Born: July 8, 1839, New York Died: May 23, 1937, Florida (age 97)
At 16 years old John's first job was an assistant bookkeeper with Hewlett & Tuttle, commission merchants and produce shippers. He was a cautious businessman and never took any unnecessary risks. In 1863 he opened his first oil refinery outside of Cleveland. In 1870 he founded Standard Oil Company. He made a deal with Vanderbilt who owned a large portion of the railroad that gave him reduced shipping rates. Rockefeller soon gained enough power to influence the way the country worked. Rockefeller hated competition and wanted to eliminate the railroad companies so he came up with a pipe line to ship his oil to his main refinery in Cleveland. The problem with this was that standard oil made up 40% of the railroads cargo. The pipelines caused one third of all railroad companies to go bankrupt and sent the U.S. into a depression Rockefeller secretly began buying out rival oil companies and buying up the resources other companies needed for next to nothing expanding the Standard Oil Company. In little over a decade Rockefeller controlled almost every oil refinery in the U.S. While other oil companies simply dumped the waste products in rivers or onto the ground instead of learning how to use it Rockefeller took this opportunity to make even more money of the waste, Vaseline. Samuel Dodd, an attorney working for Standard Oil, introduced the concept of a trust, a board of 9 trustees controlled by Rockefeller. The Standard Oil Trust allowed the monopolization of the the Oil Industry. This monopoly put Rockefeller above the ridiculous prices of the railroads to ship products and he no longer needed to rely on banks or government funding. Rockefeller took the place of richest man in the world from Vanderbilt with the U.S steel and Standard oil company. Rockefeller gave away over $550 million to medicine, education and scientific research. In today's economy Rockefeller's net worth would be nearly 225 billion dollars compared to Bill Gates 61 billion dollars.
Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company controlled 90% of the U.S. oil industry
Standard Oil as we know it today, Exxon Mobil is the biggest U.S company earning 41 billion dollars in profit.
A political ad depicting Rockefeller putting money into the Supreme court as a bribe to keep the Standard Oil trusts active.