Mephistopheles from Cleveland

For the descendants of John Rockefeller was the real embodiment of the American dream. She started her career as a simple accountant, by the forty years he became the richest man in the world. Philanthropist, and a ruthless businessman, Rockefeller gathered in all the vices and virtues, which have existed in the wild America in the late XIX century. Now published in Research "is preparing to release a book of American author Howard Minza" Money and power. The history of business "dedicated to the history of the life of an entrepreneur. The material for the article kindly provided by IR "Analysis."

Reduce and conquer
From the age of sixteen, John Rockefeller was forced to earn his own living. However, salaried employees, he worked for three years - in the office of a Cleveland accountant trading firm. In 1858 John, together with a friend, opened a small grocery desk "and Clark Rockefeller." Cases partners were quite good, and the twenty-four years Rockefeller saved over 4000 dollars. For all the money he bought shares of refinery, built just outside of Cleveland. The first oil field in the world, opened in America seven years earlier, caused the country's present oil rush. This was akin to a frantic race for gold, which then tells not one generation of American writers. Do not resist, and the young John Rockefeller, kinuvshiysya to head the new business.

In 1870, he founded the Cleveland company, Standard Oil. However, according to the businessman, a registration clerk in the House, his firm became the twenty-sixth on account of oil company incorporated in the state. Cut-throat competition does not leave any chance to the entrepreneur.

While oil prices have changed with incredible speed. For example, a barrel of oil, stoivshy the morning of 13 dollars, in the evening to fall to 10 cents.

Penetrating into the subtleties of business, young entrepreneur realized that victory in the competition can only be achieved while reducing the cost of transporting oil from wells to a processing plant. At that time, all oil is produced in only one field and processed almost at the same plants with the same technology. Therefore, price advantage can only give lower transport costs. "Decide a transport puzzle in its favor - and you can conquer all of America!" For the Rockefeller Foundation has had such an opening force of the Holy Scriptures. He concluded a secret agreement with three state railways. "Standard Oil" had pledged to use only those three firms. In turn, the Rockefeller Foundation, the railroad promised to substantially reduce tariffs for the transportation of oil. Business has gone up the hill. While revenues grew entrepreneur enormous pace, its competitors began to gradually broke.

Scandalous fame
Although the contract was a secret, about him all the same soon pronyuhali leisurely journalists. Against diabolical John Rockefeller rebelled all American oil. Crowds of angry people with burning torches scrambled to destroy cars with the words "Standard Oil. Rockefeller, whose name has previously heard only the business people of his native city, trice became known throughout the country. Press called him except as Mephistopheles from Cleveland, and the riots of 1872 known as "Cleveland massacre." After just two months since the conclusion of a secret pact the court found the agreement illegal. But this time, John Rockefeller quite enough to buy a song for 22 of the 26 state oil companies. All of the first in a short period, he acquired 53 refineries, of which 32 were immediately closed, retaining only the most profitable.

During the massacre, "the businessman controlled 10% of U.S. refining industry. Ten years later, the share of Standard Oil "had already processed 90% of all the world's oil. It was then that John Rockefeller became a truly rich - the richest man of America.

Two dollars per second
A Rockefeller was the idea to close all the oil business itself: beginning with the oil and sell petroleum products to the consumer. He invented the first vertically integrated company.

Traditionally, oil is sold on the market by independent brokers that have earned five cents per gallon of kerosene. Rockefeller thought it unforgivable. He wanted to earn that money! "We had to create methods for sales, far surpassing that then existed," - he would say later. To get started, Rockefeller destroyed the independent oil dealers. In their place came supply units "Standard Oil.

By the end of the century company, Standard Oil controlled nearly all the refineries in countries that produce a third of the crude oil in America, owned the second largest steel manufacturer, and managed a fleet of thousands of rail cars, barges and ships. Its property is a lot of coal and iron mines. By the mid 90-ies of the Rockefeller Foundation, the company evolved into a fully vertically integrated oil company. Oil escape from the well "Standard Oil, traveled through the pipeline" Standard Oil, clear on refinery Standard Oil, shipped in the tank "Standard Oil" and even sold to the end consumer sales agent "Standard Oil. Control the entire production chain, Rockefeller is no longer dependent on any vendor, nor of the incompetent distributors of any other vagaries of the market. He reached the order.

Since then, the money in the pockets of millionaire polilis river. At a time when most Americans were at two dollars a day, Rockefeller earned nearly $ 2 per second - more than 50 million per year.

It managed to create a Rockefeller with the best management structure. Instead of trying to personally manage their business through fear, as did most big businesses, it has delegated some authority to managers. In the "Standard Oil" was even created specialized committees: the production and procurement. Now we are not aware of other governance structures, but a hundred years ago it was truly a brilliant invention. "By creating incomprehensible complexity of the empire, he was sufficiently clever to be able to dissolve their identity in the organization," - says Rockefeller biographer Ron Chernou. Specialist in business history, Alfred D., Jr. Chendler. Rockefeller called the invention of the creation of a new subspecies of economic rights - to the salaried manager. " According to the Brookings Institution, in the period from 1880 to 1920 the number of professional managers in the United States has more than six-fold - from 161 thousand to a million or more.

Charitable bribe
The famous rich man loved to observe, that to him and to his business law applied only to ex post facto. Secret railroad transaction that led to the massacre of Cleveland, in fact, become illegal only in 1887 when the Commission was established on interstate commerce. Combinations of restriction of trade, is a vital foundation of the vertically integrated companies have been recognized as illegal only after the adoption of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890.

In gathering material for a biography, Ron Chernou found in the correspondence Rockefeller numerous confirmed instances where the business simply to pay bribes to politicians to influence the outcome of legislative activity. 250 thousand dollars spent by the Rockefeller campaign McKinley in 1896, were only the most dramatic episode of the activities that Rockefeller saw as a necessary business expense. " Neither the Commission nor the antitrust act did not affect the ambitions of the entrepreneur. On the contrary, since this is the first he had to redouble their efforts to treatment of legal obstacles erected in front of Standard Oil. Rockefeller is constantly "buying" politicians, is simply not knowing how else can you have with them. He saw himself in the service of higher interests. For him, cleaning business was a matter of inefficiency, pleasing not only the economy but also the country, and God. But businessman underestimated the extent of public outrage.

May 15, 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court finished hearing Rockefeller, consisting of 23 volumes of testimony, totaling 12 thousand pages. At last, the eleventh-account process was caused by 444 witnesses, in the presence of which the Court ruled that Standard Oil was a monopoly and is subject to fragmentation.

The news caught Rockefeller playing golf. After carefully listening to the message, a great entrepreneur turned to its partners in the game and said: "I recommend that you immediately buy shares of Standard Oil." Perhaps it was the wise counsel, who ever gave Rockefeller, preferring to enjoy alone the fruits of their mind. As a result, Standard Oil was broken into 34 separate companies. But John Rockefeller has managed to retain control over each of them.

Subsequently, many of these firms grew in the industrial giants such as ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, Conoco, Inc., ARCO, BP America and Cheesebrough Ponds.

At the time of sentencing condition Rockefeller was estimated at approximately $ 300 million. Two years later, as a result of the execution of the penalty, that figure has tripled, to 900 million (equivalent to the current 13 billion U.S. dollars). For comparison: the entire federal budget in 1913 was only 715 million, while public debt was 1.2 billion dollars. The wealth of the Rockefeller Foundation has reached approximately 2.5% of gross national product, while the current state of Croesus Bill Gates is only one fifth of this figure. Lose antitrust process resulted in the greatest career success Rockefeller. In addition, it is time for a new market, the largest consumer of oil - the car.

Germ of laziness
Rockefeller once said that if it were not for charity, it would be three times richer. Indeed, the businessman handed out money to those in need with the same ease as they worked.

Contemporaries said that apparently John Rockefeller looked real curmudgeon. But it was impressive, he handed out to children dime-desyatitsentovye coins - has become a true legend. During his life, Rockefeller, and based his funds donated to charity more than 530 million dollars. One only has received from the University of Chicago, a famous entrepreneur of 35 million dollars.

Through its "Sanitary Commission," Rockefeller helped to destroy the South ankilistomidoz - the so-called "germ of laziness." One way to combat the disease has become a mere distribution of tens of thousands of pairs of shoes. The world's first organization devoted entirely to human health has been the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University).

Snake oil
In life, Rockefeller was a man of relentless controversy, almost all of whom were brought to absolute extremes. The philosopher William James once said that John Rockefeller - this is a very bad and very good man, whom he had ever seen. "This is a man deep in 10 tiers and completely incomprehensible to me - he wrote. - On the top surface of a seemingly perfect and integrity and all the accused that he was the biggest villain in the business ever created by our country."

From his mother Eliza Rockefeller inherited the best of human qualities: istovoe piety, moral austerity, frugality, hard work, self-discipline and social consciousness. But when civil war broke out, John for 300 dollars to buy from service in the army, because it was a true abolitionist. Moreover, he married a girl from a family whose members were conductors on the "underground railroad" and at one time hid in the house of the famous American abolitsionistku Sodzhorner coward.

Rockefeller's wife, Laura Spelman Ketty, with whom he lived for more than half a century, as Eliza, was the standard of piety. Over time, the family oil tycoon has four estates with beautiful trails for horseback riding and golf course for nine holes. But inside the house did not have any luxuries.

Even at home they had not lost in vain. John Rockefeller, Jr., their only son, once uttered, that until the age of eight was only women's clothing - obnoski sisters. Ketty and I were their own social aspirations. She founded the first school for freed black women's education - Spelman College in Atlanta.

But from his father, Rockefeller Senior inherited directly opposite tendencies, for example, the ability of low cunning and designing. William "Devil Bill" Rockefeller was the so-called "snake oil merchant" and dvoezhentsem. He traveled throughout the country, selling worthless medical medicine, and gave himself for it "botanical physician, for the" well-known expert in cancer ", in the impoverished deaf and dumb. Finally in 1855, Bill devil ever left the family, marrying at young girl who knew him as Dr. William Livingston. According to Ron Chernou, stepmother great entrepreneur Margaret Livingstone Elien only in recent years to learn that her husband was the father of the richest man in the world.

Sam, John Rockefeller of affairs more than once resorted to various tricks, and even threats. One day he told his wife that people succeed in life, must sometimes go against the current. "You can not fear that you bran hand - he said one of its competitors - but your body will suffer." When the threat fails, he falsified the transaction. When this did not help, he simply bought the people, their voices and support of the newspapers. One senator from Ohio, Rockefeller handed over 44 thousand dollars that he discredited the Attorney General of causing discomfort to the activities of Standard Oil.

Rockefeller was a man of tireless repetition. Every morning he was at the same time, play golf, chewed each piece ten times before you swallow, and rinse your mouth ten times each gulp of liquid. He possessed a great deal of willpower, and he seldom failed to get what is wanted. One of the goals of the Rockefeller Foundation was celebrating its 100 th birthday, and he nearly achieved it, died in 1937 at the age of 98 years.

Grand Dynasty
Son dvoezhentsa and devout Christian, Rockefeller gave birth to one of the most prominent and generous American families. John Rockefeller, Jr.. devoted his life to philanthropic and civil cases, giving to charity an additional 400 million dollars. To send a gift to the federal government, he bought land that later became the American National Parks Grand Teton and Acad. The grandchildren of the famous entrepreneur, too, played a big role in the history of their country. Nelson Rockefeller became governor of New York, has run for president from the Republican Party, then - the Vice-President of the United States. His brother Uintrop was governor of Arkansas and chairman of the board of Colonial Williamsburg, the basis of which the important role played by John Rockefeller, Jr.. Lawrence Rockefeller, a recognized defender of natural resources, the State donated the land for the creation of Virgin Islands National Park. John III was led by the Rockefeller Foundation, brought together one of the world's largest collections of Oriental art, and funded Linkolnovsky Center of Fine Arts, New York. And David Rockefeller was chairman of the bank Chase Manhattan, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as mainly due to the Museum of Modern Art - another project the Rockefeller family.

Now great-great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. IV - member of the Democratic Party and a third term as senator from West Virginia. A beautiful name for the future.



By Julia Tikhonova

Posted in: Oil Market,People-legends