JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

1839–1937

From humble farming origins, John D. Rockefeller went on to lay the foundations for modern American capitalism, becoming one of the richest men of all time in the process. His control of the US oil industry was so tight and all-consuming that it prompted the world’s first anti-monopoly laws.

Born in Upstate New York in 1853, John Davison Rockefeller moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where his journey to incredible wealth began. His father, a traveling salesman, passed on his entrepreneurial spirit, while his mother, a devout Christian, taught him thriftiness.

Unable to afford a college education, Rockefeller learned bookkeeping and the basics of commerce at business school, before beginning work aged 16. When he was refused a raise after three years with his first wholesale employer, he quit and went into business with Maurice Clark, selling produce to the government during the American Civil War (1861–65).

The oil business

In 1863, Rockefeller and Clark, looking for further investment opportunities, partnered with the inventor Samuel Andrews to buy oil refineries. Recognizing the decline of the whale oil industry, Rockefeller anticipated the recently discovered oil fields in Pennsylvania to be commercially lucrative. His refineries were economically efficient—they sold the by-products of their oil such as petroleum jelly and tar, unlike his competitors, who discarded 40 percent of the oil product. Rockefeller’s company soon prospered and he began persuading other oil-refining companies to either merge with his company or to allow themselves to be bought out. This led to the creation of a single entity, the Standard Oil Company, in 1870. The company went on acquiring competitors until it controlled around 90 percent of oil refineries in the US. Rockefeller drove competitors out of business by undercutting them until they were forced to sell up.

Standard Oil became the first monopoly in modern business history. In the face of growing public concern about the conglomerate’s economic power, the US Supreme Court brought an action against it in 1911 under the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, breaking the Standard Oil into 38 smaller companies.

Rockefeller’s company Standard Oil controlled 90 percent of US pipelines and refineries by 1880. He had begun employing scientists to refine his product for maximum efficiency.

Philanthropic work

Rockefeller was not only a ruthless businessman but also a philanthropist. Between 1890 and 1916, he founded the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and the schools of public health at Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities. He is best known, however, for establishing the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. The foundation developed a cure for yellow fever in 1937, the year he died, and continues to fund improvements in health and education and to raise living standards in the US and overseas to this day.

Rockefeller’s monopolization of the US oil industry earned him unrivaled wealth. However, he never lost his sense of Christian duty and donated substantial amounts of money to charity throughout his life.

ANDREW CARNEGIE

A contemporary of Rockefeller’s, Andrew Carnegie built the US steel industry and became another of the US’s richest individuals.

Born in Scotland in 1835, Carnegie emigrated to Pittsburgh at the age of 13. There, he started Carnegie Steel in 1892, replacing wooden bridges with iron ones. He amassed a fortune of $250 million, most of which he gave away, building more than 2,500 public libraries, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Hall in New York.