Transcription
There was a time when anyone would tremble upon hearing the name John D. Rockefeller. Not only was he the world's first billionaire, he's one of the richest people in history. His empire, Standard Oil, became the most dominant monopoly in the world by brutally crushing competitors, taking control of multiple industries, bribing the government into submission, and treating business as if it was war.
Because of his ruthless business practices and secretive deals, Rockefeller made many enemies. His career is filled with bitter rivalries, like with Andrew Carnegie, and even ferocious battles against U.S. presidents. But before he was the titan of the oil industry, Rockefeller was at the very bottom of society. His story is one of only a handful of cases where someone manages to rise from the depth of poverty to the absolute peak of wealth and power. Rockefeller's story is at times inspiring and at times chilling. It's an example of what happens when greed and ambition go completely unchecked.
So, let me take you back to 1839, where a young John D. Rockefeller is born into poverty.
In 1839, John D. Rockefeller was the first child born into a family of peasant farmers with no cash to spare. In his small town of less than a thousand, the most mysterious character to be found was undoubtedly John's father, who was known as "Devil Bill." Instead of helping on the family farm, Bill did just about anything else. He was an athlete, ventriloquist, hunter, hypnotist, and even an animal trainer. Once, he won a bear in a competition, kept it as a pet, and taught it to do tricks. Bill did a little of this, a little of that, but not much of anything.
Bill would also spontaneously ski town in the middle of the night, leaving John and his siblings to fend for themselves for weeks or even months, only to reappear in a luxurious carriage and shower John and his siblings with toys and gifts. And this confused John because his family lived in a rumbling old house, wore tattered clothes, and they were hungry and cold every night. They lived a pitiful life with these occasional bouts of luxury when his father returned.
And the reason for that was because Bill lived a secret double life as a con artist. Whenever he disappeared, Bill changed his name from William Rockefeller to Dr. William Levingston and traveled from town to town selling useless herbal remedies and potions to the sick and desperate.
Because Bill was usually far away running scams, John's mother enlisted John's help working at the farm, where she instilled a strong religious faith and sense of duty in him. While they plowed the fields, for a boy younger than 10, balancing school and farming was backbreaking, but it taught him the value of discipline and hard work. John was proud to be helping his family out. In fact, he even started coming up with other ways to make money. For example, John once followed a wild turkey into the woods, stole its eggs, and raised the hatchlings. When they matured into turkeys, John sold some of them for a tidy profit and kept the rest so he could get more eggs and repeat the process. Despite his young age, John was now pitching in a few dollars every week and was making a serious impact on the family's finances. It looked like the Rockefellers might finally have a decent and stable life.
However, when John was 10, his father, Bill, was accused of sexually assaulting a young woman. Even though nothing was proven, the Rockefellers still faced public disgrace, and so they were forced to pack their bags and find a new home. You'd think after this event, Bill would dial back his schemes, his infidelity, and focus on healing his relationships with his family. But instead, he did the complete opposite. Using his fake identity of Dr. William Levingston, Bill married another woman in a different state where no one recognized him. Of course, he kept this a secret, and neither John's mother nor the other woman ever knew he had two wives.
But the effect was evident. Bill was almost never around. So, the Rockefellers moved from town to town, and John took on more responsibility as the unofficial head of the household. While still going to school, he kept finding ways to make money, manage the family's finances, and he even started giving out very small loans.
Finally, the Rockefellers found a good home in Cleveland, Ohio. But now that John was 16 and nearly done with school, he wondered what the next phase of his life would be. John wanted to go to college, but by this point, he had four siblings and a fifth on the way. And since John's father was absent even more than normal now that he had his secret other wife, John's mother relied on John to help pay for their food, housing, and education. This meant college was out of the question. John had to get to work immediately.
And so, just two months before his graduation, John dropped out of school and began looking for a job in Cleveland. He was after something big, so he made a list of all the biggest railroads, banks, and wholesale merchants in the city. However, every time John showed up to an interview, people laughed in his face when they found out he was only 16 years old. John faced rejection after rejection, but no amount of humiliation was going to stop him.
And after six long weeks, he got an interview at a small firm that needed help with bookkeeping. When they saw John's excellent penmanship, they decided to give him a chance and told him to get to work immediately, not even mentioning how much he'd get paid. John was ecstatic, and for the rest of his life, he celebrated September 26th as a personal holiday he called "Job Day." To him, it was even more important than his own birthday.
Even though it was not a massive operation, John's first job taught him how to deal with suppliers, pay bills, and see the inner workings of a real business for the first time. One day, his boss came in with a check for $4,000 and put it inside a safe. John knew the safe's combination, so when his boss was gone, he opened it up just so he could hold the note in his hands. Hypnotized by how much it represented, John dreamed of someday making as much money as his bosses. And so, every morning before heading off to work, he began repeating to himself, "I am bound to be rich."
On the last day of 1855, John's bosses gave him his payment: $50. This meant he'd only earned a little over 50 cents a day. It wasn't much, but since he'd done such a good job, his bosses raised his salary to $300 per year, the equivalent of around $11,000 today. The raise gave John something he deeply wanted: independence from his father. Now, with his mother's help, he could finally give his family the stable life they'd yearned for. And from early on in his career, John personally gave around 10% of his salary to various charitable causes.
But after two years of diligent work, a recession slowed the business down, and one of the founders quit the firm. All of his responsibilities fell onto John, who became the company's lead accountant. However, John knew the economic downturn had caused a sharp decline in the firm's revenues, and he suspected that soon the firm may have to close down completely. And yet, John wasn't worried. His two years of experience in the job had given him a huge amount of confidence. And so, John was already planning his biggest move yet. John D. Rockefeller was ready to start his own company.
During his first job, John had become friends with Maurice Clark, a 28-year-old chemist who worked down the street from him. Even though John was just 18 years old at this point, he developed a good reputation as a bookkeeper in Cleveland. And one day, Maurice told him he was planning on starting a produce business and suggested that they partner up together. After saving up a bit of money, they formed Clark and Rockefeller and got to work buying and reselling grain, fish, beans, meat, and other foods.
It was tough at first. John and Maurice were often exhausted from looking for customers out on the road, but owning their own business gave them immense pride. And even though he was a bit shy and quiet at first, John was a capable salesman because he was so mature. Everyone called him "Mr. Rockefeller." The older men in the industry easily trusted him, and the list of clients at Clark and Rockefeller quickly grew. In fact, their biggest problem was that they didn't have the capital needed to scale the business and handle even more clients.
But John and Maurice found a smart way to solve this problem. If they wanted to seek a $5,000 loan, they would go around Cleveland saying their firm was looking to invest $10,000 very publicly, giving the impression that they had plenty of cash. This simple trick meant the banks were more willing to give them money, and the extra loans they got put them in a great position when the American Civil War broke out.
As business picked up even more, as a devout Baptist, John was very strongly opposed to slavery, so he wanted the Union to win the war. However, John was still responsible for feeding his family of six, and if he stopped working, they wouldn't have any income. So, instead of serving in the army himself, John paid $300 for a substitute and even paid to equip several more Union soldiers.
The war gave a huge boost to the economy of the northern states, and Cleveland became an important strategic location for the Union. Local food prices were massively inflated, so John's produce business quadrupled almost overnight. In 1862, John and Maurice cleared a profit of $177,000, over $500,000 in today's money. Not bad for a 23-year-old. But an opportunity to multiply his wealth even more soon came across John's desk.
You see, before electricity, people used to light their homes at night by burning oil inside of a lamp. Usually, this oil came from whale fat, but finding and hunting down whales was costly and difficult, and sadly, some whales had been hunted down to the point of extinction. However, in 1859, someone in Pennsylvania discovered that by using a tall wooden structure known as an oil derrick, you could extract industrial amounts of crude oil by drilling straight into the ground. Mining crude oil this way was cheap and it was fairly easy. Profits came quickly, and since so many people were made rich by the oil boom, crude oil was given the nickname "black gold."
And that's when John was introduced to Samuel Andrews, a young man who was looking for investors to build a crude oil refinery in Cleveland, which was only a day's ride away from the Pennsylvania oil regions. Andrews had a huge advantage over most of the competition. He discovered that if you applied sulfuric acid to crude oil, it would essentially purify it and turn it into kerosene. When burned, kerosene lasted longer and shined brighter than crude oil. It was a simple process, but the secret was closely guarded by the few who had discovered it.
Now that John and Maurice had plenty of money to spare because of how successful their produce business was, they thought it would be wise to diversify their business. Unless they loaned Andrews $4,000 to set up his oil refinery. But to begin, they considered this as a side venture. John and Maurice kept managing their produce business and let Andrews handle the refinery by himself. Setting it up was remarkably simple, and because kerosene was a superior product to crude oil, it began selling like crazy. John couldn't ignore the numbers anymore. Within only a year, the oil refinery had become the most profitable side of the business.
Together, John and Maurice decided to make a bold move. They abandoned their previous business and went all in on the oil industry. However, their initial enthusiasm was met by a massive challenge. The supply of oil was always in an unpredictable state. At this point, oil had only been found in one small region of Pennsylvania, so many people thought that it would eventually run out. Whenever someone struck a massive oil field, an entire town of oil miners would suddenly form around the site, drill every last drop, and then the town would disappear just as quickly as it had formed.
Because of this, there were periods where oil was overabundant and prices would dip as low as 10 cents. But on the flip side, if it seemed like the oil was running out, then prices would suddenly rise all the way up to $14. So to say that the oil market was turbulent would be an understatement. To mitigate this effect slightly, John decided to stay out of mining oil and concentrate only on refining oil. But for John and Maurice, the situation was still extremely stressful. When oil was easy to find, they weren't as profitable as prices were low, and when the wells were running dry, they feared that the last drop had finally been found and they'd soon have nothing to sell.
The uncertainty was too much to handle from Maurice, and in 1865, he agreed to sell his share of the business to John. This was the tipping point of his career. Scared to his bones, but with a calm exterior, John agreed to buy Maurice's share of the company for $72,500, or 1.35 million in today's money. Maurice was cashing out, whilst John was doubling down and going all in on the seemingly risky oil business. However, it seemed like John's daily affirmation that he was bound to be rich was quickly becoming a reality because just as the deal was going down, a gigantic new oil field was found in the Pennsylvania oil regions, finally undoing any doubts he had about oil running out. Of course, the market was still very competitive, so if John truly wanted to become as wealthy as he desired, he would have to brutally crush his competition.
The year before buying his business partner's share, John married a woman who shared his religious devotion. Even though he was now making good money, John bought a modest house in Cleveland where they began to raise a family. So, with his home life in order and the northern economy booming after the Union Army won the Civil War, everything was ready for John to begin building his empire.
Now that his partner was gone, John rebranded the company under a new name, Standard Oil, and he got to work building a second refinery and began exporting kerosene to Europe. John was confident that the oil industry would make him extremely rich, but it quickly became apparent that he needed some help. So, John took on a new partner to help him run the company, a man named Henry Flagler. And the two men were remarkably similar. Like John, Henry wasn't interested in just making money; he wanted to build an empire. That's why when John told him about his ambitious plans for Standard Oil, Henry was all in. He was also just as religious, disciplined, and determined as John. In fact, perhaps the only difference was that Henry was even more ruthless when it came to doing business. Henry approached business the same way he would approach war: the only way to win was to completely crush your enemy. And so, John adopted this philosophy as well.
You see, competition in the oil refining industry was quickly turning warlike. Now that others had uncovered how simple the refining process really was, Rockefeller's product was no longer unique. New brands of kerosene were popping up all over the market. So, John and Henry began scheming and decided to form strategic alliances that would not only boost Standard Oil's profits but also hurt their competitors at the same time.
One example of this was when John secretly colluded with the railroads to get better transportation costs than all their competitors. At the time, oil was transported from one place to the other by an extensive network of trains, mostly dominated by three railroad companies: the New York Central, the Erie, and the most powerful company in America at the time, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Because of the way their routes were laid out, it was beneficial for the New York Central and the Erie railroads to carry oil to refineries in Cleveland, but for the Pennsylvania Railroad, it was more profitable to carry oil directly to New York City or Philadelphia.
So, the Pennsylvania Railroad declared that Cleveland would be wiped out as a refining center, and they pulled out of the city completely. After this news that the largest railroad was leaving the city, many refineries in Cleveland left the city too. This was a disaster for the New York Central and Erie railroads, who had made sizable investments in Cleveland and they were now losing customers. So, instead of joining the panicking crowd and leaving Cleveland, John saw that the Erie and New York Central railroads were in dire need of business, and he decided to use their desperation to his advantage.
In exchange for a consistent flow of oil through their networks, John negotiated a deal with the Erie in which Standard Oil would get a 75% discount on the railroad's official shipping costs. And in exchange for a daily order of 60 carloads of refined oil, John negotiated another deal with the New York Central Railroad to pay $1.65 per barrel shipped when the official rate was $2.40. So, with both railroads, John now had extremely favorable rates secured. And even though the railroads were reluctant to accept these lower prices, the guaranteed consistent shipments were irresistible to them. In fact, since these railroads went from shipping all sorts of things to focusing just on oil, they could simplify their operations and boost their profits. So, it was win-win for everyone, well, except for the Pennsylvania Railroad and Standard Oil's competitors.
Because of the deal, Cleveland became the largest refining center in the country, and since the Pennsylvania Railroad had abandoned the city, it was at a steep disadvantage when trying to revive their business there. And of course, the discounts John had negotiated with the railways, known as railroad rebates, were kept secret from Standard Oil's competitors. And so, all the other oil businesses would have to pay the full price to transport their oil on the very same trains.
And here's the thing: because John knew for a fact that his costs were now lower than his competitors, he was able to trigger a price war. John would lower the price of his oil so that his competitors would have to do the same in order to remain competitive in the market. But since John knew his competitors were paying more than him to transport the oil, and thus at higher costs, even if they charged the same price for their oil, John was still making more profit. He knew his competitors wouldn't be able to survive. So, John kept slashing the prices, and eventually, the price would go so low that some competitors would go bankrupt. Once they went bust, Standard Oil would have way less competition, so John could bump up the price again and charge even more than he did originally. It was brutal, but it was extremely effective.
Now, John knew these railroad rebates were morally dubious. They gave bigger businesses hugely preferential treatment over smaller ones. However, it would be over a decade before any antitrust laws were passed to prevent these kinds of monopolistic practices. So, legally, John wasn't doing anything wrong. And thus, in the meantime, this warlike strategy to crush competitors was paying off, and Standard Oil raked in enormous profits.
However, there was one major problem. The massive surplus of oil meant oil prices had fallen as low as $0.24 per barrel. And as more oil fields were found in Pennsylvania, it seemed that the price would continue to fall. The remaining competition was barely hanging on. In fact, John estimated that around 90% of oil refiners were actually losing money. But John began to fear that his individual success could be overshadowed by a total collapse of the entire oil industry. John was convinced that if they were facing a system-wide problem, they needed to find a system-wide solution for it. And John's solution would be to organize an even more dominant monopoly, the likes of which had never been seen before.
By 1872, John and Henry were ruthlessly expanding Standard Oil, but oil prices had dropped another 25%. They knew if they didn't do something soon, the entire industry could collapse, and they would fall right along with it. So, John decided to collaborate with the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Tom Scott. John and Scott had been rivals after the deal John made with the other two main railroads, but now Scott was reaching out to make a similar secret deal that was even more ambitious and ruthless.
Scott proposed a secret alliance between the largest railroads and a very select group of the largest refiners, which of course included Rockefeller. And thus, oil and the Pennsylvania, New York Central, and Erie railroads all formed an alliance together under the inconspicuous name of the South Improvement Company, or SIC for short. The deal was that in exchange for a secret 50% rebate on transportation costs, John would transport all his oil exclusively through these railroads. But John wasn't content with just getting benefits for himself. He designed the deal to be devastating for his competition.
For example, when anyone outside of this secret alliance transported kerosene through these railroads, Standard Oil would receive a 50% rebate from the cost of their shipments. These were known as drawbacks, and they meant that Standard Oil's competitors would not only be paying higher prices to transport their oil on the same railroads, but some of that money would be going directly to Rockefeller. And to top it all off, the railroads would even secretly give John detailed information about their competitor shipments. He would know every detail of his rivals' businesses, and so he could undercut them by selling kerosene for cheaper prices. Anyone outside this secret alliance stood no chance. It was a death sentence for anyone excluded from the club, and the worst of it was, they didn't even know it.
However, what many of Rockefeller's critics call this whole arrangement a shameless power grab, to John, he truly believed it was the best way to save the oil industry because, as things stood with so many competitors, their product was getting closer and closer to being given away for free, as there was so much supply of oil readily available. He believed wiping out these smaller refiners would help the oil industry overall. But either way, it didn't matter because rumors of a railroad and refiner cartel soon began to spread.
When people read in the newspapers that the rates for the three most important railroads in the country had doubled overnight, they knew exactly who to blame: Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad and John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. As rumors of the alliance continued to spread, thousands of people took to the streets to protest, threatening Standard Oil and the Pennsylvania Railroad with violence, vandalism, and arson. Protesters hijacked Standard shipments and spilled their oil, and they tore the Pennsylvania's train track from the ground.
But the final blow to the SIC came when the oil miners made their counter-move and boycotted the SIC. Without a supply of crude oil, John's refineries were useless. So, two months after it was formed, the SIC had been disbanded. It was a humiliating event, one that brought a lot of negative attention on John, but John wasn't phased by it. He simply decided if he couldn't control the oil industry through shady backroom deals, then he would do it in public and conquer the industry by force.
John wanted to bring as many refineries under Standard Oil as he could. And to his surprise, the SIC fiasco had actually caused one important change in the industry. Despite the very public fallout of the SIC alliance, there were still whispers of a secret railroad and refiner cartel. With many people paranoid that there must still be some kind of secret deal in place between the big railroads and the big refiners, even though there wasn't, the rumor spread everywhere. Oil refiners were scared that if Standard Oil still had a secret deal with the railroads, they would get crushed. And John decided to leverage this threat to his advantage.
In a period of six weeks, now known as the Cleveland Massacre, John managed to intimidate 22 out of the 26 oil refining companies in Cleveland into selling out for fractions of what their businesses were actually worth. So, even though the SIC hadn't gone ahead, the fear it had created pressured many refiners into panic selling their companies to John. Plus, since many other refiners were losing money anyway, John would show them his company's finances so they could see how well Standard was doing and to prove to them that he could outlast them all.
For most refiners, the choice between fighting a losing battle and cashing out was obvious. And whenever anyone sold out, John gave them only two options: they could either sign a damning contract prohibiting them from ever joining the industry again, or they could join Standard Oil. Since most competitors chose to join Standard, John had the brightest minds in the industry working for him. All those entrepreneurs who'd been running their own companies were now brought under the Standard Oil umbrella into one giant company. Also, when the new refineries came under Standard's ownership, they outfitted them with the latest oil refining technology, which drastically cut costs.
By mid-1873, John was in control of an empire with a growing number of highly efficient refineries that together could ship out over 1 million barrels of kerosene every year. He now had a monopoly over the Cleveland refineries. However, on September 18th, 1873, a day historians called Black Thursday, a series of bank failures plunged the U.S. economy into a national recession that lasted six years. For the first time, oil prices dropped not because there was too much supply, but instead because of a total lack of demand. Standard began operating only two of their six main refining plants in Cleveland. And a year after Black Thursday, a single oil barrel traded for as little as 48 cents, less than the cost of an equal amount of water.
So, everyone from the miners to the railroads and the refiners were dreading their seemingly inevitable fate: bankruptcy. But thanks to Standard Oil's careful management of finances, excellent credit with banks, and their modernized refineries, Standard was one of the only refiners in the country who was able to still clear a profit. And as always, John regarded every crisis as an opportunity. He smelled blood in the water now.
John already dominated in Cleveland at this point, which was one of the main refining centers in the country, but he knew the bleak economic conditions were a nationwide problem. And so, refiners in the other refining centers like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York were all struggling badly. And thus, John decided this was precisely the right time to acquire as many of them as he could.
So, John initiated a nationwide buyout campaign. And whenever anyone was reluctant to sell out, John would resort to indirect ways of pressuring them into submission. For example, he would buy all the available refining machinery and barrels so competitors couldn't even make or package their oil. And if somehow they managed to make any oil, he would reserve every railroad for months so they couldn't even ship it anywhere. Another one of John's brutal business tactics was to pressure the railroads to raise prices for other refiners high enough that they would soon face bankruptcy. Since he had detailed records of all his competitive shipments, he would wait for them to be on the verge of ruin and then he would offer to save their business by buying them up for pennies.
Eventually, everyone who Standard Oil wanted to acquire was either absorbed into the growing giant or crushed under its pressure. By the time the economy was starting to recover, Standard controlled over half of Pittsburgh's refining capacity, the largest refineries in Philadelphia, and they secured a dominant position in New York as well. To exert even more control over the industry, John built a network of pipelines, which brought crude oil into their refineries and pumped out refined oil in large cities. The pipelines meant Standard relied less on the railroads to transport their oil, and thus it further reduced their unit costs. And with its pipelines covering the Eastern Seaboard of the United States like tentacles, Standard Oil earned its appropriate nickname: "The Octopus."
Despite still only being in his 30s, John D. Rockefeller was now the undisputed king of oil refining and one of the wealthiest men in the country. However, by now, too many people had been victims of Standard Oil's predatory business practices. The largest newspaper in America at the time even called the company "the most cruel, and stingiest, and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country." John's list of enemies was growing dangerously long.
For the railroad companies, the oil industry was a tremendous source of business, as miners needed to get oil from wells to refineries, and refiners then needed to get it to the big cities. However, when Standard Oil began laying a vast network of pipelines all across America's Eastern Shore, the railroad companies were faced with the fact that one of their most important customers was making moves. So, Tom Scott, the owner of the Pennsylvania Railroad, decided to lay his own pipelines. But he also did something he knew John wouldn't like: he started building his own oil refineries.
Now, Scott was in direct competition with John, so John interpreted this as a declaration of war. He decided to launch an all-out attack against America's most powerful company. First, John canceled all his business with the Pennsylvania Railroad and redirected all that oil to other railroads instead. Then, John lowered the price of Standard Oil kerosene, which meant that competitors had to do the same, thus reducing their profit margins and decreasing the shipment orders on the Pennsylvania Railroad. And finally, John convinced the New York Central and Erie railroads to lower their shipping fees drastically for everyone to make sure the Pennsylvania Railroad lost even more business.
These strategies most definitely worked. To compete with all this, the Pennsylvania Railroad literally had to pay refiners to transport oil for them. Scott also had to lay off hundreds of his employees and reduced the salaries of those who stayed by 20%. But John's attack didn't just affect the Pennsylvania Railroad. Another big railroad, the B&O, had to make similar layoffs and wage cuts. And thus, John's attack on the Pennsylvania Railroad inadvertently caused one of the most violent labor strikes in American history. Dozens of people died in the commotion, and in Pittsburgh alone, the Pennsylvania Railroad lost 500 freight cars, 120 locomotives, and 27 buildings after they were torched by protesters.
Even John started to get concerned by the chaos that was unfolding. Before long, the Pennsylvania Railroad, a Goliath once thought to be invincible, had lost the battle against Standard Oil, and Tom Scott was more than ready to surrender. Scott was in a desperate position, and John's business partner, Henry, who saw business as war, saw this as an opportunity to crush him totally. But John had a better idea and instead moved to coordinate a massive deal with the railroads.
John agreed to help the Pennsylvania Railroad survive by guaranteeing 47% of Standard's traffic to them. The New York Central, the Erie, and the B&O got the rest of it. In exchange for the steady source of shipments, John demanded a very large secret rebate on the Pennsylvania's official rates. He demanded even more detailed information about their competitor shipments, and he wanted 20 cents for every single barrel but passed through any of the railroads as well. A lot of this was similar to the secret alliance that had been proposed before, but this time, John was the one who held the balance of power and could basically demand what he wanted.
The railroads had little choice, and thus the deal effectively made John one of the most powerful men in America. John basically now owned the railroads. He essentially controlled the oil industry and had an all-seeing eye into every one of his competitors. He completely dominated Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, and there were only a few scattered refineries in New York that weren't his. Standard Oil was now in control of about 90% of the entire oil refining industry.
However, as for John's rival, Tom Scott, even though John had technically now struck up a deal with his company, the Pennsylvania Railroad never regained its footing, and Scott personally never recovered from his humiliating defeats. Just a year later, Scott suffered from a stroke and died shortly after. What's interesting here is that many years earlier, Tom Scott had been the mentor to a young Andrew Carnegie, who was to the steel industry what John was to the oil industry. Carnegie blamed the death of his beloved mentor on John, and thus a rivalry was born between Carnegie and Rockefeller: the king of oil versus the king of steel. The rivalry between these two titans of industry would intensify as time went on, but for now, both men were determined to become wealthier than the other.
In the midst of all this, John was becoming quite a notorious public figure. The fight with the Pennsylvania Railroad, his rivalry with Carnegie, and his tremendous wealth and power had all taken John from a mysterious oil man in Cleveland, Ohio, to now one of the most controversial figures in American newspapers. And yet, for all his wealth, fame, and power, John didn't indulge in the extravagant lifestyle that many of his peers did. When he moved to New York, John spent his free time playing with his children instead of seeking the company of wealthy bankers or celebrities, and he rarely bought expensive clothes or luxuries. Silently managing his army of puppets from their new office in New York, John was enriched by his 90% dominance of the oil refining industry. It seemed like he could now just sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor, but actually, the opposite was true.
Even though he had achieved total dominance, the state of the industry was changing, and fast. A few years earlier, Thomas Edison patented a light bulb that gave off a powerful white light for 100 hours, and he was pushing to light the country with electricity instead of oil. Then, in 1885, a huge deposit of crude oil was found in Northern Ohio. These two events meant many Standard Oil executives started to panic, fearing a massive oil surplus that would take the industry back to the days when oil was priced at 10 cents per barrel. But whilst this company was panicking, John was calm as ever. By now, he was a master at turning chaotic situations into opportunities, and this was exactly the crisis he'd been waiting for.
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Up until this point, Standard Oil had only focused on refining oil. John had been pursuing horizontal integration, taking over other refining companies who did the same thing he did. But John knew that the discovery of oil in Ohio would change the oil industry, and he wanted to ensure his company profited from Ohio's new oil fields. So, this was just the excuse he needed to begin radical plans for vertical integration, where Standard Oil would now be involved in every step of the supply chain. John essentially wanted to cut out any middlemen and control the entire oil industry himself, from oil wells to refineries to transportation, storage, and distribution. And thus, John doubled down on every step of the business, turning Standard into its own supplier, transporter, producer, and retailer.
Standard Oil's existing operation had the strong base of industrial infrastructure it needed to make sure it kept making money while John figured out how to profit from Ohio's new oil fields. He began buying up land in the area, building hundreds of derricks to drill for oil, and laying new pipelines to transport it. However, it quickly became clear that Ohio's oil had one glaring problem: even after it was refined, it had such a terrible smell that people called it "skunk oil." And so, nobody wanted to buy it, and it traded for as low as 15 cents per barrel. Almost everyone else gave up trying to sell the skunk oil immediately. But instead, John hired a team of chemists to study the skunk oil, and within a year, they'd found a way to remove the sulfur in the oil that had been causing the terrible smell. Standard was now the only company selling this new, cheaper form of oil, and this gave John a massive head start.
When a few years later, oil began breaking out in immense quantities in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and California, it was now evident that America was sitting on an ocean of petroleum, and the company best poised to take complete advantage of it was Standard Oil. It was also around this time that automobiles were beginning to replace the horse and carriage. And luckily for John, the process of refining crude oil produces one key waste product: gasoline. With wealthy consumers being introduced to the automobile, Standard found a reason to transform a material they typically discarded into an immediate source of extra profits. This meant that even when the United States was thrust into another economic depression in 1893, and 600 banks had to close their doors, John was once again prospering amidst even the worst economic conditions.
With John's fortune growing larger than ever, John took more of a backseat in day-to-day operations at Standard Oil and began to think more about investing elsewhere. For a man as capable in business as John, you'd expect he'd probably also be a decent investor, but if you took a look at John's personal investments at the time, you'd find most of them were deep in the red. John knew if he wanted to keep the generational wealth he'd acquired up to this point, that he needed to get his investments in order. So, he hired a Baptist minister called Frederick Gates to help him. Now, it's impossible to know what John was thinking when he hired a former priest to administer his fortune, but years later, when John was asked who was the greatest businessman he'd ever met, he pointed to Frederick. And there's no doubt Frederick helped grow John's fortune much larger with a series of strategic investments.
It was also around this time that John's son, John Jr., graduated from university, and John thought it would be a good idea to have Junior learn from Frederick. Frederick taught Junior how to invest, how to negotiate, and before long, the two of them had turned John's laughable portfolio into a wealth multiplication machine. It was at this point that John told them to start making huge investments in other industries, like buying up railroad companies, which would come in handy later.
But the most critical of these investments was a long strip of land in Minnesota known as the Mesabi Mountain Range. In this territory was a 120-mile-long vein of the highest quality iron ore, founded to be potentially the largest in North America. Now, iron is the main ingredient needed to produce another important material: steel. So, when Andrew Carnegie, the steel king, heard this news, he feared that John was planning to compete against him in the steel business. And in fact, John had been planning to do this for a long time. Up until now, Rockefeller and Carnegie's rivalry had really only been about who was wealthier, but now, they were in an open battle in Carnegie's territory. John was no longer content dominating the oil industry; he was now coming after the steel industry.
John told Frederick and Junior to commence mining operations in the Mesabi Range and they undercut Carnegie by selling their higher quality ore to his competitors at dirt cheap prices. As they built up their mining operations, a rumor started to spread that John was planning to further infiltrate Carnegie's niche and build a huge steel mill. Now, over on Carnegie's side, he had a head start of a few decades in the steel industry, which gave him considerable leverage over John. But he also had two big problems: Firstly, John had a source of iron that was more plentiful and of a higher quality than Carnegie's. And secondly, Carnegie had made the mistake of assuming that iron would always be cheap and easy to find, so he hadn't made any investments in iron mines during the last few years. His blind faith had been proven wrong over time, and now his supply of the most important mineral he needed was running out.
And so, hoping to save his business, Carnegie approached John, Frederick, and Junior to make a deal. By the time the negotiations concluded, the two sides had reached an agreement. Carnegie agreed to buy a minimum of 600,000 tons of ore from John's mine every year and transport all of it, plus an additional 600,000 tons from his own mine, exclusively through John's railroads, which John now owned a few of. In exchange, Carnegie would get a secret rebate from John for supplying his railroad with so much business. It was the exact same sort of mutually beneficial secret agreement that John was used to making with railroad companies for his oil transportation, except now he was the one giving Carnegie a secret rebate. And to seal the deal, Carnegie agreed to never buy land around the Mesabi Range, and John agreed never to build a steel mill. The partnership was win-win for both men, and so it seemed they were willing to overlook their differences if it meant they'd both profit hugely, and of course, at the same time, help both of their competitors.
The agreement between these two former rivals soon made news headlines, provoking a craze on Wall Street. Investors hoped to get rich by investing in John's iron mines and Carnegie's steel mills, which both looked unstoppable now they were working together rather than competing. However, there was one man who had a bit more imagination than simply investing separately in their two companies, and that man was J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan realized that if he could unite John's investment with Carnegie's business under a single name, he could create a steel monopoly that was more profitable than Carnegie Steel and even larger than Standard Oil. J.P. Morgan called it U.S. Steel, and if it all worked out, it could be the most valuable company in history.
So, J.P. Morgan approached John and asked him how much he would sell the Mesabi iron mines for. But to his surprise, John said that Morgan should talk with his 27-year-old son, John Jr. J.P. Morgan assumed he'd be dealing with the rookie. How much could this 27-year-old really know? But when J.P. Morgan met Junior and bluntly asked him, "What's your price?" Junior was not intimidated by Wall Street's wealthiest banker. He calmly responded, "Mr. Morgan, I think there must be some mistake. I did not come here to sell. I understood you wish to buy." Junior insisted that J.P. Morgan had to set the price for the Mesabi territory, which meant Junior had all the power in the negotiation. Morgan was so surprised that he had to step out of his office and rethink his strategy. Eventually, he made his offer. In exchange for total ownership of the Mesabi mines and the existing mining operation in it, J.P. Morgan offered a grand total of $88.5 million in U.S. Steel stock, just over $3.1 billion today. Later on, Morgan bought Carnegie's entire steel business and incorporated it into U.S. Steel, and it became the world's first billion-dollar corporation.
But remember, John now owned a huge chunk of that company, and his U.S. Steel stock soon appreciated to over $200 million. Plus, thanks to the automobile boom and the need for gasoline, Standard Oil was growing into an even more powerful monopoly than it had been before. Not to mention that thanks to Frederick, John's investments were now in order too. With all of this combined, John's wealth continued to grow to unimaginable levels. It was now spread across multiple industries, and John was finally ready to step back from the business world completely. However, John never publicly announced his retirement, which was a crucial mistake, as the public still closely associated him with Standard Oil, and that would soon come back to haunt him as John was about to be involved in the most public scandal of his career.
Even though he was now retired, John still owned around 30% of Standard Oil stock, and because of the tremendous growth of the auto industry, he was actually getting wealthier in retirement than money was working. However, because of their brutal business practices, Standard now had such a negative public image that U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt saw it as the perfect target to fight against in his rise to power. Now, this wasn't the first time he tried. Previously, Roosevelt passed a bill that punished railroad rebates, but it really wasn't enough to get the public excited, and the end of his first presidential term was coming up. So, Roosevelt detected that the public opinion of John and Standard Oil was quickly turning from a mere dislike to a passionate hatred, and that was largely thanks to a journalist called Ida Tarbell. You see, Tarbell's father was one of the oil refiners who were bankrupted by John's ruthless business tactics a long time ago. Her father's business partner even took his own life after their wealth was destroyed by John. Now, Tarbell was...
Publishing monthly articles that told an in-depth story about the company and the man who had bankrupted her father and made her childhood miserable. As you'd expect, she didn't have many nice things to say. Tarbell managed to break through John's wall of secrecy, and so the dark history of the once mysterious Standard Oil was now in full view. With John as its protagonist, his backroom deals with railroads, his intimidation tactics, the politicians they bribed, everything was fully revealed, and the American public devoured the story. The series even exposed John's father's history of scams, his sexual abuse accusation, and they eventually discovered his second marriage, which took a heavy emotional toll on John and his family. Needless to say, John never responded to anything Tarbell wrote, and so his public image was contaminated as she publicly condemned him, and his silence only angered the public further. So, in a few years, John went from one of the most private and mysterious members of the American elite to the national embodiment of corruption and greed.
Now, the public was dying to see John and Standard Oil pay for their crimes. So, as President Roosevelt approached the end of his first presidential term, he saw an opportunity to use the public sentiment to his advantage by making Standard Oil his enemy. In his presidential campaign, Roosevelt promised to take down the monopolies, and thus, when he won the re-election, it was time to make good on that promise and wage war on Rockefeller's empire. He launched a full-fledged investigation into Standard Oil, and now the antimonopoly laws that corrupt politicians always ignored got used to their full potential. Roosevelt announced that the government would prosecute Standard with the full force of the United States government. In a historic all-out attack, Standard was charged with monopolizing the oil industry, predatory pricing, negotiating railroad rebates, corporate espionage, and secret ownership of competitors. Apart from having to fight 21 lawsuits in individual states, the federal government hit Standard with the largest lawsuit in history up to that point. There were over 1,000 exhibits, 444 testifying witnesses, and over 12,000 pages of damning evidence. The Standard Oil was indeed a monopoly. The lawsuit was so vast that it continued years beyond Roosevelt's presidency, but his ambition to defeat Standard Oil would eventually be satisfied. The evidence that Standard Oil was a full-fledged monopoly came when Standard profits were examined because they were in control of 87% of oil refining in America, 100% in some places. Standard was taking full advantage of their monopoly status and overpricing their kerosene in order to make outrageous profits. And apart from being confirmed as a monopoly, evidence proved that Standard had systematically bribed hundreds of politicians and knowingly broken multiple antitrust laws.
On May 15th, 1911, after being found guilty of the crimes they'd been accused of, it was ordered by the federal government to dissolve Standard Oil and reorganize its subsidiaries into separate, unaffiliated companies. After 41 years, John's empire had finally been dealt a fatal blow and was being split up. Now, of course, you'd think breaking up an empire of Standard Oil's scale would be a losing situation for John. Many of his enemies, like Ida Tarbell and President Roosevelt, certainly thought this event was a cause for celebration. But what they didn't expect was that the dissolution of Standard Oil would be the most profitable event in John's career. You see, from the outside, it may have looked like Standard had been ruined by the dissolution, but actually, it was a pretty convenient time for the company to be broken up, as a lot of important changes were happening in the industry as a whole. As more oil fields were found in places like Texas and California, independent refiners were starting to find their footing in new markets faster than Standard could absorb them. The Middle East and Russia were now looking like their first worthy international competitors as well. And at the year before the verdict, gasoline had surpassed kerosene sales, and so the entire focus of the industry was changing. And because John still owned around a quarter of Standard Oil when it was broken up into 34 different companies, he got his share of stock in all of them, and after they were open to public trading, investors nearly tripled the value of his shares. So, John became even richer. By the end of 1911, the same year that Standard Oil was dissolved, John was getting close to becoming the world's first billionaire. Andrew Carnegie was now left far behind in the fight for the title of world's richest man. But now that John had achieved such unimaginable wealth, just one question remained: what was he going to do with all that money?
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John was the wealthiest man in the world, and now that he was retired and that his old company had been dissolved, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to philanthropy. And even though he was over 70 years old at this point, John's sense of duty meant that he was as energetic about charity work as he was in business. Throughout his life, John told people that he was a soldier of God, sent to Earth and given money for the benefit of mankind. And John really did want to make an impact on the world. And to be fair, ever since John got his first paycheck, John had given various organizations at least 10% of the money he made. And even when his sizable donations were publicly labeled as just ways to improve his image, John continued to give away a lot of money anonymously as well. However, John wanted to make his philanthropy a well-oiled machine that continued his legacy. So, in 1913, he started the Rockefeller Foundation with the two people who were previously responsible for managing his personal investments: Frederick Gates and his son, John Jr. By now, John had given away almost $150 million, and in the future, he would personally give a grand total of $540 million. To add to that, Frederick and Junior went on to give away $537 million more through the foundation, and Junior personally gave away an additional $540 million of the wealth he inherited from his father. In its over 100-year history, the Rockefeller Foundation has given countless billions of dollars in total, and it's still making donations today. Calculating the total amount and adjusting it for inflation is complicated, but it's safe to say that the amount is well into the tens of billions, ranking John amongst the most generous philanthropists in history. The Rockefeller Foundation focused on two main issues in its inception: medicine and education, and it's undoubtedly made a meaningful contribution to society. On the side of medicine, John's donations to the laboratories and medical research facilities helped spur an era of scientific innovation that saved hundreds of thousands of lives from diseases like hookworm, malaria, and meningitis. On the side of education, John's money helped save the Southern United States from abject poverty and built hundreds of schools all around the world, including two of the world's most prestigious research institutions. Today, the Rockefeller Foundation contributes even more to many other causes, and it all started with a 16-year-old who had to go into business to help feed his family. However, this, of course, all raises an interesting moral debate: on what should we really think about Rockefeller? Clearly, John's legacy has two sides to it. As the author of his biography writes, "What makes him so problematic is that his good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad. It's almost as if there were two completely different John D. Rockefellers." There's undeniably a charitable and beautiful side to him, but there's also a corrupt, unforgiving, and brutal side. Both sides are true. But whatever you think of John D. Rockefeller, the fact remains that he's one of the most fascinating businessmen in history. Maybe that's why, after John died at 97 years old, his son, who had the same name, said, "There was only ever one John D. Rockefeller." But if you think Rockefeller's story was controversial, wait until you see the scandals Andrew Carnegie was involved with. Just click the thumbnail on screen now, and I'll see you there in a second. Cheers.