August 3, 2023 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, John D. Rockefeller had a very unusual childhood. His father, dubbed “Devil Bill,” was a smooth-talking snake oil salesman, while his mother was a very devoted and disciplined Christian who taught John to work, to save, and to give to charities. This often-demonized, so-called Robber Baron reshaped America, creating an industry centered around the world’s most important resource: oil.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
John D.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Rockefeller had a very unusual childhood. His father, dubbed Devil Bill,
was a smooth talking snake oil salesman, while his mother
was a very devoted and disciplined Christian who taught John
to work, save and give to charities. This often demonized
so called robber Baron reshaped America, creating an industry centered
(00:41):
around the world's most important resource, oil. Here to tell
this story is Bert Fulsom, author of the Myth of
the Robber Barons. What You're about to hear was shared
before live audience in Santa Barbara, California for the Young
Americas Foundation. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Rockfeller is an entrepreneur of the late eighteen hundreds. And
the two things that I would say, you know, we're
looking for bullet points. What should we know about Rockefeller?
Above all, he's the first billionaire in US history. He
did it in the oil industry. He had about a
seventy percent market share in oil sales in the world
(01:26):
in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. And he did
it with oil refining. He was in the refining, not
the drilling business, but the refining business. And I know
when you're thinking of oil, you're thinking, well, cars and
all of this they came in in the later part
of Rockefeller's generation. He mainly was kerosene, which was used
(01:47):
for lamps to light your home. So it's mainly kerosene,
not so much oil as we think of in the
way of gasoline. Second point, he was a Christian, and
I mean a Bible believing, serious Christian. The Bible taught
him to tithe ten percent. He tithed everything he ever
(02:09):
earned and kept records of it. So though we see
his first record as a teenager he earned fifty cents
and he tithed a nickel to his church, but he
increased his tithes as the years went on, so he
(02:30):
gave away more money than anyone in US history up
to then had ever earned. Well, that makes his life
rather interesting in the oil business. I want to just
say this because I want to focus on his character
and his philanthropy a little bit, but I want to
say this about his business, and that is he was
an innovator. He said, sometimes in life you need to
(02:52):
take risks you need to do the unexpected. You need
to follow paths that other people aren't taking. And he
did that. In the oil industry, for example, the standard
if you would take a barrel of oil out of
the ground, it's forty two gallons in a barrel. And
he shipped his product in barrels. And so he said,
if you get a barrel of oil, it's about maybe
(03:14):
sixty percent kerosene right there, and then the rest are byproducts,
of which gasoline would be part of one of the
by products. So he wanted to be the best in
He wanted to sell oil so that people could use
it to light their homes. People were sunrise to sun
down people up until Rockfeller oale oil. We had, but
(03:35):
it was very expensive. Only the rich could afford it.
Rockfeller wanted poor people to also be able to afford
to light their homes. This makes a difference. You can
work late at night, but I mean put work aside recreation.
You could do a bowling league or something at night.
You could go to school at night. The point is
you could do things at night because you had lighting,
(03:56):
and therefore that expanded your options in life. Wanted to
take advantage of it. So that he had a product
that everybody wanted to enjoy, and so for one cent
an hour, Rockefeller made it possible to light your home
with the kerosene lamp. That was his goal to get
(04:18):
the cheapest oil. Now to do that, he had to innovate.
For example, he would take a barrel of oil and
he thought, okay, you get fifty sixty percent kerosene. He said,
why don't we try doing different things with it. He
was specialized in research and development more than anyone else
before his time. He's a research and development guy. Research
and development says, what can we do with this oil
to get more kerosene out of a barrel? Heating it
(04:41):
was one thing he did. It was called cracking. Intense
heat applied to that barrel of oil, and you got
maybe seventy five percent kerosene. Everybody else is doing fifty
to sixty. That gives him an immediate advantage. The second
thing was the byproducts. Most of the other oil producers
had the idea, you get the kerosene and then that
(05:03):
other stuff is a bunch of sludge. They dumped it.
For example, he was in Cleveland. They dumped it in
the Cuyahoga River. You know, they didn't have any use
for it. Get the kerosene, dump the rest Rockefeller. He
was already an environmentalist because he was a save the
whales guy. Right, We're not gonna have to hunt whales
(05:26):
if we've got kerosene. So he also is an environmentalist,
but he did it kind of again, his Christianity is
framing his reference for how he approached life, how he
approached his family, his employees, his philanthropy. And so he said, look,
God doesn't make something that does not have value. Therefore,
(05:46):
everything in that barrel has value. We just don't know
what that value is. Therefore he hired chemists again, research
and development, find out what God put that stuff in
a barrel of oil? Four Oh okay. So they started
experimenting with what was being thrown into the river, and
(06:08):
they discovered, you know, waxes, paraffin, vasoline, paint great converted
to paint, varnish tars that could be used to pave streets.
Then he went into business selling the byproducts. And then
he went to his competitors and said, don't bother to
(06:28):
throw that sludge in the river. I'll just take it
off your hands. Not surprising, he had the cheapest product
on the market. No one could compete with John D. Rockfeller.
His company was Standard oil company. No one could compete
with John D. Rockfeller.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you're listening to Bert fulsome author of the myth
of the Robber Barons, share with us the story of
John D. Rockefeller. I think almost everyone knows he was
the first billionaire in America, but most people don't know
that he he gave away more money in his lifetime
than anyone had earned in US history. And of course
(07:07):
tithing and his Christian faith had been a fundamental part
of his life. From the first time he earned fifty cents,
he was giving away five cents. And of course, the
environmentalist at work, he essentially ended wailing. When we come
back more of this remarkable story John D. Rockefeller's life
story here on our American Stories. Here aret our American Stories.
(07:32):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
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(07:53):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
our American stories and with Bert Fulsome, author of the
(08:14):
myth of the Robber Barons. He continues to share with
us the story of John D. Rockefeller.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now, he says, what did God tell us to do?
Love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul,
and all your mind. Okay, So the relationship with God
is first. He would pray regularly. I left it. He
would always pray at business meetings. If things got tense,
he would be there with his directors, and if there
(08:42):
was a big argument, everybody'd look around and Rockefeller would disappear,
and they finally he had a cot out there, and
he'd be there praying, and they'd all go back and
kind of look at each other. Pretty soon he would
come back and say, well, now, I think maybe we
ought to think of this possibility, and they'd say, invariably,
it would be an interesting thought that he would have,
and it would kind of direct the meeting in the
right way. He took his Christianity very seriously. Love the Lord,
(09:07):
your God, with all your heart, all your soul, all
your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that
part isn't so pleasant. Neighbors are not always so pleasant.
But the idea he thought was that doesn't mean I
just have to warmly embrace him. But I ought to
want the best for them, and so I got him
thinking of people as kind of equals before God. It
(09:28):
produced a kind of humility. For example, here was a
scripture he liked from the Book of Galatians. Of course,
the New Testament is letters, many of them written by
the apostle Paul, and this is one of them. He says,
there is neither jew nor gentile, neither slave nor free.
This is before God. Now before God, there is neither
June nor gentile, neither slave nor free. Nor is there
(09:53):
male and female, For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Okay,
you love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind,
love your neighbor, and we all said her, He says,
So I can't really get too big headed, especially since
I read also that Paul says in the Book of Romans,
don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.
(10:14):
But he was secure with God. He said, God is love,
and God has not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power, love and a sound mind. And he
would meditate on these scriptures. He said, I meditate him
till they got in his heart. Now it plays out
interesting with his children. Okay, how are you going to
organize your life on these biblical principles as Rockfeller was
(10:36):
reading them. Number one, God first, that's obvious. Number two,
he says, family is very important in the Bible. It's
the key institution marriage and the family. Family second, and
career third. Now, see, this is what bothers historians and
(10:56):
why very few historians ever write accurately on Rockefeller, because
they're very offended by this guy who's a billionaire, who
owns more wealth than anybody in American history and gave
away more than anybody had he previously possessed, and he
put his career third. I mean, it looks like some
(11:18):
phony setup. It's hard to take seriously until you realize
the biblical underpinnings of his life. Rockfeller said, I never
set out to be rich. Had I done so, I
would have failed. The wealth is a byproduct of following
biblical principles. And even then you have to be a
(11:39):
caretaker of what God has given you? Okay with the children.
Alan Evans wrote, a Columbia University professor, wrote a delightful
two volume work on Rockfeller that still is worth reading.
I like it very much. He wrote it right after
Rockefeller died in nineteen thirty seven, and he's trying to
(11:59):
find what do you think of rock Filler. He interviewed employees,
he interviewed the children, and the children all loved him,
had great affection. He was there in their lives. Isn't
that interesting. He's a billionaire, he's running the most successful
oil industry in the world, and he's there for his children.
(12:20):
So he taught them how to ride bikes. This is
Evan's he's interviewing the history. Oh yeah, taught us how
to ride by. He taught us how to ice skate,
although he never wanted to do it. Sunday was the
day of rest and we had to do that. And
they said, well, what else about your father? He said, oh,
we'd have fun at dinner. Sometimes he would try to
balance a plate on his nose. He said that was fun.
(12:41):
He said that he'd play blind Man's bluff with us.
I don't know if that's a game. That any of
you have ever. My father did that with us. You
get a blindfold, and then the kids are in the
room hiding somewhere, and he's there moving around, and you've
got to be quiet or else he'll feel you moving
around and then rush at you and get you. And
(13:02):
so you had to be very, very careful. But one
thing that was interesting is they said one day he
came and whacked his eye on this table leg. And
Rockfeller himself had talked about that, coming to work with
a black eye and having to explain that it worked.
But it was playing with his kids. The children did
not have the same aptitude that he did. And so
(13:25):
Rockefeller said, this isn't an idea of what I want
for them. It is what God wants for them, and
I need to try to put them on the path
to success. For example, John D. Junior was not a
good businessman. We just have to say right off, Rockefeller
tried him out, John D. Senior, and had him in
control of a part of the business and investing about
(13:47):
one million dollars a lot of money back in eighteen hundreds.
And he came back and his investment, after his risked
taking was done, was worth about four hundred thousand Ord's
he lost about sixty percent of it, and he said,
(14:07):
I really dreaded going in to see dad, right, And
so he came in and sat down and told his
father about it, and he said, John D just said, son, yeah,
you've described it right, and you did make some unfortunate
moves there. And then he said, you know what, in
my own investment experience, I've even occasionally done worse. Obviously
(14:32):
he didn't do worse often, or he wouldn't be the
first billionaire, right, But he said, I've had some where
I even did worse. And he said, why don't we
look at other avenues that you might want to pursue.
And he ended up being active with the Rockefeller Foundation.
But the point is he didn't berate his son, but
at the same time he tried to direct him towards
something that he thought he could be productive. His children,
(14:55):
in other words, have massively positive accounts of their father,
and the grandchildren do too. They remember him fondly as
well as an employer. Again, he's framed with his biblical
understanding of the world. So the employees are fellow human
beings before God who have equal standing before God. And
(15:16):
I mean, it starts right off. Even he was born
in eighteen thirty nine, so he's twenty two years old
when the Civil War began. Even before the Civil War began,
he used some of the profits that he had made
as a young man to free a slave, to buy
that slave's freedom. Had Rockefeller had his fortune before the
(15:36):
Civil War, we might never have had a Civil war
because he would have bought the freedom of the entire
black population in the South. At least he would have tried. Well.
The Bible says he looked. He says One Timothy, chapter one,
verse ten talks about sinful behavior, and slave trading is
among the sinful of behavior. So not only can I
(15:59):
not be supporting that, but slave stand equal before God.
I want to help this slave reach his potential. Were
going to buy his freedom.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And you've been listening to Bert Fulsom tell the story
of John D. Rockefeller, and he's the author of the
Myth of the Robber Barons. Go to Amazon or the
Usual Suspects and pick up this book. Everything you think
you thought or thought you knew about the Robber Barons,
much of it not true or only partially true. And
(16:27):
you're learning some of that right here on how John D.
Rockefeller organized his life, and he organized it around biblical principles,
and even he attributed his wealth to not pursuing wealth,
but simply living by these principles and always starting with
God first. I mean, he put God first before profits,
and the prophets flowed. And then he put family second,
(16:51):
which is the proper biblical order if you're a Christian.
And again that means putting profits below it. And last,
care and career is not all profit. It's how you
treat your people. It's how you treat your customers, it's
how you treat everybody and your neighbors. And so in
the end, what happened because he organize his life this
(17:12):
way was this massive fortune, much of which he gave away.
And how he treated his kids in particular is so important.
Any men listening here who think their priorities have to
be their work and they don't have time for their
kids because they're helping their kids by providing for them
are not listening carefully to this story. And by the way,
(17:33):
his purchasing of a slave, there's no doubt, having read
this biography and all that I've read on Rockefeller, he
would have bought every slave possible and maybe ended slavery himself.
Rockefeller didn't have the wealth to do it. He became
wealthy after the Civil War. When we come back more
of Bert Fulsome's remarkable storytelling John D. Rockefeller's life story
(17:54):
continues here on our American stories, and we continue with
our American stories and author Bert Fulsome, author of the
Myth of the Robber Barons, he's telling the story of
(18:17):
John D. Rockefeller. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
His workforce also benefited greatly from him. For example, he
paid high wages, competitive wages. I want to get a
good staff of people working for me, and I want
to pay them well because if I pay them well,
(18:42):
they'll work well. And if somebody didn't, by the way,
they would get canned. They would get fired. But he said, people,
if you pay them well and have confidence in them,
will often work very well. And I want to reward
them with bonuses. You know, in the book Myth of
the Robber Barons, which Young America's Foundation published, and I wrote,
(19:03):
we went through Rockefeller. We have made sure we had
a chapter on him, and just give you this is
again his business model. I'm reading from page ninety four.
Rockefeller treated his top managers as conquering heroes and gave
them praise, rest, and comfort. Says Rockefeller knew that good
ideas were almost priceless. There were the foundation of the
(19:26):
future of Standard Oil. To one of his oil buyers,
Rockefeller wrote, I trust you will not worry about the business.
Your health is more important to you and to us
than the business. Long vacations at full pay were Rockefeller's
antidotes for weary leaders. Here's another quote. After Johnson Camden
(19:49):
consolidated the West Virginia and Maryland refineries for Standard Oil,
Rockefeller said, quote, please feel at perfect liberty to break
away three six, nine, twelve, fifteen months or months or more.
Your salary will not cease, however long you decide to
(20:09):
remain away from business. Now, one point I want to
make right off. This wasn't a deal he extended to everyone,
but it was a deal he extended to this guy
because that person had gained enough financially for the company
that even if he took that long away, the company
would still benefit from his previous doings, and Rockefeller wanted
(20:30):
him to be fresh for action again, not overworked. What's
interesting is in reading neither Johnson, Camden or others rested
very long. They were too anxious to succeed in what
they were doing and to please the leader who trusted them,
so they wanted to get back in. By the way,
Henry Ford, who is the second billionaire in US history,
(20:54):
also paid very high wages. Some of you may have
heard of his five dollars day, which was more than
twice the industrial wage to build and he was doing it,
of course, to build cars. Now, I know some people say, well, wait,
there are a lot of businessmen out there who were
lowballing their employees. What do you call that? Well, I
(21:15):
call those people those businessmen non billionaires. In a free market,
you're going to get people who do that. But what's interesting, right,
we have the freedom to move and not do that work.
And when you have Rockefeller who's employing not only tens
of thousands, but at certain point hundreds of thousands of
(21:37):
people and entry forward the same way, there are opportunities
out there and it has an impact on the market,
driving wages up. Now, I know unions could be helpful,
and I'm not saying that there's no need for them,
but I'm saying that it's interesting that the first actual
push up on wages was not really pressure from the unions.
It was voluntary by Rockefeller and by Ford, the first
(22:01):
two billionaires in US history. So you have that. Now,
there are other things about Rockfellers. Give me just a
flavor of how he operated. Standard Oil office was in
the New York City. It was a tall skyscraper and
the executive offices were on the top floor. And if
somebody had really done good work for the company, they
(22:22):
could get a promotion. And sometimes it would be a
promotion if it was really work well done, to the
top floor of the Standard Oil building, which everybody knew
was the elite. He had an accountant in Cleveland who
had done massively good work in helping the company save
massive amounts of money, and he received a promotion to
(22:44):
go to the top floor of the Standard Oil building
in New York. He was excited. Alan Evans talks about
his story. He interviewed him in his book, and Guy says,
I was there. It was exciting. He said, I was exhilarated.
I told everybody going to New York, Yeah, standard Oil building,
top floor, that's me, top floor. And so he goes there.
(23:08):
He gets in the elevator. He punches, the elevator door
opens and comes out the plush carpet, the elaborate scenes,
and he walked on the carpet, and then he looked around. Oh,
there were offices people he had heard of, like H. H. Rogers,
who was going to be a president of Standard Oil
at one point, and John Archibald. He says, oh, my gosh.
(23:29):
And he went in and there was an unpleasant thing.
He discovered there was no office with his name on it.
And so he went into the secretary and said, now,
I'm supposed to be gave his name, have this office.
And she looks and he says, oh, yeah, okay, we're
not going to have that ready for another week. And
(23:51):
he went back and he sort of was singing, Okay,
I've told everybody I'm going to be up here on
the and she offered him another office several floors down, temporary.
While they waited, he says, okay, I can tell everybody
I'm so important that they don't have an office for
me and I'm not up there, or I can try
to make something happen up here. So he's looking around,
(24:11):
Is there a closet anywhere where I can fight or
so he goes in and he found an exercise room.
There was small one, and there was some guy in
there on so much you treadmill, and he says, I
wonder if I could use this, And so he came in.
He looked around. He says, this is just my work
is an office. And so there was even a chair
in there. That's a start. And so he asked the
(24:35):
guy in the exercise machine, I'm going to be needing
this as an office. Would you please take your equipment elsewhere?
And the guy says all right and gets up and lease.
So then he's there and he says, okay, what else
do I need? I need a desk, I need some paper,
I need some pens, I need a phone. I'm important.
And so he went down there and went to the
secretary and says, well, ma'am, I ben here. We don't
(24:57):
have to wait a week at least for the time being.
I worked to place out. I've got the exercise room
over there. And she says, oh really, She looks a
well did mister Rockefeller say you could have that? He
likes to exercise in there. And you know, in literature,
you know, we call it the epiphany, the moment of awareness.
(25:19):
Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that guy in the
room who was, oh, no, no, no, it isn't happening
that I'm promoted to the top floor. And within five minutes,
I've kicked John Dye Rockefeller out of flows. And he
said he went back into the exercise room, into that
(25:40):
chair and slumped. He says, I just could hardly even
muster the strength. He says, I was waiting to be fired.
I was too limp practically to walk. And I waited
there the rest of the day and nothing happened. And
I came back and I thought, well, I've got to
officially be fired. And so he came back and nothing happened.
And at the end of a week he got his
office up there. And so Nevan's you know, the interviewer
(26:02):
is saying, well, did Rockfeller ever mention this to you
in any cauch No, And I didn't ask. But you
see the point here at Rockefeller, although he never knew this,
guy knew that that was not an insult. Had it been,
he would have done something. But he knew that this
was an accident. And he also knew nobody gets promoted
(26:25):
to the top floor at standard oil unless they've earned
his company many millions of dollars, and Rockefeller is the
biggest stockholder, so he probably paid minimal attention to it.
And when the guy moved into his office, Rockefeller moved
his exercise machine back and life went on as usual.
(26:50):
But it made this guy want to work hard for
Standard oil. There's something compelling about John D. Rockefeller as
a boss.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
There is something indeed compelling about John D. Rockefeller as
a boss. He paid well, and this is just another
part of living by the Golden rule and living according
to biblical principles. He paid people well by the way.
He was no softy. I mean, if he didn't do
your job, that was another matter. The story of John D. Rockefeller,
(27:20):
his life, his faith, his fortune, and so much more.
Here on our American stories. And we continue with our
(27:40):
American stories and the story of John D. Rockefeller, and
it's being told by Bert Fulsom, author of the Myth
of the Robber Barons. Let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
The interesting thing is that standard oil was often reviled
and criticized by some people who were jealous. I mean
not everybody was it standard oil. There were competing oil companies,
some of which were still tossing oil into the river,
or at least not producing oil efficiently. One of them
was Ida Tarbell. You may have heard of her. She
wrote a book called History of Standard Oil. Her father
(28:14):
was in the oil business and he was selling oil
at eleven cents a gallon and Rockefeller at eight cents
a gallon, and he ruined her childhood, and so she
wrote a book called the History of Standard Oil. Essentially
the book is this. There's one chapter called quote the
Legitimate Greatness of Standard Oil, where he says, this guy's awesome.
(28:37):
I mean she did do that. I've got to give
her credit. Every other chapter is filled with interviews with
people who did not like Rockefeller, and many of these
are unconfirmed. One source says that and there, so it's
hard to track some of these down. Rockefeller had many
(28:58):
of his staff people wanted to respond. Rockefeller, however, said
the Bible says, do not reap this in one Peter.
Then Peter's letter one Peter, do not repay evil with evil,
insult with insult, but with blessing. Because to this you
were called. This is a hard one to meet, but
(29:22):
it is the biblical standard. And Rockefeller would not attack
Ida Tarbill. He said, what we're going to do is
she says this, and our oil will say something entirely different.
It's the cheapest and highest quality in the world. That
will tell one story, She'll tell another, and will win.
(29:43):
Except it was a time of muck raking in the
early nineteen hundreds, and the press again and again hit
on these issues, and eventually an antitrust suit was launched
on Rockefeller, saying that he had such a large percentage
of the oil market that he must in some way
be quote in restraint of trade, or as the court said,
(30:04):
he had the potential to restrain trade. See the wording
of the Anti Trust Act is do not restrain trade
any combination and restraint of trade is illegal, is the wording.
But they said, well, we can't trace that he's restrained trade,
but he has the potential, and so we'll interpret it
that way. Standard Oil ultimately was broken up into about
(30:27):
thirty different corporations, one in each state, and Rockefeller was
only allowed to preside over one of them. That was
in nineteen eleven. So Rockefeller did say that. He said, later, well,
what do you think you should have said something to Tarbell?
And he said, you know what, I think, in retrospect,
we should have had a challenge out but not an insult.
(30:50):
But he did. He said, I think that was a mistake.
Now I want to take a look at his philanthropy too,
because this is where it gets very very interesting. Here
with the biggest giver up to that time in the world.
He gave way over half a billion dollars at a
time when a five thousand square foot house could be
(31:10):
had for seven thousand dollars, and he has half a
billion that he's giving away. So Rockefeller felt, I'd like
my giving to con under the categories here of health
and improvements of health, crops, or building of human capital.
Let me give you an example. Hookworm was a disease
(31:31):
in the South that with a worm getting in you,
that sapped people's strength. We estimate in nineteen ten that
forty percent, maybe thirty three, one in every three people
had hookworm in the South. Because it flourished in the
hotter climates, the winners couldn't kill it off. Rockefeller spent
an enormous amount of money with scientists to try to
(31:54):
eradicate hookworm. He didn't do it completely, but he really
lessened it as a missed it considerably as a problem
for crops. Let me give you an example. The bowl
weavil came over from Mexico in the eighteen nineties and
was damaging the cotton crops in the United States. He
targeted heavy resources to eliminating and killing off the bull
(32:19):
weavil so that cotton could again be a flourishing export
human capital. Colleges. For example, he gave to black colleges
Tuskegee Institute with Booker T. Washington. But he said, hey,
they trained men, what about women? So he said, I'm
(32:42):
going to found a college for black women. And so
he said, the smartest thing I ever did in life
was make Jesus my savior. And the second smartest thing
I ever did was make Lauris Bellman my wife. And
spelled In College was established in Atlanta, Georgia to educate
(33:05):
black women. The assumption here, with Rockfeller and others is
we make these opportunities widely available, are you going to
do the work and develop yourself? He liked the biblical
phrase if any would not work, neither should he eat.
And Rockfeller thought, you need to have to put out
(33:25):
some oaph on your own and then get something in return,
and it's mutually good for the giver and for the receiver.
Andrew Carnegie, who was the second wealthiest man in the
United States, he built libraries, over twenty five hundred of them,
see the same human capital. The idea is poor people
(33:45):
can have access to libraries. Colleges expand opportunities, but libraries
even more because Carnegie said, when I was a poor kid,
a migrant from Scotland and I didn't have any education,
I could go to a library and read books and
learn things. So a library is something that helps a
lot of people. Now you notice about these categories of
(34:07):
giving here they take a problem and they try to
solve it. Rockfeller's very results oriented. Hookworm is a problem.
You eradicate hookworm and you've solved part of the medical problem. Period.
An example, in nineteen oh three, there was a meningitis
outbreak in New York City that killed three thousand people.
(34:29):
Meningitis is a swelling up in the veins around your
brain and also apparently in the spinal cord. Can be fatal,
it can be crippling. Rockefeller immediately put meningitis on his list,
and meningitis was diminished not cured completely, but it was
diminished because of medicines and other things. He had to
(34:52):
help people with meningitis. One final thing, Rockfeller was happy
with his life. He wanted to live to be one hundred.
He didn't quite make it. Rockfeller made it to He
died in his ninety eighth year, and many people would say,
how do you judge your life? And you say, well,
are you happy? You got to be the richest man
(35:13):
in the world. However you were broken up by the
government and I trust and all this. What do you think?
And he would say, you have to look at it
this way. The issue is not these surface accomplishments. The
issue is how well have I followed God directed me
to do? Rockefeller would say, the key is have I
followed God's leading in my life effectively and lived up
(35:38):
to what he would have had me do? Did I
get quiet enough and then spirit enough to be and
accomplish what he would have me accomplished? And I won't
know that till I get to heaven. Anyway, I present
to you today John D. Rockefeller, entrepreneur from the late
eighteen hundreds, part of the group that led the United
(35:59):
States to dominance in the world. He did his part
in oil, others did in inventing the typewriter, the adding machine,
edison with developing electricity, the phonograph, movies, all of these
inventions coming in closely together and making the United States
a dominant force in the world by nineteen hundred, and
(36:20):
preparing us with automobiles and the computer because that was
also invented in eighteen ninety, preparing us for the twentieth
and twenty first centuries. A great bunch of entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler. And a special thanks to
Bert Fulsom. He's the author of The Myth of the
Robber Barons. Go to Amazon, go to a bookstore wherever
you get your books. Yet the Myth of the Robber Barons,
you won't put it down, and it dispels so many myths.
I did turbell, by the way, promulgated many of them
(36:55):
because it was essentially a hit piece. I'm the person
who put her dad out of business because he was
he's a better businessman. And then in came the trustbusters,
who claimed but could never really prove that his so
called monopoly had been an actual restraint on trade, in
other words, that it had cost customers something, and indeed
they broke it apart. And of course standard oil disappeared.
(37:18):
But John D. Rockefeller did not. His business genius continued.
But his philanthropic life he's still my heart. Five hundred
million dollars he gave away, then, that's early twentieth century
money on health crops and the building of human capital.
And my goodness, that building of human capital included traditional
(37:40):
black colleges. And then ultimately, when he realized the hbuc's
were dedicated to the education of men, well, he created
all women's Black college. He said, the smartest thing I
ever did in my life was make Jesus my savior.
The second was making Laura Spellman my wife. And thus
(38:01):
the birth of Spelman College. The story of John D.
Rockefeller here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
John D.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Rockefeller had a very unusual childhood. His father, dubbed Devil Bill,
was a smooth talking snake oil salesman, while his mother
was a very devoted and disciplined Christian who taught John
to work, save and give to charities. This often demonized
so called robber Baron reshaped America, creating an industry centered
(00:41):
around the world's most important resource, oil. Here to tell
this story is Bert Fulsom, author of the Myth of
the Robber Barons. What You're about to hear was shared
before live audience in Santa Barbara, California for the Young
Americas Foundation. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Rockfeller is an entrepreneur of the late eighteen hundreds. And
the two things that I would say, you know, we're
looking for bullet points. What should we know about Rockefeller?
Above all, he's the first billionaire in US history. He
did it in the oil industry. He had about a
seventy percent market share in oil sales in the world
(01:26):
in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. And he did
it with oil refining. He was in the refining, not
the drilling business, but the refining business. And I know
when you're thinking of oil, you're thinking, well, cars and
all of this they came in in the later part
of Rockefeller's generation. He mainly was kerosene, which was used
(01:47):
for lamps to light your home. So it's mainly kerosene,
not so much oil as we think of in the
way of gasoline. Second point, he was a Christian, and
I mean a Bible believing, serious Christian. The Bible taught
him to tithe ten percent. He tithed everything he ever
(02:09):
earned and kept records of it. So though we see
his first record as a teenager he earned fifty cents
and he tithed a nickel to his church, but he
increased his tithes as the years went on, so he
(02:30):
gave away more money than anyone in US history up
to then had ever earned. Well, that makes his life
rather interesting in the oil business. I want to just
say this because I want to focus on his character
and his philanthropy a little bit, but I want to
say this about his business, and that is he was
an innovator. He said, sometimes in life you need to
(02:52):
take risks you need to do the unexpected. You need
to follow paths that other people aren't taking. And he
did that. In the oil industry, for example, the standard
if you would take a barrel of oil out of
the ground, it's forty two gallons in a barrel. And
he shipped his product in barrels. And so he said,
if you get a barrel of oil, it's about maybe
(03:14):
sixty percent kerosene right there, and then the rest are byproducts,
of which gasoline would be part of one of the
by products. So he wanted to be the best in
He wanted to sell oil so that people could use
it to light their homes. People were sunrise to sun
down people up until Rockfeller oale oil. We had, but
(03:35):
it was very expensive. Only the rich could afford it.
Rockfeller wanted poor people to also be able to afford
to light their homes. This makes a difference. You can
work late at night, but I mean put work aside recreation.
You could do a bowling league or something at night.
You could go to school at night. The point is
you could do things at night because you had lighting,
(03:56):
and therefore that expanded your options in life. Wanted to
take advantage of it. So that he had a product
that everybody wanted to enjoy, and so for one cent
an hour, Rockefeller made it possible to light your home
with the kerosene lamp. That was his goal to get
(04:18):
the cheapest oil. Now to do that, he had to innovate.
For example, he would take a barrel of oil and
he thought, okay, you get fifty sixty percent kerosene. He said,
why don't we try doing different things with it. He
was specialized in research and development more than anyone else
before his time. He's a research and development guy. Research
and development says, what can we do with this oil
to get more kerosene out of a barrel? Heating it
(04:41):
was one thing he did. It was called cracking. Intense
heat applied to that barrel of oil, and you got
maybe seventy five percent kerosene. Everybody else is doing fifty
to sixty. That gives him an immediate advantage. The second
thing was the byproducts. Most of the other oil producers
had the idea, you get the kerosene and then that
(05:03):
other stuff is a bunch of sludge. They dumped it.
For example, he was in Cleveland. They dumped it in
the Cuyahoga River. You know, they didn't have any use
for it. Get the kerosene, dump the rest Rockefeller. He
was already an environmentalist because he was a save the
whales guy. Right, We're not gonna have to hunt whales
(05:26):
if we've got kerosene. So he also is an environmentalist,
but he did it kind of again, his Christianity is
framing his reference for how he approached life, how he
approached his family, his employees, his philanthropy. And so he said, look,
God doesn't make something that does not have value. Therefore,
(05:46):
everything in that barrel has value. We just don't know
what that value is. Therefore he hired chemists again, research
and development, find out what God put that stuff in
a barrel of oil? Four Oh okay. So they started
experimenting with what was being thrown into the river, and
(06:08):
they discovered, you know, waxes, paraffin, vasoline, paint great converted
to paint, varnish tars that could be used to pave streets.
Then he went into business selling the byproducts. And then
he went to his competitors and said, don't bother to
(06:28):
throw that sludge in the river. I'll just take it
off your hands. Not surprising, he had the cheapest product
on the market. No one could compete with John D. Rockfeller.
His company was Standard oil company. No one could compete
with John D. Rockfeller.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you're listening to Bert fulsome author of the myth
of the Robber Barons, share with us the story of
John D. Rockefeller. I think almost everyone knows he was
the first billionaire in America, but most people don't know
that he he gave away more money in his lifetime
than anyone had earned in US history. And of course
(07:07):
tithing and his Christian faith had been a fundamental part
of his life. From the first time he earned fifty cents,
he was giving away five cents. And of course, the
environmentalist at work, he essentially ended wailing. When we come
back more of this remarkable story John D. Rockefeller's life
story here on our American Stories. Here aret our American Stories.
(07:32):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
Com and click the donate button, give a little, give
(07:53):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
our American stories and with Bert Fulsome, author of the
(08:14):
myth of the Robber Barons. He continues to share with
us the story of John D. Rockefeller.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now, he says, what did God tell us to do?
Love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul,
and all your mind. Okay, So the relationship with God
is first. He would pray regularly. I left it. He
would always pray at business meetings. If things got tense,
he would be there with his directors, and if there
(08:42):
was a big argument, everybody'd look around and Rockefeller would disappear,
and they finally he had a cot out there, and
he'd be there praying, and they'd all go back and
kind of look at each other. Pretty soon he would
come back and say, well, now, I think maybe we
ought to think of this possibility, and they'd say, invariably,
it would be an interesting thought that he would have,
and it would kind of direct the meeting in the
right way. He took his Christianity very seriously. Love the Lord,
(09:07):
your God, with all your heart, all your soul, all
your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that
part isn't so pleasant. Neighbors are not always so pleasant.
But the idea he thought was that doesn't mean I
just have to warmly embrace him. But I ought to
want the best for them, and so I got him
thinking of people as kind of equals before God. It
(09:28):
produced a kind of humility. For example, here was a
scripture he liked from the Book of Galatians. Of course,
the New Testament is letters, many of them written by
the apostle Paul, and this is one of them. He says,
there is neither jew nor gentile, neither slave nor free.
This is before God. Now before God, there is neither
June nor gentile, neither slave nor free. Nor is there
(09:53):
male and female, For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Okay,
you love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind,
love your neighbor, and we all said her, He says,
So I can't really get too big headed, especially since
I read also that Paul says in the Book of Romans,
don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.
(10:14):
But he was secure with God. He said, God is love,
and God has not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power, love and a sound mind. And he
would meditate on these scriptures. He said, I meditate him
till they got in his heart. Now it plays out
interesting with his children. Okay, how are you going to
organize your life on these biblical principles as Rockfeller was
(10:36):
reading them. Number one, God first, that's obvious. Number two,
he says, family is very important in the Bible. It's
the key institution marriage and the family. Family second, and
career third. Now, see, this is what bothers historians and
(10:56):
why very few historians ever write accurately on Rockefeller, because
they're very offended by this guy who's a billionaire, who
owns more wealth than anybody in American history and gave
away more than anybody had he previously possessed, and he
put his career third. I mean, it looks like some
(11:18):
phony setup. It's hard to take seriously until you realize
the biblical underpinnings of his life. Rockfeller said, I never
set out to be rich. Had I done so, I
would have failed. The wealth is a byproduct of following
biblical principles. And even then you have to be a
(11:39):
caretaker of what God has given you? Okay with the children.
Alan Evans wrote, a Columbia University professor, wrote a delightful
two volume work on Rockfeller that still is worth reading.
I like it very much. He wrote it right after
Rockefeller died in nineteen thirty seven, and he's trying to
(11:59):
find what do you think of rock Filler. He interviewed employees,
he interviewed the children, and the children all loved him,
had great affection. He was there in their lives. Isn't
that interesting. He's a billionaire, he's running the most successful
oil industry in the world, and he's there for his children.
(12:20):
So he taught them how to ride bikes. This is
Evan's he's interviewing the history. Oh yeah, taught us how
to ride by. He taught us how to ice skate,
although he never wanted to do it. Sunday was the
day of rest and we had to do that. And
they said, well, what else about your father? He said, oh,
we'd have fun at dinner. Sometimes he would try to
balance a plate on his nose. He said that was fun.
(12:41):
He said that he'd play blind Man's bluff with us.
I don't know if that's a game. That any of
you have ever. My father did that with us. You
get a blindfold, and then the kids are in the
room hiding somewhere, and he's there moving around, and you've
got to be quiet or else he'll feel you moving
around and then rush at you and get you. And
(13:02):
so you had to be very, very careful. But one
thing that was interesting is they said one day he
came and whacked his eye on this table leg. And
Rockfeller himself had talked about that, coming to work with
a black eye and having to explain that it worked.
But it was playing with his kids. The children did
not have the same aptitude that he did. And so
(13:25):
Rockefeller said, this isn't an idea of what I want
for them. It is what God wants for them, and
I need to try to put them on the path
to success. For example, John D. Junior was not a
good businessman. We just have to say right off, Rockefeller
tried him out, John D. Senior, and had him in
control of a part of the business and investing about
(13:47):
one million dollars a lot of money back in eighteen hundreds.
And he came back and his investment, after his risked
taking was done, was worth about four hundred thousand Ord's
he lost about sixty percent of it, and he said,
(14:07):
I really dreaded going in to see dad, right, And
so he came in and sat down and told his
father about it, and he said, John D just said, son, yeah,
you've described it right, and you did make some unfortunate
moves there. And then he said, you know what, in
my own investment experience, I've even occasionally done worse. Obviously
(14:32):
he didn't do worse often, or he wouldn't be the
first billionaire, right, But he said, I've had some where
I even did worse. And he said, why don't we
look at other avenues that you might want to pursue.
And he ended up being active with the Rockefeller Foundation.
But the point is he didn't berate his son, but
at the same time he tried to direct him towards
something that he thought he could be productive. His children,
(14:55):
in other words, have massively positive accounts of their father,
and the grandchildren do too. They remember him fondly as
well as an employer. Again, he's framed with his biblical
understanding of the world. So the employees are fellow human
beings before God who have equal standing before God. And
(15:16):
I mean, it starts right off. Even he was born
in eighteen thirty nine, so he's twenty two years old
when the Civil War began. Even before the Civil War began,
he used some of the profits that he had made
as a young man to free a slave, to buy
that slave's freedom. Had Rockefeller had his fortune before the
(15:36):
Civil War, we might never have had a Civil war
because he would have bought the freedom of the entire
black population in the South. At least he would have tried. Well.
The Bible says he looked. He says One Timothy, chapter one,
verse ten talks about sinful behavior, and slave trading is
among the sinful of behavior. So not only can I
(15:59):
not be supporting that, but slave stand equal before God.
I want to help this slave reach his potential. Were
going to buy his freedom.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And you've been listening to Bert Fulsom tell the story
of John D. Rockefeller, and he's the author of the
Myth of the Robber Barons. Go to Amazon or the
Usual Suspects and pick up this book. Everything you think
you thought or thought you knew about the Robber Barons,
much of it not true or only partially true. And
(16:27):
you're learning some of that right here on how John D.
Rockefeller organized his life, and he organized it around biblical principles,
and even he attributed his wealth to not pursuing wealth,
but simply living by these principles and always starting with
God first. I mean, he put God first before profits,
and the prophets flowed. And then he put family second,
(16:51):
which is the proper biblical order if you're a Christian.
And again that means putting profits below it. And last,
care and career is not all profit. It's how you
treat your people. It's how you treat your customers, it's
how you treat everybody and your neighbors. And so in
the end, what happened because he organize his life this
(17:12):
way was this massive fortune, much of which he gave away.
And how he treated his kids in particular is so important.
Any men listening here who think their priorities have to
be their work and they don't have time for their
kids because they're helping their kids by providing for them
are not listening carefully to this story. And by the way,
(17:33):
his purchasing of a slave, there's no doubt, having read
this biography and all that I've read on Rockefeller, he
would have bought every slave possible and maybe ended slavery himself.
Rockefeller didn't have the wealth to do it. He became
wealthy after the Civil War. When we come back more
of Bert Fulsome's remarkable storytelling John D. Rockefeller's life story
(17:54):
continues here on our American stories, and we continue with
our American stories and author Bert Fulsome, author of the
Myth of the Robber Barons, he's telling the story of
(18:17):
John D. Rockefeller. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
His workforce also benefited greatly from him. For example, he
paid high wages, competitive wages. I want to get a
good staff of people working for me, and I want
to pay them well because if I pay them well,
(18:42):
they'll work well. And if somebody didn't, by the way,
they would get canned. They would get fired. But he said, people,
if you pay them well and have confidence in them,
will often work very well. And I want to reward
them with bonuses. You know, in the book Myth of
the Robber Barons, which Young America's Foundation published, and I wrote,
(19:03):
we went through Rockefeller. We have made sure we had
a chapter on him, and just give you this is
again his business model. I'm reading from page ninety four.
Rockefeller treated his top managers as conquering heroes and gave
them praise, rest, and comfort. Says Rockefeller knew that good
ideas were almost priceless. There were the foundation of the
(19:26):
future of Standard Oil. To one of his oil buyers,
Rockefeller wrote, I trust you will not worry about the business.
Your health is more important to you and to us
than the business. Long vacations at full pay were Rockefeller's
antidotes for weary leaders. Here's another quote. After Johnson Camden
(19:49):
consolidated the West Virginia and Maryland refineries for Standard Oil,
Rockefeller said, quote, please feel at perfect liberty to break
away three six, nine, twelve, fifteen months or months or more.
Your salary will not cease, however long you decide to
(20:09):
remain away from business. Now, one point I want to
make right off. This wasn't a deal he extended to everyone,
but it was a deal he extended to this guy
because that person had gained enough financially for the company
that even if he took that long away, the company
would still benefit from his previous doings, and Rockefeller wanted
(20:30):
him to be fresh for action again, not overworked. What's
interesting is in reading neither Johnson, Camden or others rested
very long. They were too anxious to succeed in what
they were doing and to please the leader who trusted them,
so they wanted to get back in. By the way,
Henry Ford, who is the second billionaire in US history,
(20:54):
also paid very high wages. Some of you may have
heard of his five dollars day, which was more than
twice the industrial wage to build and he was doing it,
of course, to build cars. Now, I know some people say, well, wait,
there are a lot of businessmen out there who were
lowballing their employees. What do you call that? Well, I
(21:15):
call those people those businessmen non billionaires. In a free market,
you're going to get people who do that. But what's interesting, right,
we have the freedom to move and not do that work.
And when you have Rockefeller who's employing not only tens
of thousands, but at certain point hundreds of thousands of
(21:37):
people and entry forward the same way, there are opportunities
out there and it has an impact on the market,
driving wages up. Now, I know unions could be helpful,
and I'm not saying that there's no need for them,
but I'm saying that it's interesting that the first actual
push up on wages was not really pressure from the unions.
It was voluntary by Rockefeller and by Ford, the first
(22:01):
two billionaires in US history. So you have that. Now,
there are other things about Rockfellers. Give me just a
flavor of how he operated. Standard Oil office was in
the New York City. It was a tall skyscraper and
the executive offices were on the top floor. And if
somebody had really done good work for the company, they
(22:22):
could get a promotion. And sometimes it would be a
promotion if it was really work well done, to the
top floor of the Standard Oil building, which everybody knew
was the elite. He had an accountant in Cleveland who
had done massively good work in helping the company save
massive amounts of money, and he received a promotion to
(22:44):
go to the top floor of the Standard Oil building
in New York. He was excited. Alan Evans talks about
his story. He interviewed him in his book, and Guy says,
I was there. It was exciting. He said, I was exhilarated.
I told everybody going to New York, Yeah, standard Oil building,
top floor, that's me, top floor. And so he goes there.
(23:08):
He gets in the elevator. He punches, the elevator door
opens and comes out the plush carpet, the elaborate scenes,
and he walked on the carpet, and then he looked around. Oh,
there were offices people he had heard of, like H. H. Rogers,
who was going to be a president of Standard Oil
at one point, and John Archibald. He says, oh, my gosh.
(23:29):
And he went in and there was an unpleasant thing.
He discovered there was no office with his name on it.
And so he went into the secretary and said, now,
I'm supposed to be gave his name, have this office.
And she looks and he says, oh, yeah, okay, we're
not going to have that ready for another week. And
(23:51):
he went back and he sort of was singing, Okay,
I've told everybody I'm going to be up here on
the and she offered him another office several floors down, temporary.
While they waited, he says, okay, I can tell everybody
I'm so important that they don't have an office for
me and I'm not up there, or I can try
to make something happen up here. So he's looking around,
(24:11):
Is there a closet anywhere where I can fight or
so he goes in and he found an exercise room.
There was small one, and there was some guy in
there on so much you treadmill, and he says, I
wonder if I could use this, And so he came in.
He looked around. He says, this is just my work
is an office. And so there was even a chair
in there. That's a start. And so he asked the
(24:35):
guy in the exercise machine, I'm going to be needing
this as an office. Would you please take your equipment elsewhere?
And the guy says all right and gets up and lease.
So then he's there and he says, okay, what else
do I need? I need a desk, I need some paper,
I need some pens, I need a phone. I'm important.
And so he went down there and went to the
secretary and says, well, ma'am, I ben here. We don't
(24:57):
have to wait a week at least for the time being.
I worked to place out. I've got the exercise room
over there. And she says, oh really, She looks a
well did mister Rockefeller say you could have that? He
likes to exercise in there. And you know, in literature,
you know, we call it the epiphany, the moment of awareness.
(25:19):
Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that guy in the
room who was, oh, no, no, no, it isn't happening
that I'm promoted to the top floor. And within five minutes,
I've kicked John Dye Rockefeller out of flows. And he
said he went back into the exercise room, into that
(25:40):
chair and slumped. He says, I just could hardly even
muster the strength. He says, I was waiting to be fired.
I was too limp practically to walk. And I waited
there the rest of the day and nothing happened. And
I came back and I thought, well, I've got to
officially be fired. And so he came back and nothing happened.
And at the end of a week he got his
office up there. And so Nevan's you know, the interviewer
(26:02):
is saying, well, did Rockfeller ever mention this to you
in any cauch No, And I didn't ask. But you
see the point here at Rockefeller, although he never knew this,
guy knew that that was not an insult. Had it been,
he would have done something. But he knew that this
was an accident. And he also knew nobody gets promoted
(26:25):
to the top floor at standard oil unless they've earned
his company many millions of dollars, and Rockefeller is the
biggest stockholder, so he probably paid minimal attention to it.
And when the guy moved into his office, Rockefeller moved
his exercise machine back and life went on as usual.
(26:50):
But it made this guy want to work hard for
Standard oil. There's something compelling about John D. Rockefeller as
a boss.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
There is something indeed compelling about John D. Rockefeller as
a boss. He paid well, and this is just another
part of living by the Golden rule and living according
to biblical principles. He paid people well by the way.
He was no softy. I mean, if he didn't do
your job, that was another matter. The story of John D. Rockefeller,
(27:20):
his life, his faith, his fortune, and so much more.
Here on our American stories. And we continue with our
(27:40):
American stories and the story of John D. Rockefeller, and
it's being told by Bert Fulsom, author of the Myth
of the Robber Barons. Let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
The interesting thing is that standard oil was often reviled
and criticized by some people who were jealous. I mean
not everybody was it standard oil. There were competing oil companies,
some of which were still tossing oil into the river,
or at least not producing oil efficiently. One of them
was Ida Tarbell. You may have heard of her. She
wrote a book called History of Standard Oil. Her father
(28:14):
was in the oil business and he was selling oil
at eleven cents a gallon and Rockefeller at eight cents
a gallon, and he ruined her childhood, and so she
wrote a book called the History of Standard Oil. Essentially
the book is this. There's one chapter called quote the
Legitimate Greatness of Standard Oil, where he says, this guy's awesome.
(28:37):
I mean she did do that. I've got to give
her credit. Every other chapter is filled with interviews with
people who did not like Rockefeller, and many of these
are unconfirmed. One source says that and there, so it's
hard to track some of these down. Rockefeller had many
(28:58):
of his staff people wanted to respond. Rockefeller, however, said
the Bible says, do not reap this in one Peter.
Then Peter's letter one Peter, do not repay evil with evil,
insult with insult, but with blessing. Because to this you
were called. This is a hard one to meet, but
(29:22):
it is the biblical standard. And Rockefeller would not attack
Ida Tarbill. He said, what we're going to do is
she says this, and our oil will say something entirely different.
It's the cheapest and highest quality in the world. That
will tell one story, She'll tell another, and will win.
(29:43):
Except it was a time of muck raking in the
early nineteen hundreds, and the press again and again hit
on these issues, and eventually an antitrust suit was launched
on Rockefeller, saying that he had such a large percentage
of the oil market that he must in some way
be quote in restraint of trade, or as the court said,
(30:04):
he had the potential to restrain trade. See the wording
of the Anti Trust Act is do not restrain trade
any combination and restraint of trade is illegal, is the wording.
But they said, well, we can't trace that he's restrained trade,
but he has the potential, and so we'll interpret it
that way. Standard Oil ultimately was broken up into about
(30:27):
thirty different corporations, one in each state, and Rockefeller was
only allowed to preside over one of them. That was
in nineteen eleven. So Rockefeller did say that. He said, later, well,
what do you think you should have said something to Tarbell?
And he said, you know what, I think, in retrospect,
we should have had a challenge out but not an insult.
(30:50):
But he did. He said, I think that was a mistake.
Now I want to take a look at his philanthropy too,
because this is where it gets very very interesting. Here
with the biggest giver up to that time in the world.
He gave way over half a billion dollars at a
time when a five thousand square foot house could be
(31:10):
had for seven thousand dollars, and he has half a
billion that he's giving away. So Rockefeller felt, I'd like
my giving to con under the categories here of health
and improvements of health, crops, or building of human capital.
Let me give you an example. Hookworm was a disease
(31:31):
in the South that with a worm getting in you,
that sapped people's strength. We estimate in nineteen ten that
forty percent, maybe thirty three, one in every three people
had hookworm in the South. Because it flourished in the
hotter climates, the winners couldn't kill it off. Rockefeller spent
an enormous amount of money with scientists to try to
(31:54):
eradicate hookworm. He didn't do it completely, but he really
lessened it as a missed it considerably as a problem
for crops. Let me give you an example. The bowl
weavil came over from Mexico in the eighteen nineties and
was damaging the cotton crops in the United States. He
targeted heavy resources to eliminating and killing off the bull
(32:19):
weavil so that cotton could again be a flourishing export
human capital. Colleges. For example, he gave to black colleges
Tuskegee Institute with Booker T. Washington. But he said, hey,
they trained men, what about women? So he said, I'm
(32:42):
going to found a college for black women. And so
he said, the smartest thing I ever did in life
was make Jesus my savior. And the second smartest thing
I ever did was make Lauris Bellman my wife. And
spelled In College was established in Atlanta, Georgia to educate
(33:05):
black women. The assumption here, with Rockfeller and others is
we make these opportunities widely available, are you going to
do the work and develop yourself? He liked the biblical
phrase if any would not work, neither should he eat.
And Rockfeller thought, you need to have to put out
(33:25):
some oaph on your own and then get something in return,
and it's mutually good for the giver and for the receiver.
Andrew Carnegie, who was the second wealthiest man in the
United States, he built libraries, over twenty five hundred of them,
see the same human capital. The idea is poor people
(33:45):
can have access to libraries. Colleges expand opportunities, but libraries
even more because Carnegie said, when I was a poor kid,
a migrant from Scotland and I didn't have any education,
I could go to a library and read books and
learn things. So a library is something that helps a
lot of people. Now you notice about these categories of
(34:07):
giving here they take a problem and they try to
solve it. Rockfeller's very results oriented. Hookworm is a problem.
You eradicate hookworm and you've solved part of the medical problem. Period.
An example, in nineteen oh three, there was a meningitis
outbreak in New York City that killed three thousand people.
(34:29):
Meningitis is a swelling up in the veins around your
brain and also apparently in the spinal cord. Can be fatal,
it can be crippling. Rockefeller immediately put meningitis on his list,
and meningitis was diminished not cured completely, but it was
diminished because of medicines and other things. He had to
(34:52):
help people with meningitis. One final thing, Rockfeller was happy
with his life. He wanted to live to be one hundred.
He didn't quite make it. Rockfeller made it to He
died in his ninety eighth year, and many people would say,
how do you judge your life? And you say, well,
are you happy? You got to be the richest man
(35:13):
in the world. However you were broken up by the
government and I trust and all this. What do you think?
And he would say, you have to look at it
this way. The issue is not these surface accomplishments. The
issue is how well have I followed God directed me
to do? Rockefeller would say, the key is have I
followed God's leading in my life effectively and lived up
(35:38):
to what he would have had me do? Did I
get quiet enough and then spirit enough to be and
accomplish what he would have me accomplished? And I won't
know that till I get to heaven. Anyway, I present
to you today John D. Rockefeller, entrepreneur from the late
eighteen hundreds, part of the group that led the United
(35:59):
States to dominance in the world. He did his part
in oil, others did in inventing the typewriter, the adding machine,
edison with developing electricity, the phonograph, movies, all of these
inventions coming in closely together and making the United States
a dominant force in the world by nineteen hundred, and
(36:20):
preparing us with automobiles and the computer because that was
also invented in eighteen ninety, preparing us for the twentieth
and twenty first centuries. A great bunch of entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler. And a special thanks to
Bert Fulsom. He's the author of The Myth of the
Robber Barons. Go to Amazon, go to a bookstore wherever
you get your books. Yet the Myth of the Robber Barons,
you won't put it down, and it dispels so many myths.
I did turbell, by the way, promulgated many of them
(36:55):
because it was essentially a hit piece. I'm the person
who put her dad out of business because he was
he's a better businessman. And then in came the trustbusters,
who claimed but could never really prove that his so
called monopoly had been an actual restraint on trade, in
other words, that it had cost customers something, and indeed
they broke it apart. And of course standard oil disappeared.
(37:18):
But John D. Rockefeller did not. His business genius continued.
But his philanthropic life he's still my heart. Five hundred
million dollars he gave away, then, that's early twentieth century
money on health crops and the building of human capital.
And my goodness, that building of human capital included traditional
(37:40):
black colleges. And then ultimately, when he realized the hbuc's
were dedicated to the education of men, well, he created
all women's Black college. He said, the smartest thing I
ever did in my life was make Jesus my savior.
The second was making Laura Spellman my wife. And thus
(38:01):
the birth of Spelman College. The story of John D.
Rockefeller here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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