The Career of John D. Rockefeller

The purpose of this research is to examine the career of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the man who established the fabulously wealthy Rockefeller dynasty. John D. Rockefeller's life was fairly typical of that of many other 19th-century Americans. In many other respects, it was a life that has never been equalled. John D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839. One report of his childhood says that "his first distinct recollections were of the rough farming country near the villiage of Moravia in western New York, where he lived from his fourth to his eleventh year; in 1843 his father paid $3100 for the ninety-two acre tract in Moravia township."

This farm country of western New York was practically wilderness. The Rockefellers were not frontiersmen in the sense that they had to fight off Indians, but they did live in the United States at a time when most of the nation was rural. Rockefeller's childhood on the farm was typical of that of most youngsters of his generation. He came from a large family which was not actually poor but had to struggle to avoid being poor. His parents provide an interesting combination of characteristics. Rockefeller's mother was Scotch-Irish and his father was Anglo-Saxon. Both were hardworking, thrift-oriented people who taught their children the value of the work ethic and the value of money, but the resemblance does not seem to have gone further than that in terms of personal character. John Rockefeller's moth

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g his own spies present (and voting) at the shareholders' meetings of corporate rivals. Another technique of his was to buy out companies in secret, using their actions (controlled by him) to help manipulate the market in his own favor. Some people believe this practice was necessary and for the best in 19th-century America. However, no one denies that this was the financial basis of the Rockefeller fortune. When put by circumstances into a region and industry that took cut-throat business tactics for granted, Rockefeller earned the contempt of his peers. He was so ruthless that word of his lack of civilized values became widespread. By law, he did not have to respect the rights of others, and, in the name of profit, he did not. Acording to one report, "by 1870, after only seven years in the business, he was able to establish a joint stock company called Standard Oil Company with a capital of a million dollars, of which he owned 27 percent. Already, the company held a tenth of the oil industry in America." This meteoric rise through the economic system was considerably easier in 19th-century America than it would have been 100 years later, but this does not make it any less extraordinary. The original investment made

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