The Industrial Revolution : The Iron Company Known As Standard Oil Co. Inc.

John D. Rockefeller was the guiding force behind the creation of the Standard Oil Company, which grew to dominate the oil industry. This company was one of the first big trusts in the United States, thus much controversy and opposition arose regarding business strategies and its organization. John D. Rockefeller was also one of the United States first major philanthropists, establishing numerous important foundations and donating close to $600 million to various charities.

During the post Civil War period many capitalists took over and ramped up industry. There were also individuals who took industries and monopolized them. Many historians who look back at these capitalists who shaped the post Civil War industry argue about whether they should be viewed as captains of industry who developed large industry, or as robber barons who used industry and monopolies to achieve wealth and take advantage of the working class. This essay will show why they were captains of industry.

Near the last decades of the 19th century, America’s industrial economy skyrocketed. As these industrial leaders like Carnegie and Rockefeller not only lead the expansion through their respective industries, but revolutionized businesses while crushing free-market competition in the process. As

John D. Rockefeller Senior is one of the most famous industrialists to date. His fame is well deserved, through decades of hard work that brought prosperity to the American petroleum industry. Rockefeller has been called philanthropist, "great man" 1 "industrial statesman…, robber baron" , thief and other titles of both pleasant and unpleasant nature. His ways of conducting business brought him fame, fortune, and a lawsuit that broke up the Standard Oil Company. Despite these questionable business practices, John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company greatly contributed to the economy, and the well-being of the United States and its people. "The life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., was marked to an exceptional degree by silence,

He holds little as important as this day. The reason that I say that he is smart about how he went about becoming the oil tycoon is because he essentially gave it his all. His first oil refinery that was built was built to very impeccable standards unlike others of that time. Many people thought that the oil craze was something that will rise and fall real quick. Even though John D. was faced with this possibility he still was very careful about where he built his plant and about how the waste from it was disposed. He also had good working relationships with his employees and his partners. He also was able to talk an owner of a railroad company into allowing him to ship his oil for almost a dollar cheaper per barrel than the others. And then he sought to buy out all the other companies by either offering them cash or offering them stock in the company. Eventually all these little oil companies sold out to him and he founded Standard Oil Company (John D and his partners).

John Davison Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York on July 8, 1839. His family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was 14. As a teenager, Rockefeller did many small business jobs, getting his first office job at 16 as an assistant bookkeeper at Hewitt and Tuttle, who were merchants and produce shippers. He did well as all of his jobs, so at the age of 20, a business partner and he started working as merchants, selling meats, grains, hay, and other various things. After just one year, that company earned 450,000 dollars. Rockefeller felt there was a good opportunity in the oil business in the early 1860’s. So, he started his own oil refinery in Cleveland in 1863. By 1865, it was the largest refinery in the area.

Rockefeller was an American business tycoon. His early life made an impact on him with his father’s odd habits and parenting. His father was a traveling salesman who regularly cheated on his wife; even cheating on her when he was home. His father regularly “ cheated” his children by lying to them. He made the excuse that it would make them strong. John did not let this affect him. He got a job at an early age and used this experience and knowledge to become a business partner. By the end of the year the company had made half a million dollars. He used this money to open an oil refinery. He and a few others created the Standard Oil Company, in 1870. Within two years they had owned a majority of the oil refineries in Cleveland. They, in nearly a decade, had a monopoly on the US oil refinery

A "robber baron" was someone who employed any means necessary to enrich themselves at the expense of their competitors. Did John D. Rockefeller fall into that category or was he one of the "captains of industry", whose shrewd and innovative leadership brought order out of industrial chaos and generated great fortunes that enriched the public welfare through the workings of various philanthropic agencies that these leaders established? In the early 1860s Rockefeller was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, who came to epitomize both the success and excess of corporate capitalism. His company was based in northwestern Pennsylvania.

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.

No wonder that only a handful of people can’t distinguish that this old man was a crock and deserves to rot in hell! With all this positive media attention, the public had been fed lies! In real life, this money hungry, greedy villain is the prime reason why the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. Rockefeller’s dream was to monopolize the oiling industry, and he so successfully did. Because of his great empire (the Standard Oil Co.)

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

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.

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

Although, he was scrutinized for monopolizing the oil industry, his reputation later changed. John D. Rockefeller, a successful oil industrialist, overcame his reputation of greed by donating much of his fortune to aid in educational and medical advancements for the U.S. John D. Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York to his father William A. and his mother Eliza Davison Rockefeller in 1839, and the second of six children. Rockefeller and his family relocated frequently, but when he eventually settled in Ohio in 1853, and attended Central High School in Cleveland. At the age of 21, he became autonomous by joining a church home and by renting his own place.

John D. Rockefeller was born July 8, 1839 in New York. He was a married man with a total of 5 kids with one of them dying at birth. His wife 's name was Laura S. Rockefeller and he married her in 1864. He always had a business mindset and he never strayed from hard work, he actually thrived on it. Even at a young age he started working harder than anyone in the room. This along with his natural talent for the business world made him a top competitor in any job he was willing to take on. Before Rockefeller had even had a job before he had walked around to local businesses and tried showing his potential and tried landing a job. He was turned down time after time but this did not