John D Rockefeller example essay topic

Jessica M. HintermeisterAmerican History Louisa Garry Due: Thursday, March 15, 2001 The Rockefellers feared the temptations of wealth, yet a visitor once described their estate as the kind of place God would have built if only he'd had the money. They amassed a fortune that outraged a Democratic nation, then gave it all away reshaping America. They were the closest thing the country had to a royal family, but the Rockefellers shunned the public eye. For decades, the Rockefeller name was despised in America, associated with John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s feared monopoly, Standard Oil. By the end of his life, Rockefeller had given away half of his fortune. But even his vast philanthropy could not erase the memory of his predatory business practices.

Who was Rockefeller? Was he a ruthless businessman who only wanted to belittle the American dream of small business people who believed in hard work and determinedness, or was he someone who had a vision for making a more efficient and established America? The world's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller Sr. held ninety percent of the world's oil refineries, ninety percent of the marketing of oil, and a third of all the oil wells. Working methodically and secretly, he did more than transform a single industry.

When he formed his feared monopoly, Standard Oil, in 1870 he changed forever the way America did business. Because of the ruthless war he waged to crush his competitors, Rockefeller was to many Americans the embodiment of an unjust and cruel economic system. Yet he lived a quiet and virtuous life. 'I believe the power to make money is a gift of God,' Rockefeller once said.

He believed the gift had bestowed upon him a particular aptitude for acquiring money. 'It is my duty to make money and even more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow men' (Chernow 315). He had the strength of this vision that this was where his destiny was, and this was where the destiny of this country was, that the country was going to, kind of, ride to greatness on this tidal wave of oil. And he constantly felt that he would inevitably triumph in some fundamental way.

Oil was being used to grease the wheels of America's infant industries, to fuel the expansion of growth. Rockefeller lamented that so many wells were flowing that the price of oil kept falling yet everyone went right on drilling. He saw an industry plagued from overproduction and his own success was being threatened by ruin ness cut throat competition. John D. was shrewd enough and he was analytical enough that he realized that in order to figure out a way to save his own firm and his own newly-won fortune, that he had to figure out a solution for the entire industry. It was at that point that John D. began to conceive of the oil industry as one big interrelated mechanism. And you couldn't just change one component, you had to control the entire machine.

In a move that would transform the American economy, Rockefeller set out to replace a world of independent oilmen with a giant company controlled by him. In l 870, begging bankers for more loans, he formed Standard Oil of Ohio. The next year, he quietly put what he called 'our plan' -- his campaign to dominate the volatile oil industry - into devastating effect. Rockefeller knew that the refiner with the lowest transportation cost could bring rivals to their knees. He entered into a secret alliance with the railroads called the South Improvement Company. In exchange for large, regular shipments, Rockefeller and his allies secured transport rates far lower than those of their bewildered competitors.

John D. Rockefeller said, 'The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism is gone forever, never to return' (Hawke 128). Their great business capacity would have insure the managers of the Standard Oil Company success, but the means by which they achieved monopoly was by conspiracy with the railroads. John D. Rockefeller killed his rivals by getting the great Railroad lines to refuse to give them transportation.

Multimillionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt, the king of railroads, is reported to have said that there was but one man, Rockefeller, who could dictate to him. Whether or not Vanderbilt said it, Rockefeller did it. Rockefeller might create a shortage of the railroad tank cars that transported oil. He might go out and buy up all the barrels on the market so a competitor would have no place to store his oil or ship it.

He would even buy up all the available chemicals that were necessary to refine oil. Ida Tarbell, the daughter of an oil man, later remembered how men like her father struggled to make sense of events: 'I never had an animus against Standard Oil's size and wealth, never objected to their corporate form,' 'I was willing that they should combine and grow as big and rich as they could, but only by legitimate means. But they had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me' (Bruce 90). Rockefeller, of course, disagreed: 'It was the law of nature, the survival of the fittest, that (the small refiners) could not last against such a competitor. Undoubtedly... some of them were very bitter. But there was no band of greedy men plundering them.

An able, intelligent, far-seeing organization simply outstripped men in the casual, haphazard way of doing business. That was inevitable' (Chernow 445). Rockefeller believed he was destined to guide the oil industry. It was never in his interest to alienate his competitors. He much preferred convincing people to sell to him voluntarily rather than trying to squeeze them through paratactic. Although if necessary he would resort to very rough methods in order to soften them up.

He had no self-doubts. He had a vision that no one could stop him from accomplishing, and that is why he came off as a savage. John D. Rockefeller was a pillar of the Baptist church. His financial plan was to makes as much money as he could, and then give away as much as he could. To do so, he hired Reverend Frederick Gates to help him with his principles of philanthropy because he didn't want to waste a penny.

His thinking was ahead of his time; he wanted to give money to society to make people more efficient on their own instead of simply distributing money to the masses on a whim. Find a more productive way of growing corn, rather than making a soup kitchen. In the coming years, Rockefeller would fund the education of black women at Spelman College in Atlanta; found the University of Chicago - the midwestern equivalent of the Ivy League; support groundbreaking medical research and public health campaigns. Frederick Gates pushed him on, warning, 'Mr. Rockefeller your fortune is rolling up... like an avalanche!

... You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you and your children and your children's children' (Raymond 198)! Already strained by the demands of making money, Rockefeller now staggered under the new pressures of giving it away.

'I investigated and worked myself almost to a nervous breakdown,' he said, 'in groping my way through the ever-widening field of philanthropic endeavor' (Raymond 199). John D. Rockefeller created an industrial empire, and a personal fortune on a scale that the world had never known. He ruthlessly crushed his competitor's in the process, alienating the public and leaving a stain on the family name. He set the standard for philanthropy, but his reputation was so sullied that he never received the credit that he was due for this great act on behalf of humankind. 'We came to realize that the real problem was the integration of power and goodness,' says Steven Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller Junior's grandson. 'And that if the family was going to continue to work together, philanthropic commitments and values would be at the center' (Harr 67).

In a society that has more millionaires, even billionaires than ever, the story of the Rockefellers is both a cautionary tale and an exemplary one.