John D. Rockefeller

Who was Jhon D. Rockefeller?

Standard Oil

• In 1870, Rockefeller and his associates incorporated the Standard Oil Company, which immediately prospered, thanks to favorable economic/industry conditions and Rockefeller’s drive to streamline the company’s operations and keep margins high.
• Standard’s moves were so quick and sweeping that it controlled the majority of refineries in the Cleveland area within two years. Standard then used its size and ubiquity in the region to make favorable deals with railroads to ship its oil. At the same time, Standard got into the business itself with the purchase of pipelines and terminals, setting up a system of transport for its own products. Controlling (or owning) almost every aspect the business, Standard’s grip on the industry tightened, and it even bought thousands of acres of forest for lumber and drilling and to block competitors from running their own pipelines.
• Standard’s footprint got bigger as well, and it bought up competitors in other regions, soon pursuing ambitions of being an industry player both coast-to-coast in the U.S. and abroad. In just over a decade since Standard Oil was incorporated, it had a near monopoly of the oil business in the U.S. and consolidated each division under one giant corporate umbrella, with Rockefeller overseeing all of it. Everything Rockefeller had done to this point had led to the first American monopoly, or “trust,” and it would serve as a guiding light for others in big business following behind him.

Rockefeller is so far the only case that has been seen of a man who came to build a pure monopoly, which cost the government itself to dissolve and in fact marked in depth the development of the oil industry worldwide.



He is considered the most affluent man in World History5 6 7 8 9 and is the founder of the mythical family of millionaires that still persists today, with his same name and power as well as the extension of his wealth they were extreme not only over the United States but over other places, such as Europe and Latin America, in fact, his family continued to control 90% of the oil industry in the latter region for more than six decades after his death.

The power of Rockerfeller

• As a result of all these maneuvers, Rockefeller had established his power over the oil industry, but now he wanted to consolidate it completely. For this he decided to proceed with the creation of the Standard Oil Trust. This would be a kind of extraordinary business holding that would concentrate diverse investments in the world of oil and fuels, not only in the United States but in several other countries of the world. The creation of this entity, was based on an idea that Rockefeller created, to avoid being accused of monopoly by the authorities, given that by the time the government was beginning to have interference in the regulation of free competition between companies. Because of this, Rockefeller could not acquire all the companies that it wanted to control, because to do so, the authorities would intervene, the solution was the creation of the Trust, a term that in English means "trust", and that referred to a concentration of companies under the same direction, the legal control of the constituent companies was conferred to the board of directors, changing the actions of the companies for the certificates of the trust. In this way, Rockefeller managed to unite the different companies, under the same central management, in order to control the sales and marketing of oil. The idea of ​​Rockefeller materialized in 1882, creating the Standard Oil Trust, which was the first monopoly in the world, covering the entire US oil industry, controlling the processes of extraction, refining, transportation, distribution and sale of all products derived from 90% of all US oil and holding operations, investments and activities in dozens of other countries. This was the epitome of Rockefeller's extraordinary business career, which was now the wealthiest man in the United States and possibly the world.

personal fortune

Due to his vast fortune, Rockefeller managed to become the very image of the American billionaire. Owned multiple real estate properties. His principal residence in New York, was the most luxurious and extensive of all,having nine floors. In addition, it initiated investments in a variety of other entities, financial and productive.

His philanthropic contributions reached 550 million dollars. Of these, 80% went to four charities created by Rockefeller: the Rockefeller Foundation, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (today Rockefeller University) and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, created in 1918 and absorbed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929.