June 30, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, John D. Rockefeller had a highly unusual childhood. His father, known as “Devil Bill,” was a smooth-talking snake oil salesman, while his mother was a devout and disciplined Christian who taught John to work hard, save diligently, and give generously to charity. Often demonized as a so-called Robber Baron, Rockefeller reshaped America by building an industry around the world’s most important resource: oil. Sharing the story is Burt Folsom, author of The Myth of the Robber Barons—special thanks to Young America’s Foundation for providing this audio.
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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. And every
he 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
(04:17):
goal to get 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
(04:38):
of a barrel? Heating it 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
(05:01):
the kerosene and then that other stuff is a bunch
of sludge. They dumped it. For example, he was in Cleveland.
They dumped it in the Cuyahoga River. Yeah, they didn't
have any use for it. Get the kerosene, dumped the
rest Rockefeller. He was already an environmentalist because he was
a save the whales guy. Right, We're not gonna have
(05:25):
to hunt whales if we've got kerosene. So he also
was 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, everything in that barrel has value.
(05:49):
We just don't know what that value is. Therefore he
hired chemists again, research and development, find out what God
put that stuff fin a barrel of oil four oh okay.
So they started experimenting with what was being thrown into
the river, and they discovered, you know, waxes, paraffin, vasaline paint,
(06:14):
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 throw that sludge in the river. I'll just
take it off your hands. Not surprising. He had the
(06:35):
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 are at our
(07:31):
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(07:53):
give 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 it 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 June 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 where you are all one in Christ Jesus. Okay,
you love the Lord with all you your heart, soul
and mind, love your neighbor. And we all said there,
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. But he who's secure with God.
(10:15):
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 Rockefeller was reading them? Number one, God first,
(10:38):
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 why very few historians ever write accurately
(10:59):
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 phony setup. It's hard to take seriously until
(11:22):
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 caretaker of what God has given you. Okay with
(11:43):
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 find what do you think of rock Filler?
He interviewed employees, he interviewed the children, and the children
(12:05):
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. So he taught them how to
ride bikes. This is Evans, he's interviewing the history. Oh yeah,
(12:26):
he 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, and
he said that was fun. 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
(12:47):
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 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
(13:09):
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 Rockefeller said, this isn't an idea of what
I want for them. It is what God wants for them,
(13:31):
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 one million dollars a lot of money back in
(13:52):
eighteen hundreds. And he came back and his investment after
his risk aking was done was worth about four hundred
thousand ords. He lost about sixty percent of it, and
he said, I really dreaded going in to see dad, right,
And so he came in and sat down and told
(14:14):
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
he didn't do worse often, or he wouldn't be the
first billionaire, right, but he said, I've had some where
(14:37):
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,
in other words, have massively positive accounts of their father,
(14:59):
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
I mean it starts right off. Even he was born
(15:19):
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
Civil War, we might never have had a Civil war
(15:39):
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
not be supporting that, but slaves stand equal before God.
(16:01):
I want to help this slave reach his potential for
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 of you're a Christian.
And again that means putting profits below it. And last,
career 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 Robert 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,
(19:02):
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
(19:48):
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,
(20:53):
also paid very high wages. Some of you may have
heard of his five dollars day, which was more than
I the industrial wage to build and he was doing it,
of course, to build cars. Now, I know some people say, well, wait,
there were a lot of businessmen out there who were
lowballing their employees. What do you call that? Well, I
(21:14):
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 then by four the
(22:00):
first 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,
(22:21):
they 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
(22:44):
to 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
he says, I was there. It was exciting. He said,
I was exhilarated. I told everybody, Oh, go on to
New York Standard Oil building, top floor. That's me, top
(23:05):
floor and so he goes there. 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,
(23:26):
and John Archibald. He said, oh my gosh, 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
(23:47):
going to have that ready for another week. And 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 wait. 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 some 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
(24:34):
guy in the exercise machine, I'm gonna be needing this
as an office. Would you please take your equipment elsewhere?
And the guy says all right and gets up and leaves.
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've worked a play. I've got the exercise room over there.
And she says, oh really, and she looks like, 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. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
(25:20):
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 chair and slumped. He says, I
(25:41):
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 is saying, well, did Rockfeller ever
(26:04):
mention this to you in any capach? No? And I
didn't ask. But you see the point here, A 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 to the top floor at
(26:26):
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
(26:46):
went on as usual. 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,
(27:19):
his life, his faith, his fortune, and so much more.
Here on our American stories. And we continue with our
American stories and the story of John D. Rockefeller, and
(27:43):
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 (27:51):
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
(28:13):
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.
(28:36):
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 they are so
it's hard to track some of these down. Rockefeller had
(28:57):
many of his staff people who 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
(29:21):
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.
(29:42):
Except it was a time of muckraking 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 ine way be quote in
restraint of trade or is The court said he had
(30:04):
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
(30:26):
thirty different corporations won 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.
(30:49):
So 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. He
or dealing 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 had for seven thousand dollars, and he
(31:12):
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 a
human capital. Let me give you an example. Hookworm was
a disease in the South that with a worm getting
(31:32):
in you, that sapped people's strength. We estimate 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
(31:52):
to eradicate hookworm. He didn't do it completely, but he
really lessened it. As they diminished it considerably. Is 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.
(32:12):
He targeted heavy resources to eliminating and killing off the
bowl weavil so that cotton could again be a flourishing export.
Human capital. Colleges, For example, he gave to black colleges
(32:33):
Tuskegee Institute with Booker T. Washington. But he said, hey,
they trained men, what about women? So he said, I'm
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
(32:53):
I ever did was make Lauris Bellman my wife. And
Elman College was established in Atlanta, Georgia to educate 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
(33:18):
any would not work, neither should he eat. And Rockfeller thought,
you need to have to put out 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,
(33:38):
he built libraries, over twenty five hundred of them, see
the same human capital. The idea is poor people 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
(33:59):
learn things. So a library is something that helps a
lot of people. Now you notice about these categories of 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.
(34:19):
An example, in nineteen oh three, there was a meningitis
outbreak in New York City that killed three thousand people.
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,
(34:42):
and meningitis was diminished, not cured completely, but it was
diminished because of medicines and other things. He had to
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. Rockefeller made it to He
(35:03):
would die in his ninety eighth year and a many
people would say, how do you judge your life? And
you say, well, are you happy? You got to be
the richest man 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
(35:25):
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 to what he would have had
me do? Did I get quiet enough and then the
spirit enough to be and accomplish what he would have
me accomplished? And I won't know that till I get
(35:46):
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 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,
(36:10):
all of these inventions coming in closely together and making
the United States a dominant force in the world by
nineteen hundred, and 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 (36:31):
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
(36:54):
because it was essentially a hit piece. I'm the person
who put her dad out of business because he was
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, But John D.
(37:17):
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 black colleges. And
(37:41):
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 Spelman my wife, and thus the birth of Spelman College.
(38:03):
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. And every
he 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
(04:17):
goal to get 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
(04:38):
of a barrel? Heating it 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
(05:01):
the kerosene and then that other stuff is a bunch
of sludge. They dumped it. For example, he was in Cleveland.
They dumped it in the Cuyahoga River. Yeah, they didn't
have any use for it. Get the kerosene, dumped the
rest Rockefeller. He was already an environmentalist because he was
a save the whales guy. Right, We're not gonna have
(05:25):
to hunt whales if we've got kerosene. So he also
was 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, everything in that barrel has value.
(05:49):
We just don't know what that value is. Therefore he
hired chemists again, research and development, find out what God
put that stuff fin a barrel of oil four oh okay.
So they started experimenting with what was being thrown into
the river, and they discovered, you know, waxes, paraffin, vasaline paint,
(06:14):
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 throw that sludge in the river. I'll just
take it off your hands. Not surprising. He had the
(06:35):
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 are at our
(07:31):
American Stories. 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
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Stories dot Com and click the donate button. Give a little,
(07:53):
give 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 it 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 June 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 where you are all one in Christ Jesus. Okay,
you love the Lord with all you your heart, soul
and mind, love your neighbor. And we all said there,
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. But he who's secure with God.
(10:15):
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 Rockefeller was reading them? Number one, God first,
(10:38):
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 why very few historians ever write accurately
(10:59):
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 phony setup. It's hard to take seriously until
(11:22):
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 caretaker of what God has given you. Okay with
(11:43):
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 find what do you think of rock Filler?
He interviewed employees, he interviewed the children, and the children
(12:05):
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. So he taught them how to
ride bikes. This is Evans, he's interviewing the history. Oh yeah,
(12:26):
he 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, and
he said that was fun. 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
(12:47):
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 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
(13:09):
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 Rockefeller said, this isn't an idea of what
I want for them. It is what God wants for them,
(13:31):
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 one million dollars a lot of money back in
(13:52):
eighteen hundreds. And he came back and his investment after
his risk aking was done was worth about four hundred
thousand ords. He lost about sixty percent of it, and
he said, I really dreaded going in to see dad, right,
And so he came in and sat down and told
(14:14):
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
he didn't do worse often, or he wouldn't be the
first billionaire, right, but he said, I've had some where
(14:37):
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,
in other words, have massively positive accounts of their father,
(14:59):
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
I mean it starts right off. Even he was born
(15:19):
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
Civil War, we might never have had a Civil war
(15:39):
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
not be supporting that, but slaves stand equal before God.
(16:01):
I want to help this slave reach his potential for
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 of you're a Christian.
And again that means putting profits below it. And last,
career 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 Robert 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,
(19:02):
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
(19:48):
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,
(20:53):
also paid very high wages. Some of you may have
heard of his five dollars day, which was more than
I the industrial wage to build and he was doing it,
of course, to build cars. Now, I know some people say, well, wait,
there were a lot of businessmen out there who were
lowballing their employees. What do you call that? Well, I
(21:14):
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 then by four the
(22:00):
first 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,
(22:21):
they 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
(22:44):
to 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
he says, I was there. It was exciting. He said,
I was exhilarated. I told everybody, Oh, go on to
New York Standard Oil building, top floor. That's me, top
(23:05):
floor and so he goes there. 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,
(23:26):
and John Archibald. He said, oh my gosh, 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
(23:47):
going to have that ready for another week. And 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 wait. 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 some 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
(24:34):
guy in the exercise machine, I'm gonna be needing this
as an office. Would you please take your equipment elsewhere?
And the guy says all right and gets up and leaves.
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've worked a play. I've got the exercise room over there.
And she says, oh really, and she looks like, 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. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
(25:20):
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 chair and slumped. He says, I
(25:41):
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 is saying, well, did Rockfeller ever
(26:04):
mention this to you in any capach? No? And I
didn't ask. But you see the point here, A 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 to the top floor at
(26:26):
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
(26:46):
went on as usual. 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,
(27:19):
his life, his faith, his fortune, and so much more.
Here on our American stories. And we continue with our
American stories and the story of John D. Rockefeller, and
(27:43):
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 (27:51):
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
(28:13):
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.
(28:36):
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 they are so
it's hard to track some of these down. Rockefeller had
(28:57):
many of his staff people who 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
(29:21):
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.
(29:42):
Except it was a time of muckraking 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 ine way be quote in
restraint of trade or is The court said he had
(30:04):
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
(30:26):
thirty different corporations won 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.
(30:49):
So 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. He
or dealing 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 had for seven thousand dollars, and he
(31:12):
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 a
human capital. Let me give you an example. Hookworm was
a disease in the South that with a worm getting
(31:32):
in you, that sapped people's strength. We estimate 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
(31:52):
to eradicate hookworm. He didn't do it completely, but he
really lessened it. As they diminished it considerably. Is 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.
(32:12):
He targeted heavy resources to eliminating and killing off the
bowl weavil so that cotton could again be a flourishing export.
Human capital. Colleges, For example, he gave to black colleges
(32:33):
Tuskegee Institute with Booker T. Washington. But he said, hey,
they trained men, what about women? So he said, I'm
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
(32:53):
I ever did was make Lauris Bellman my wife. And
Elman College was established in Atlanta, Georgia to educate 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
(33:18):
any would not work, neither should he eat. And Rockfeller thought,
you need to have to put out 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,
(33:38):
he built libraries, over twenty five hundred of them, see
the same human capital. The idea is poor people 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
(33:59):
learn things. So a library is something that helps a
lot of people. Now you notice about these categories of 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.
(34:19):
An example, in nineteen oh three, there was a meningitis
outbreak in New York City that killed three thousand people.
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,
(34:42):
and meningitis was diminished, not cured completely, but it was
diminished because of medicines and other things. He had to
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. Rockefeller made it to He
(35:03):
would die in his ninety eighth year and a many
people would say, how do you judge your life? And
you say, well, are you happy? You got to be
the richest man 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
(35:25):
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 to what he would have had
me do? Did I get quiet enough and then the
spirit enough to be and accomplish what he would have
me accomplished? And I won't know that till I get
(35:46):
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 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,
(36:10):
all of these inventions coming in closely together and making
the United States a dominant force in the world by
nineteen hundred, and 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 (36:31):
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
(36:54):
because it was essentially a hit piece. I'm the person
who put her dad out of business because he was
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, But John D.
(37:17):
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 black colleges. And
(37:41):
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 Spelman my wife, and thus the birth of Spelman College.
(38:03):
The story of John D. Rockefeller here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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