies. Rockefeller complied: 34 small enterprises were created. And in each of these enterprises, John Rockefeller had a controlling stake. Almost every modern American oil company has a success story that begins with Standard Oil. To put it more precisely: their stories are the success story of John Davison Rockefeller.

Before the division, Standard Oil brought its main owner more than three million dollars annually. And besides Standard Oil, John Rockefeller owned 16 railway transport companies, 6 metallurgical enterprises, 6 shipping companies, a dozen companies that traded real estate, a group of banks (9 pieces) and many other properties, such as orange groves and huge plots of land.

What more can be said about John Rockefeller and his success story?

He was a very religious man (?) and from his childhood he donated ten percent of his income annually to the Baptist Church. In 1905, 10 percent amounted to one hundred million dollars.

He lived a long life and died at the age of 97 (and dreamed of living to 100). He began to (gradually) move away from business management back in 1897 and focused all his efforts on charity: the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Medical Institute were built with his money, etc., etc., etc.

Before he died, he gave away more than $500 million to charity. But this was not the entire fortune: the son inherited about 460 million.

In 2007, Forbes magazine attempted to estimate Rockefeller's wealth in modern terms. It turned out to be 318 billion. That year, Bill Gates topped the list with a net worth of just 50 billion.

And in conclusion, 12 golden rules of success from John Davison Rockefeller.

Success stories always make you think about how a person managed to achieve this very success, in what ways and by what means. If you read this post completely and carefully, then, quite possibly, you felt some disappointment: a Christian entrepreneur, high moral principles and collusion, bandits, tax evasion on an especially large scale. And it’s all one person - John Davison Rockefeller. It's up to you, as always, to decide who he was. One big life, like any big story, consists of small stories. Can these stories be considered success stories or should they be shamefully kept silent? To each his own. There was just such a person and this person lived. And these are no longer success stories - this is a historical fact.

Almost similar stories, but such different destinies. You can look at ways to achieve success or. And think...

The Rockefellers moved to the New World in the 18th century and gradually moved north to Michigan. Things are piled into a creaking oxcart, Rockefeller's grandfather holds the reins, his wife and children trail 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.)

William appeared in the city separately from his family - a handsome man with a light brown beard, wearing a brand new frock coat and (an unprecedented thing in Richford!) carefully pressed trousers. On his chest was a sign that read, “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.

“He was a very quiet boy,” one of the townspeople recalled many years later, “he was always thinking.” 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: while playing checkers, he tormented his partners, thinking about each move for half an hour, and never lost. “You don’t think that I play in order to lose?..” The stern, dry-skinned face of John Davison Rockefeller and his eyes, devoid of a boyish shine, truly frightened those around him. He never knew how to enjoy life.

But John was a very practical young man: he knew how to benefit even from 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 (John's father) 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 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. From early childhood, he was involved in business: he bought a pound of candy, divided it into small piles and sold it to his own sisters at a markup. At the age of seven, he sold the turkeys he raised to his neighbors, and lent the $50 he earned to his neighbor at 7% per annum.

Rockefeller never finished school. At age 16, with a three-month accounting course under his belt, he began looking for work in Cleveland, where his family then lived. After six weeks of searching, he got a job as an assistant accountant at the trading company Hewitt and Tuttle. At first he was paid $17 a month, and then $25. When receiving them, John felt a sense of guilt, finding the reward excessively inflated.

In order not to waste a single cent, the thrifty Rockefeller bought a small ledger from his first salary, where he recorded all his expenses, and carefully kept it all his life. But John wanted something more. In four years, he was able to save $800 and borrowed another $1,000 from his father to open his own trading company with partner Maurice Clark. It was April 1, 1858.

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 began, and Rockefeller, who became co-owner of a brokerage firm with a starting capital of $4,000, made good money. And then he stumbled upon a real gold mine; in the evening, in all 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 faith and oil"; at night he dreamed of oil wells gaping in the ground. (Having made a profitable deal, a gloomy man in a black suit jumped around the office, sang and hugged the secretaries.)

A rig cost less than $1,000, and new refinery rigs were popping up every day. By 1864, Clark and Rockefeller were already deep into Pennsylvania oil. A year later, Rockefeller decided to focus only on the oil business, but Clark was against it. Then, for $72,500, John bought his partner’s share and plunged headlong into oil.

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 newlyweds moved after their honeymoon was rented cheaply by Rockefeller, 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 feared Rockefeller like fire, and his wife considered him the kindest person.

Immediately after the end of the Civil War, the United States began an economic recovery. Consumption of kerosene and lubricating oils grew rapidly, and within a year the Rockefeller company's sales exceeded $2 million. But the low entry barrier allowed literally everyone to refine oil, and very soon signs of excess refining capacity appeared on the market. Rockefeller recalled how a German baker, whose regular customer he was, sold his business and opened a handicraft oil refining industry. John had to buy out the factory to return the baker to the bakery business. But the crisis still struck. In 1870, processing capacity was three times greater than market demand.

True, by that time Rockefeller had already achieved sufficient financial stability for his company to benefit from the crisis. “If oil goes down, nothing will make us stop buying,” he said. “Unlike other people, we have to act and not get nervous when the market goes down.” It was then that Rockefeller transformed his partnership into a joint stock company, Standard Oil, and began the total purchase of competitors.

Exactly at 9.15 he appeared 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 imperturbable face and quietly said: “Excuse me, please, I didn’t catch what you were talking about. Can’t I 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.

John Rockefeller Sr. created a model of a market economy at home: he appointed his daughter Laura as "CEO" and ordered 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 valued at 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 bicycle for four, they will learn to share with each other.. "

The crisis grew, and by 1871 even the 32-year-old head of the most powerful company in the country was alarmed. Many years later he would say of his fears in those days: “It was absolutely necessary to do something, otherwise the business would have died.” First of all, Rockefeller tried to reduce transportation costs. Playing on the competition of railway companies, Standard Oil sought from them an exclusive reduction in tariffs in exchange for guaranteed road load. Secondly, a company as large as Standard Oil could afford to innovate. And she was the first to use tanks instead of wooden barrels to transport oil.

And of course, Rockefeller continued to buy up all the enterprises that interested him. If beliefs did not work, the dirtiest methods were used. For example, Standard Oil reduced prices on a competitor’s local market, forcing it to operate at a loss. Or Rockefeller sought to cut off oil supplies to recalcitrant refiners. For this, shell companies were used that were actually part of the Standard Oil group. Many refiners had no idea that the local rivals who were pressuring them were actually part of Rockefeller's growing empire.
At the time, crude oil was transported in flatcars in open wooden barrels, causing the most valuable part of the cargo to evaporate. Upon arrival, only a thick sediment remained, which lost its main value. Secretly the owner of the railroad transportation company Union Tanker Car Company and holding a patent on the metal and sealed tank cars still in use today, John Rockefeller leased them to his competitors so they could transport their products to oil refineries. As new producers developed their infrastructure to increase production, Union Tanker unilaterally terminated oil railcar leases, causing producers who had invested heavily in upgrading production to suffer enormous losses and ultimately go out of business. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company then bought bankrupt companies for a pittance, usually acquiring adjacent railroads in the process. He used this ploy for many years without causing any backlash, since no one knew that he was the owner of Union Tanker.

For the success of such operations they were kept in the strictest confidence. Standard Oil agents exchanged encrypted dispatches with the parent company. Even visitors to Standard Oil management were not supposed to see each other. The company used an extensive system of industrial espionage to collect information about competitors and market conditions. Standard Oil's files contained records of virtually every oil buyer in the country, the use of every barrel sold by independent dealers, and even records of where every grocer from the Isle of Man to California bought kerosene...

…By 1879, the “war of conquest” was virtually over. Standard Oil controlled 90% of US oil refining capacity. Rockefeller himself greeted this victory dispassionately - as an obvious inevitability.

Rockefeller's gloomy appearance and brutal methods gradually led to the real demonization of his image. Journalists did not leave Rockefeller alone. The first journalistic investigation into the activities of Standard Oil, published in the Atlantic Money magazine signed by Henry Lloyd in 1881, increased the publication's circulation sevenfold. The tycoon was accused of monopolism and dirty methods of absorbing competitors. American mothers began to scare naughty children with Rockefeller. But John himself met all attacks with silence. “The public has no right to interfere with our private contracts,” he once declared.

“We have achieved a success unprecedented in history, our name is known all over the world, but our image is difficult to envy,” wrote one of Rockefeller’s colleagues in 1887. “We personify everything that is evil, heartless, painful, cruel.”

Many expected the collapse of Standard Oil when the first commercial automobiles appeared. The number of cars in the United States alone grew from 8,000 in 1900 to 902,000 in 1912. But, having reduced kerosene production, Standard Oil more than compensated for this by increasing gasoline production. And in the world market, no matter what, Rockefeller’s share did not fall below 70%.

Legal charges of monopolism, which Standard Oil's lawyers fought off, began to be complemented by loud political attacks. And to end of the 19th century century, Rockefeller began buying major politicians. There was enough money to pay both Democrats and Republicans. Standard Oil legally paid support to the Republican senator from Ohio, which in 1900 alone amounted to $44,500 (a huge amount of money at that time). The Texas senator, who at the time enjoyed a reputation as "America's leading Democratic leader," received money from Standard Oil to buy a 6,000-acre ranch near Dallas. Rockefeller also financed the party coffers of both parties.

But in 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took the helm of the state. He declared his main goals to be consumer protection, social justice and strengthening control over big business. Roosevelt immediately attacked Standard Oil with harsh criticism. To which Rockefeller responded by increasing funding for Roosevelt's election campaign in 1904.

According to Attorney General Philander Knox, shortly after the 1904 election, he entered Roosevelt's office and heard him dictate a letter ordering the return of money to Standard Oil. “What, Mr. President, the money has already been spent?” Knox said. “We simply don’t have it anymore.” “Okay,” Roosevelt replied, “this letter will still look good in the official records.”

Under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the company was charged with conspiracy to restrain free trade. In 1909, the court upheld the government's claim and ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil. The company appealed to the Supreme Court, but after two years of considering the protest, it upheld the decision. By the end of 1911, Standard Oil went out of business. In its place, 38 independent companies were created. The largest of these were Jersey Standard (since 1970 Exxon), Standard Oil Co of New York (renamed Mobil), Standard Oil of Indiana (renamed Amoco), Standard Oil of California (renamed Chevron) and Continental Oil Company (now - ConocoPhillips).

The split actually didn't do much damage to Rockefeller's monopoly, which he managed to maintain. However, he promised to take revenge on the all-powerful state that he despised. To do this, he invested a significant portion of his fortune in the creation of 12 giant banks, which became the Federal Reserve when Congress decided to use them to collect taxes in 1913. From now on, the funds collected annually by the Federal Reserve, before being transferred to the state, ended up in the safes of the Rockefeller dynasty.

At that time, there were two other world-class companies: the British-Persian Petroleum Company, which mostly produced oil in the fields of modern Iran, and Shell, which operated in the former Dutch colonies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Instead of wasting energy fighting against each other, which would provoke price instability, the three rivals agreed on the world price of oil and the division of large oil zones. To do this, they had to eliminate or take control of all small producers at the local and national level. The First World War provided them with this opportunity.

That Standard Oil induced the United States to enter the war in order to participate in the redistribution of former colonies under the Treaty of Versailles is sparsely documented, but the fact is undeniable. But we can say with confidence that after the war, the Russian Empire, which in 1917 turned into Soviet Union, was able to avoid the cartel's claims by building a different economic model. All this happened at a time when the use of oil became common practice due to the invention of the internal combustion engine, which provoked an exorbitant increase in demand. Then the "three sisters", under pressure from Rockefeller, decided to finance the Italian fascists and German Nazis so that they would start a war against the USSR in order to overthrow the Bolsheviks and gain access to oil. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In 1917, John Davison Rockefeller's personal fortune was estimated at between $900 million and $1 billion, which was 2.5% of the then United States GDP. In modern terms, Rockefeller owned approximately $150 billion. He remains the richest man in the world to this day. By the end of his life, Rockefeller, in addition to shares in each of Standard Oil's 32 subsidiaries, owned 16 railroad and six steel companies, nine banks, six shipping companies, nine real estate firms and three orange groves. Standard Oil's holdings in 1903 included about 400 enterprises, 90 thousand miles of pipelines, 10 thousand railroad tanks, 60 ocean tankers, 150 river steamers. The company transported and processed more than 80% of the oil produced in the United States. Standard Oil's share of world oil trade exceeded 70%.

At the end of his life, John Rockefeller himself began to look like an cannibal.
Rockefeller fell ill with alopecia, and all the hair on his body fell out. Without eyebrows, eyelashes and a mustache, he became truly scary: those around him shied away - it seemed as if death was walking towards them. The fact that Rockefeller was addicted to wigs added additional charm to the picture: his collection included all hairstyles and all shades. In addition, he became a great fashionista: now his favorite suit consisted of a yellow straw hat, a blue silk jacket and a bright Japanese vest, the ensemble was completed with dark glasses. One fine day, Rockefeller was not recognized by his own vice president, who was giving a dinner in his honor: “What’s wrong with you, Charlie? I’m Mr. Rockefeller!”). Journalists hinted that the multimillionaire had fallen into insanity, but this did not even remotely resemble the truth. With age, Rockefeller's mind did not change. He ruled his empire with an iron fist.

Standard Oil's dishonest strategy and numerous conflicts with the government apparatus, which passed laws against trusts, made Rockefeller a very unpopular figure in the United States. However, he managed to save his honor (as well as pay less taxes) by bequeathing $550 million, according to his grandson Nelson, who was vice president under Gerald Ford in 1974, to various foundations and charities, most famously was the Rockefeller Foundation. John Rockefeller died at the ripe old age of 98, leaving his only son John to take over the company at nearly retirement age. He, in turn, gave away $552 million, paid $317 million in taxes and left his family with a total of $240 million. His son David Rockefeller became famous in financial circles for being president and then director of Chase Manhattan Bank until 1981. He also served as president of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1970 to 1985. The total value of assets in the hands of relatives of John Rockefeller I in 1974 was estimated at $2 billion. Today, his heirs own 2% of Exxon-Mobil's capital and this is only part of the iceberg.

Hello! As always, Ruslan Miftakhov welcomes you! Surely today there are no people who do not know about richest man in the world throughout history - John Rockefeller, whose fortune, taking into account inflation, would now be about 200 billion dollars. Can you put this on yourself?

Today I decided to tell you about Rockefeller’s golden 12 rules and talk about the secret of his success. I believe that everyone who is interested in increasing their income (and this is most likely the majority!) will be interested in this article.

To begin with, I would like to give some facts from his life and upbringing in order to understand: where did it all start, how did you manage to earn so much? And then we will look in detail at the treasured list of his golden rules, which he always followed himself and advised everyone else to do the same.

John was born in New York State on July 8, 1839. His family, in particular his mother, instilled in him from childhood the basic principles of life, which he followed until his death.

Since childhood, the boy has learned in practice the basic principles of economics, one of which is to buy cheaper in bulk.

An interesting fact from the biography of the future billionaire: with the money given to him for his birthday, he bought candies, and then sold them one at a time to his sisters “at a premium.” The teachers did not like the boy’s “business”, but no one forced the sisters to buy candy, and they could do it themselves.

When the boy was about seven years old, he learned another rule of business: any work can bring income. He raised turkeys and then sold them to his neighbors at a profit. Is this bad business? However, nowadays it is difficult to find such independent child what John was like.

The boy did not spend the money he received for the turkeys, and did not just put it under his pillow, but lent it to a neighbor, receiving 7% from it. This lesson learned will then become part of one of his rules about passive income.

But don't think that John was a callous person. He was very upset when one of his sisters died. He was very sensitive, responsive, and thanks to his mother, a believer. And he always gave 10% of his income to those in need, and also built several universities, colleges and churches.

Not only the mother, but also the father, who led a riotous lifestyle, influenced the boy’s upbringing. Rockefeller, who looked at his drinking father and his mother's suffering, forever decided to lead a healthy and correct image life, was faithful husband and a wonderful father to his children.

How did you manage to earn a huge fortune?

John did not even finish college, and at the age of 16, after completing a 3-month accounting course, he went to work as an assistant accountant, after a month and a half of searching, in Cleveland, where his entire family lived. Later he was offered the position of chief accountant, but he always wanted to work for himself and refused it.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Rockefeller and his companion Clark were engaged in supplying food for soldiers, from which they made a small capital. And in 1864 they began to engage in oil, deposits of which were discovered near Cleveland.

Clark was not a risk-taker, and was afraid to pursue only oil, as John wanted. And then, having bought out his partner’s share for $72,500, not being afraid to take out a loan, Rockefeller went into the oil business. He founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and managed it skillfully until his retirement in 1897.

This is how John Rockefeller earned his capital, but he never became arrogant. He died at the age of 97 (in 1937), and according to his will, his descendants are still involved in charity work.

He promised it would be brief, but he delayed it a bit. life stories such a great person, among which there are many instructive moments.

Now let's get down to the treasured list.

Rockefeller's 12 golden rules

John wrote a book called Memoirs in 1908, in which he talked about his life path, success stories, how to get rich, and also described the ethical and moral principles by which he lived.

So, let's take a closer look at its basic rules:

These are the rules that allow you to achieve not only a good financial position, but also a successful and joyful life. They are very useful for everyone. Of course, some may disagree with them and come up with various excuses.

But this is everyone's business. I believe that you should learn from the advice of people who have really achieved a lot. And their advice is not just words, but actually proven actions.

I hope these rules help you achieve your goals! Good luck everyone!

Until next time.

Best regards, Ruslan Miftakhov