JD ROCKAFELLER

During the Gilded Age, the United States saw an increase in the power of big businesses, many of which monopolized their industries. This time period, although it appeared successful from the outside, was filled with governmental corruption. Manipulated by the robber barons of the Gilded Age, the United States government fell victim to their control. Contrary to this downfall, the nation celebrated much success in the numerous life-changing inventions attributed to this era. With the invention of the internal combustion engine, among others, there also came a major increase in the demand for oil. Entering the flourishing oil business in 1870, John D. Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Company, which later dominated the entire oil industry. Although he had years filled with success in the business, Rockefeller faced a disastrous court case that dissolved his company and years of his hard work. Despite this catastrophic event, Rockefeller found other ways to contribute his knowledge and hard-work by making innumerable philanthropic donations. After many years and countless efforts, John D. Rockefeller had one of the most outstanding and positive influences on the United States through his work in the oil industry and his philanthropic actions.

1. What did John D. Rockefeller believe was the key to stabilizing the oil industry? He believed that centralizing the administration, hard-working people that applied themselves and work together, and a monopoly – owning as much as they can – would stabilize the oil industry.

     True, Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller may have been the most influential businessmen of the 19th century, but was the way they conducted business proper? To fully answer this question, we must look at the following: First understand how Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller changed the market of their industries. Second, look at the similarities and differences in how both men achieved domination. Third and lastly, Look at how both men treated their workers and customers in order achieve the most possible profit for their company.

While Standard Oil did come to basically control the price of oil in the United States, it never engaged in 'predatory', or deep and unnecessary price cutting to push out it's competitors. John McGee states this about how Standard Oil accomplished this by other means: “It is correct that Standard discriminated in price, but it did so to maximize profits given the elasticities of demand of markets in which it sold. It did not use price discrimination to change those elasticities. Anyone who has relied upon price discrimination to explain Standard's dominance would do well to start looking for something else. The place to start is merger” (McGee 168). Carnegie on the other hand preferred to buy out all competitors that were in the same area of production as he was, and consolidate. Through consolidating most steel mills in the Pittsburgh/Pennsylvania area, he was able to control that particular step of the production process in the steel business, therefore maximizing his profits like Rockefeller, but in a different way. Carnegie preferred stable prices and stable business, and Harold Hotelling manages to place Carnegie's view on why he consolidated his mills as such: “This is the fact that of all the purchasers of a commodity, some buy from one seller, some from another, in spite of moderate differences of price. If the purveyor of an

John D. Rockefeller should be considered a Robber Baron. Rockefeller may be associated with a Robber baron because he used illegal tactics to create a strong oil company. The most uncertain things of all his success was how he got it. John was getting discounts from other railroad companies which made them suspicious of him. Which as you could see would be a disadvantage to other oil companies that were in competition with them. Rockefeller's competition found this practice and others he did to be funny which is why he was considered a robber baron by many people. Rockefeller owned basically the entire oil industry at the same time when he bought out the other oil businesses. Rockefeller workers barely made income, he always shortened their pay which made them stop working for him. The workers felt that if they were working hard they should get paid what they deserved. So even with him being one of the richest man alive who donated money to different business such as schools, churches and etc he used different unfair advantages to accomplish his success.

In the 1900s drove 15,000 oil companies when they first discovered oil in the spindletop texas.There were a lot of benefits of this discovery like higher pay for a lot of the workers, Better football teams and better growth in a lot of their universities. There were a lot of disadvantages to this discovery like in ector texas was 23 times the amount of the national average. Oil was the only way for the future with entrepreneurs showing up all over the U.S region.This discovery changed texas future for ever.

Oil has created new opportunities such as college for people who want to or need to have for their jobs. People now have a better chance of going to college than they use to. The legislature had given the two schools UT and Texas A&M two million acres of land. When oil came into town in 1923 it was a booming business. Now that the oil had came into town the oil and land produced 4.4 billion dollars for the university of UT and Texas A&M. Oil money from land grants helped develop higher education levels in Texas. Overall oil has made a huge impact on school in a great way.

Oil was being used to grease the wheels of America's infant industries, to fuel the expansion of growth. Rockefeller lamented that so many wells were flowing that the price of oil kept falling yet everyone went right on drilling. He saw an industry plagued from overproduction and his own success was being threatened by ruinness cut throat competition. John D. was shrewd enough and he was analytical enough that he realized that in order to figure out a way to save his own firm and his own newly-won fortune, that he had to figure out a solution for the entire industry. It was at that point that John D. began to conceive of the oil industry as one big interrelated mechanism. And you couldn't just change one component, you had to control the entire machine.

Ralph W. Hidey and Muriel E. Hidey disagreed with Josephson. In the book Taking Sides, They believe that John D. Rockefeller and his associates created and applied a system for operating a large integrated industrial enterprise, which was one of the earliest representatives of Big Business. He contributed to the development of American petroleum industry and through it to the growth of the economy.

Rockefeller was obsessed with controlling the oil market and used many of undesirable tactics to flush his competitors out of the market. Rockefeller was also a master of the rebate game. He was one of the most dominant controllers of the railroads. He was so good at the rebate that at some times he skillfully commanded the railroad to pay rebates to his standard oil company on the traffic of other competitors. He was able to do this because his oil traffic was so high that he could make or break a section of a railroad a railroad company by simply not running his oil on their lines. Another one of Rockefellers earlier mentioned but not explained tactics was his horizontally integrated monopoly. Rockefeller used this horizontal monopoly to set prices and force his competitors to merge with him. (All with Doc. J) Document J shows that Rockefeller had his tentacles, or his influence and power around every piece of the oil industry. That, also, includes the politicians and their support.

and the wealth it brought, when any other competitor tried even to step foot into the oiling industry, Rockefeller dropped his prices until the rookie industry was forced out. After he ! regained monopoly, he then jacked up the prices. Sure, the people were

In 1914, John D. Rockefeller Jr. hired Lee because his Standard Oil company had image problems, especially after journalists published a powerful muckraking series about his business tactics and after his company’s strikebreakers and members of the state militia battled striking coal miners trying to win recognition for their union. Fifty-three workers and their family members were killed in Colorado. Lee proposed a series of informational bulletins by management that would be distributed to opinion leaders in Colorado and around the nation – telling the company’s part of the story – that were highly influential in shaping public discussion and opinion. Lee clearly recognized that there are several sides to every story and that decisions about which facts to present to the public and which to leave out could strongly shape public perceptions. He also brought in the press and staged photo opportunities at Rockefeller family’s

By establishing these set shipping rates with the railroad companies, it not only made it impossible for his competitors to stay in business, but it also allowed Rockefeller to establish a strong relationship with a key method of transportation for shipping products (Biography). By establishing a strong relationship with the railroad companies, Rockefeller was able to use his successful business practice to “control over 90 percent of the nation’s oil-refining industry by 1880” (The New Tycoons). As time continued on and his business became more successful, he also applied another clever business strategy known as vertical integration. This process consisted of a company purchasing and controlling each and every step of one’s industry production process. Rockefeller’s company used this process very efficiently as they “became known to manipulate crude oil prices to drive refineries to bankruptcy, allowing him to buy them cheaply” (Epstein). By controlling each production step, he was able to minimize costs by removing any companies from the middle that were previously completing steps on the way to the finish product. Rockefeller was also known to manipulate prices of crude oil in order to drive his competing refineries into bankruptcy which allowed him to buy them cheaply (Epstein). However, his economic beliefs and ideas were not the only strategies which John Rockefeller used to elevate his business and personal profile to a national level and

Their great business capacity would have insure the managers of the Standard Oil Company success, but the means by which they achieved monopoly was by conspiracy with the railroads. John D. Rockefeller killed his rivals by getting the great Railroad lines to refuse to give them transportation. Multimillionaire

For two years, Tarbell looked through public records, state and federal reports, and court cases to figure out what Rockefeller’s tactics were when building the Standard Oil Company. Tarbell used this information to write a popular 19-part series called “The History of the Standard Oil Company” that was published between November 1902 and October 1904. Even though she did not like what Rockefeller did, she still managed to mention that