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Rich,But Generous: John D. Rockefeller
为富亦仁的约翰·戴维森·洛克菲勒
It is said that money and friendship don’t mix. But in one of the strange news stories of last year, the world’s second-richest man, Warren Buffet had given most of his money to the world’s richest man, Bill Gates. To be more accurate, Buffett arranged in June of last year to give $37.1 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps people in the poorest parts of the world. With such extreme wealthand the generosity made possible by such money — it’s not hard to see why Buffett and Gates are often compared to the first billionaire, John D. Rockfeller.
Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, on July 8, 1839. His mother, a very religious woman, taught him the value of working hard and saving money. His father, who traveled around selling “miracle cures”, taught him the value of earning money. With both of these ideas in mind, young John worked for his neighbors and raised turkeys for his mother. By the age of 12, he had saved more than $50, which he lent to a local farmer. When he collected the interest after a year, he understood something, “The impression was gaining ground1 with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my servant and not make myself a slave to the money,” he said later.
The Rockefellers moved to Cleve-land, where John learned bookkeeping and banking. At the age of 16, he got his first job, as assistant bookkeeper for a shipping company. His employers were impressed with the exactness of his work and the seriousness with which he went after money that others owed the company.
In 1859, Rockefeller and his neighbor, Maurice Clark, started a business in grain, hay, and meat. Rockefeller’s aggressive efforts to expand the business and find new customers were helped by grain prices rising after the start of the Civil War in 1861. The following year, however, Rockefeller realized that another product would soon become far more profitable than grain. It was oil.
In northwestern Pennsylvania, not far from Cleveland, the first oil wells had just been built and a railroad line to Cleveland was just being completed. Rockefeller joined an oil refining company, later called Standard Oil, and soon bought out2 the main partners. Paying great attention to detail, he increased control and efficiency at every level. Instead of depending on supplies and services from outside, he had his company install its own pipes, make its own barrels and use its own horses and wagons.
Rockefeller brought his brother William into the business, establishing a second refinery in Cleveland and an office in New York. A breakthrough in efficiency came when the men found ways to refine and use other oil products such as gasoline, benzene and paraffin, which their competitors had simply thrown away. Then, in 1871 Rockefeller thought up his master plan: to become the leader by buying up3 all the other oil companies.
As Standard bought out competitors or drove them into bankruptcy, it acquired their pipelines and railroad connections. Within one year Standard Oil owned the other refineries in Cleveland. Within the decade, it grew until it owned 90 percent of the oil business in the United States. By 1890, its distribution network reached the entire country.
This network greatly advanced the industrial age and made possible the age of the automobile. However, Standard’s aggressive marketing practices, such as forcing small shopowners sell only Standard’s products began to make the company very unpopular. A front-page story in the New York Times 91 years ago, in 1916, announced the result: Rockefeller’s fortune was, for a short time, worth $1 billion.
Rockefeller had actually retired from Standard in 1897. Stress had caused him to lose all of his hair and eyebrows, and he is believed to have had a nervous breakdown. From the mid-1890s, he changed his focus to philanthropy, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the public good.
On May 23, 1937, 97-year-old Rockefeller passed away. At that time, he was worth $26.4 million. His philanthropy, like that of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, set an example for future billionaires. According to Forbes magazine there are now 793 billionaires in the world. More than half of them live in the United States and Germany.
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