EPUB paragraph 59 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
As the chief transportation deal maker, Flagler had overseen the landmark pact, and Rockefeller always credited him for it. Some of this derived from Rockefeller’s humility, but it also betrayed a lifelong habit of covering his tracks and pretending to be elsewhere when critical decisions were made. Although Rockefeller didn’t lead the Lake Shore negotiations, he was smack in the thick of them. On August 19, 1868, he sent a fascinating letter to Cettie from New York that shows his toughness vis-à-vis the Vanderbilts, who controlled the New York Central, the Lake Shore’s parent. “We were sent for by Mr. Vanderbilt yesterday, at twelve o’c & did not go, he is anxious to get our business and said that he could meet us on the terms. We sent our card by the messenger, that Vanderbilt might know where to find our office later.” The point is worth underscoring: Twenty-nine-year-old John D. Rockefeller demanded that seventy-four-year-old Commodore Vanderbilt, the emperor of the railroad world, come to him. This refusal to truckle, bend, or bow to others, this insistence on dealing with other people on his own terms, time, and turf, distinguished Rockefeller throughout his career.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Henry M. Flagler · Cornelius Vanderbilt · New York Central · New York · Vanderbilt · Lake Shore · Vanderbilts
EPUB paragraph 60 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
Bolstered by the Lake Shore deal, Cleveland soon surpassed Pittsburgh as the leading refining center, and for the first time journalists began to track Rockefeller’s ascendancy. In 1869, one writer marveled at the power that this laconic young man, in his understated manner, had already attained in Cleveland. “He occupies a position in our business circles second to but few. Close application to one kind of business, an avoidance of all positions of honorary character that cost time, keeping everything pertaining to his business in so methodical a manner that he knows every night how he stands with the world.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Cleveland · Pittsburgh · Lake Shore
EPUB paragraph 61 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
Today an arcane, forgotten subject, the issue of railroad rebates generated heated debate in post–Civil War America since they directly affected the shape of the economy and the distribution of wealth. Railroads had obtained the power to produce either a concentrated economy, with progressively larger business units, or to perpetuate the small-scale economy of antebellum America. The proliferation of rebates hastened the shift toward an integrated national economy, top-heavy with giant companies enjoying preferential freight rates.
Names: United States · Civil War
EPUB paragraph 62 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
Rockefeller justly argued that he hadn’t invented the rebate and that the Pennsylvania Railroad had granted thousands of them in the six years before his seminal Lake Shore deal. “It was a common practice in all descriptions of freighting, not peculiar to oil; in merchandise, grain, everything.” Rebates had inevitably accompanied railroad expansion. As the total railroad trackage doubled to 70,000 miles within eight years after the Civil War, the roads were saddled with high fixed costs and heavy bonded debt. This forced them to maintain a high, steady freight volume to stay alive and waylaid them into vicious rate wars. Rebates weren’t just solicited by shippers but were sedulously pushed by railway freight agents eager to win over new business. Rebates enabled them to maintain the fiction of listed rates while secretly giving discounts to favored shippers. Over time, relations grew ever closer and more incestuous between the railroads and large shippers. For decades, Rockefeller and his colleagues enjoyed free passes on all major railroads, which they regarded not as payoffs but as natural perquisites of their business.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Pennsylvania Railroad · Lake Shore · Civil War
EPUB paragraph 63 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
Rockefeller never saw rebates as criminal or illegitimate or as favors secured only by bullying monopolies. He was correct in stating that listed rates were always a farce, a starting point for haggling. Many refiners received rebates, not just the leading firms, and some tiny rivals actually got superior discounts, especially from the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rockefeller’s business papers display much internal grumbling about this presumed inequity, for which he and his colleagues regularly chastised railroad officials at critical moments in negotiations. But in spite of numerous scattered cases of rival refiners getting comparable rebates, no other firm received so many rebates so consistently over so many years or on such a colossal scale as Rockefeller’s. It was therefore disingenuous of him to suggest that rebates played only an incidental role in his success.
EPUB paragraph 64 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
So were Ida Tarbell and other detractors justified in tarring Rockefeller’s whole career based on railroad rebates? Unfortunately, the controversy was played out in a gray area of ethics and the law that makes a definitive answer impossible. From a strictly economic standpoint, Rockefeller rested on solid ground when he insisted that bulk shippers deserved a discount. “Who can buy beef the cheapest—the housewife for her family, the steward for a club or hotel, or the commissary for an army? Who is entitled to better rebates from a railroad, those who give it 5000 barrels a day, or those who give 500 barrels—or 50 barrels?” Besides providing a steady flow of oil shipments, Rockefeller’s firm invested heavily in warehouses, terminals, loading platforms, and other railroad facilities so that the roads probably derived more profit from his shipments than from those of rivals who paid higher rates. Small, irregular shippers were the bane of railroads for the simple, mechanical reason that they forced the trains to stop repeatedly to pick up single carloads of oil. To meet the terms of his deal with the Lake Shore, Rockefeller had to run his refineries at full capacity even when kerosene demand slackened. He therefore paid a price for his rebates and felt that equal rates for all shippers would have unfairly penalized his firm.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Lake Shore
EPUB paragraph 65 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
Perhaps because Ida Tarbell trained a glaring spotlight on the rebate issue, Rockefeller insisted vehemently in later interviews that the real profitability of his firm lay elsewhere. In an intriguing aside in later years, he even hinted that the clamor over rebates conveniently deflected public attention away from other, more profitable aspects of his operation: “Along this line much was said about rebates and drawbacks for long years, and the Standard Oil Company knew full well that the public were not on the right scent. They knew where their profits came from, but they did not deem it wise to inform the public, and especially their competitors, of the real secret sources of their strength.” Indeed, one can argue that the obsession among reformers with the rebate issue might have blinded them to a multitude of other sins.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 66 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
Not until the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887 did it become an illegal, punishable offense for railroads to give rebates, and the practice didn’t cease entirely until the 1903 Elkins Act. Nevertheless, by the end of the Civil War, a widespread belief had begun to take hold that railroads were common carriers and should shun favoritism. Ida Tarbell cited provisions in the Pennsylvania state constitution that, as she interpreted them, compelled railroads to serve as common carriers and avoid discrimination. Yet in the last analysis, she based her withering critique of Rockefeller less on specific laws than on her belief that he had violated a sense of fair play. “That is,” she wrote in McClure’s Magazine in July 1905, “rebate giving then as now, was regarded as one of those lower business practices which characterizes commerce at all periods, and against which men of honor struggle, and of which men of greed take advantage.” In the privacy of his study in 1917, an unrepentant Rockefeller disputed her view of the prevailing business ethics. “I deny that it was regarded as a dishonorable practice for a merchant or manufacturer to obtain the best rates possible for his goods.” As to Tarbell’s charge that the secrecy of rebates proved their immorality, Rockefeller countered that railroads didn’t wish to advertise discounts that might then be demanded by other shippers. “For these arrangements were not except by the academic expected to be published, any more than the general of an army’s plans are published to enable the enemy to defeat him.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Pennsylvania · Interstate Commerce Act · McClure’s Magazine · Elkins Act · Civil War
EPUB paragraph 67 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
The most compelling argument against rebates was that railroads received state charters and therefore had the right of eminent domain—that is, the right to claim private property in order to lay down tracks—investing their activities with a public character. In 1867, a committee of the Ohio senate declared that railroads, as common carriers, should charge equal rates, but a bill incorporating these ideas was defeated. The following year, just as Rockefeller implemented his Lake Shore deal, a Pennsylvania senate committee reported that railroads were common carriers and had “no right to show partiality among their customers”; but, again, no regulatory changes ensued. Almost twenty years passed before reformers succeeded in introducing public regulation that forced an end to the railroad favoritism that so incensed farmers and other small shippers across America. In the meantime, Rockefeller profited enormously from the failure of public authorities to rectify the inequities of the transportation system, and his firm understandably kept up vigorous lobbying efforts to perpetuate the status quo.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · United States · Lake Shore · Ohio senate · Pennsylvania senate committee
EPUB paragraph 68 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c06_r1.htm
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., forced to wear his sisters’ hand-me-downs. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Rockefeller Archive Center
EPUB paragraph 1 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
ockefeller had speedily acquired a level of respectability that would have seemed unthinkable fifteen years before when he and his demoralized family were crowded into the Humiston house in Strongsville. In August 1868, after his rebate deal with the Lake Shore Railroad, he certified his enhanced status in Cleveland when he and Cettie moved from Cheshire Street to a solid brick home at 424 Euclid Avenue. This move dramatized the immense distance he had traveled after a few years in the oil business. Local boosters had already tagged Euclid Avenue “the most beautiful street in the world,” with homes that lavishly mirrored the local fortunes in oil, iron, banking, timber, railroads, and real estate. All of the town’s new opulence was reflected in this street of massive houses. The residential address for such local luminaries as Henry B. Payne, Amasa Stone, and John Hay, Euclid Avenue claimed so many mansions that it had richly earned its sobriquet of “millionaires’ row.”
Names: Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Henry B. Payne · Strongsville · Cleveland · Euclid Avenue · Cheshire Street · John Hay · Amasa Stone · Lake Shore Railroad · Humiston
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With the spacious grandeur of a fine Victorian street, always busy with fashionable horses and carriages, the wide avenue had a double row of elms that created a tall, shady canopy overhead. The imposing homes were deeply recessed from the street, their trimmed lawns and shapely shrubbery providing buffer zones between the houses and their distant front gates. Since few houses were separated from adjoining houses by fences, the street sometimes gave the impression of being a single, flowing park, with elegant homes standing in an unbroken expanse of greenery.
Names:
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While Rockefeller’s home looked small and cramped beside Amasa Stone’s towering manse and other gaudy monstrosities, it was a substantial two-story structure with a mansard roof, a portico, and arched windows, shielded from the street by an iron picket fence that spanned its entire 116-foot frontage. Rockefeller could have afforded something showier than this $40,000 house, and pedestrians might have thought its owner a lesser light in business, yet this was exactly the misimpression that he wanted to convey. Far from trying to parade his wealth, he wanted to blend into the scenery. Even at home, Rockefeller was discreet and behaved as if he was concealing some secret from prying eyes. Beyond that, he had the Puritan’s discomfort with possessions, a nagging Baptist anxiety that decoration might appear idolatrous. Again, like Weber’s ideal capitalist, “he avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure, as well as conscious enjoyment of his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social recognition which he receives.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Max Weber · Amasa Stone
EPUB paragraph 4 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Fond of roomy, ungainly houses that he could remodel ceaselessly, Rockefeller would have been stymied by a house that required no improvement. Utilitarian by nature, he was more concerned with the grounds and interiors of homes than with the subtleties of architectural ornamentation. “I hate frills,” he once said. “Useful things, beautiful things, are admirable; but frills, affectations, mere pretences of being something very fine, bore me very much.” With a country boy’s love of open spaces, he hated anything confined or cluttered and probably chose the Euclid Avenue house for its large, high-ceilinged rooms, which included a parlor, a sitting room, and a dining room downstairs plus four bedrooms upstairs.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Euclid Avenue
EPUB paragraph 5 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Rockefeller devoted more time and expense to the trees and shrubbery than to the house itself. To expand his gardens, he bought an adjoining lot but was disturbed by the house that came with it and obstructed his view. Since he detested waste, he donated the house to a new girls’ school being built a block away. In what was hailed as an engineering wonder at the time, the brick house was jacked up by a windlass and rolled down the block on greased logs—a spectacle that was covered by local papers and drew spectators. “Mr. Rockefeller … set [the house] on new foundations where it was as good as ever,” Lucy Spelman said of her brother-in-law’s feat. “This was a marvelous undertaking, but then he was always undertaking marvelous things.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Lucy Spelman
EPUB paragraph 6 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Behind the house, he built a stone stable and coach house more magnificent than the residence itself. Over one hundred feet long, it had stout beams, pine panels, and elaborate chandeliers. An expert driver with either a pair of horses or a four-in-hand, Rockefeller had a passion for trotters, and Euclid Avenue provided a perfect straightaway for races. If anybody tried to pass him, the hypercompetitive Rockefeller automatically turned it into a trial of speed. John, William, and Frank were stockholders in a racing club called the Cleveland Driving Park Company, the first amateur club of its sort in America. Unable to do anything in a casual manner, Rockefeller became obsessive about his hobbies, which he could sometimes indulge in extravagant fashion. In the 1870s, his records show, he paid stupendous sums—from $10,000 to $12,500—for thoroughbred trotters with such evocative names as Midnight, Flash, Jesse, Baron, and Trifle.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frank Rockefeller · Euclid Avenue · United States · Cleveland Driving Park Company · Jesse · Baron · Uncle William · John
EPUB paragraph 7 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
In his early days in business, Rockefeller often suffered from severe neck pains that might have indicated stress on the job, and he turned to horses as a therapeutic diversion. “I would leave my office in the afternoon and drive a pair of fast horses as hard as they could go: trot, break, gallop—everything.” Since Cettie was also fond of horses, they often rode together. His style of racing was also revealing: He never applied cruel, coercive measures to recalcitrant horses but studied them closely and tried to coax them along gently and with great patience. “I remember when my brother William and I used to go riding,” he said. “I would invariably come in first. He would be covered with perspiration, as was his horse. My horse would be too—but I would be as cool as I am now. I always would talk to my horses—quietly, steadily—never get excited.” This unflappable style and conservation of energy also characterized his approach to the management of his vast oil empire.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Uncle William
EPUB paragraph 8 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Unlike his philandering father, John D. Rockefeller remained firmly, almost prudishly, anchored in domestic life. Much like Jay Gould—who didn’t drink, smoke, or gallivant with women—Rockefeller’s harsh business tactics were counterbalanced by exemplary behavior at home where he was a sweet, respectful Victorian husband. To borrow a line from Flaubert, to be fiercely revolutionary in business, he needed to be utterly conventional at home. Eternally at war with the devil, John and Cettie allowed their religious beliefs to define their entire cultural agenda. They subscribed to seats at the philharmonic, for instance, but theater and opera were too racy for these professing Christians. Shying away from social situations that weren’t safely predictable, they socialized only within a small circle of family members, business associates, and church friends and never went to clubs or dinner parties. “Club life did not appeal to me,” said Rockefeller. “I was meeting all the people I needed to meet in my day’s work.… My family would rather have me at home—even if I were snoring in an easy chair—than going out for the evening, and certainly I preferred to stay at home.” He especially enjoyed the company of ministers whose genial, homiletic style matched his own. Thus walled off from temptation, Rockefeller was virtually untouched by the decadence of the Gilded Age.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Jay Gould · Gustave Flaubert · Gilded Age · John
EPUB paragraph 9 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Much of Rockefeller’s preference for home life stemmed from his strict temperance views. Even late in life, he accepted an invitation to a hotel barbecue, then went to investigate the site beforehand. When he spotted empty beer bottles on the premises, he promptly withdrew his acceptance. Since he and Cettie were deeply involved in temperance work—they did everything from sponsoring lecture tours to lobbying to have temperance principles inserted in school textbooks—they avoided the very presence of liquor, and this severely cramped their social activities. Yet within their circumscribed world, they had a happy home life.
EPUB paragraph 10 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Rockefeller bridled at the notion that he was a business-obsessed drudge, a slave to the office. “I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the waking hours of the day to making money for money’s sake,” he recorded in his memoirs. He worked at a more leisurely pace than many other executives, napping daily after lunch and often dozing in a lounge chair after dinner. To explain his extraordinary longevity, he later said, doubtless overstating the matter, “I’m here because I shirked: did less work, lived more in the open air, enjoyed the open air, sunshine and exercise.” By his mid-thirties, he had installed a telegraph wire between home and office so that he could spend three or four afternoons each week at home, planting trees, gardening, and enjoying the sunshine. Rockefeller didn’t do this in a purely recreational spirit but mingled work and rest to pace himself and improve his productivity. In time, he became something of an evangelist on health-related issues. “It is remarkable how much we all could do if we avoid hustling, and go along at an even pace and keep from attempting too much.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 11 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
There was a clockwork regularity about Rockefeller’s life that made it seem mechanical to outsiders but that he found soothing. He didn’t seem to require time to indulge normal human idleness, much less illicit passion. In his rigidly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted, whether for business, religion, family, or exercise. Perhaps these daily rituals helped him to deal with underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain in creating his oil empire. He fretted endlessly about his company and, below the surface, was constantly on edge. In one of his few admissions of weakness, he recalled that “for years on end I never had a solid night’s sleep, worrying about how it was to come out.… I tossed about in bed night after night worrying over the outcome.… All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 12 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
By the time they moved to Euclid Avenue, the Rockefellers already had one child, Elizabeth (always called Bessie), who was born in the Cheshire Street house in 1866. (When Cettie was confined during childbirth and couldn’t attend church, John jotted down notes on the sermon and read them back to her afterward.) All of the remaining children were born in an upstairs bedroom at Euclid Avenue. Their second child, Alice, was born in July 1869 but died a year later; then came Alta (1871), Edith (1872), and John Jr. (1874). They were delivered by a pioneering physician, Dr. Myra Herrick, Cleveland’s first woman doctor, who organized a short-lived homeopathic college to train women in the field. When she set up a free medical dispensary, staffed exclusively by female doctors, to assist low-income women, Cettie and Mary Flagler were prominent contributors.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Alice Rockefeller · Rockefeller family · Cleveland · Euclid Avenue · Cheshire Street · Myra Herrick · Mary Flagler · Queen Elizabeth · John
EPUB paragraph 13 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
A surprisingly flexible, egalitarian father, Rockefeller never shrank from child care. His sister-in-law, Lute, who gave up teaching and went to live with them, told how John eased the burden from Cettie’s shoulders when he was at home: “He would get up from his nap the moment he heard a baby cry and carry the little one up and down the room until she was quieted.” Rockefeller was always patient with his children and seldom lost his temper or uttered a harsh word. As the son of a self-absorbed absentee father, he made a point of being an affectionate parent and something of a homebody.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Lucy Spelman · John
EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Like Big Bill, however, Rockefeller could be a sprightly companion for his children. He would get down on all fours and bear them on his back, recapturing a boyish glee that was seldom evident at the office. When they played blindman’s buff, he electrified them with daring feints, sudden thrusts, and unexpected, wheeling turns, followed by whoops of delight when he won. Attuned to their fantasy world, he liked to gather the children around him and tell fairy tales. Also like his father, he had an inexhaustible supply of stunts. At dinner, he dazzled the children by balancing fine china plates on the tip of his nose; he also balanced crackers on his nose, then gave them a sudden flip and caught them in his mouth. He taught the children to swim, row, skate, and ride, and he had a talent for devising imaginative outings. On moonlit nights at Forest Hill—the Cleveland estate Rockefeller bought in the 1870s—they ventured forth on bicycle trips, with Rockefeller pinning a large white handkerchief to the back of his coat and leading the children through winding, mysterious forest roads. John Jr. never forgot skating with his father: “The lake was deep, so we took under each arm long narrow boards, which would hold us up in case we broke through the ice. That was characteristic of Father. He always took the utmost care to examine any project thoroughly; then when convinced it was safe, put it through without further question.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Cleveland · Forest Hill · China
EPUB paragraph 15 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Perhaps to create a substitute for theater and other entertainments proscribed by their religion, John and Cettie encouraged the children’s musical talents, and each one took up an instrument. They formed their own quartet—with Bessie on violin, Alta on piano, Edith on cello, and John Jr. on violin—so that the house echoed with the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Handel. The children approached music as serious art, not frivolous amusement, and performed frequently at church events. They weren’t barred from playing contemporary popular music.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Mozart · Beethoven · Handel · John
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If there was more merriment in Rockefeller’s household than we might have suspected, there was also an underlying sobriety. His children remembered the playful moments, but outsiders were struck by the somber, stuffy atmosphere and found something almost spooky about the Rockefeller home, with one disgruntled tutor leaving this ghastly description: “The elastic step, the laughter of youth, the light heartedness, the romping about, the playfulness, which one is supposed to meet among the young and happy were entirely lacking, lacking almost to dejection. It was a gloomy horizon, with a heaviness that pervaded the entire household. Silence and gloom everywhere.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
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Rockefeller kept his children hermetically cut off from the world and hired governesses to educate them at home. Aside from church, they never engaged in outside social or civic functions and betrayed a very Baptist fear of worldly entertainments. In the summertime, the children’s friends might come to visit for a week or two at a time, but never the reverse, and even these playmates were the cautiously screened offspring of John and Cettie’s church companions. As John Jr. remembered, “Our interests centered in the house; our friends came there almost wholly. We went rarely, practically none at all, to neighbors’ houses.” John Jr. hinted that the children brought to visit weren’t real companions and were mostly window dressing to gratify his parents. “We had no childhood friends, no school friends.” It was a far cry from Thorstein Veblen’s image of the spoiled leisure class.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Thorstein Veblen · John
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Convinced that struggle was the crucible of character, Rockefeller faced a delicate task in raising his children. He wanted to accumulate wealth while inculcating in them the values of his threadbare boyhood. The first step in saving them from extravagance was keeping them ignorant of their father’s affluence. Until they were adults, Rockefeller’s children never visited his office or refineries, and even then they were accompanied by company officials, never Father. At home, Rockefeller created a make-believe market economy, calling Cettie the “general manager” and requiring the children to keep careful account books.They earned pocket money by performing chores and received two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents per hour for practicing their musical instruments, and a dollar for repairing vases. They were given two cents per day for abstaining from candy and a dime bonus for each consecutive day of abstinence. Each toiled in a separate patch of the vegetable garden, earning a penny for every ten weeds they pulled up. John Jr. got fifteen cents an hour for chopping wood and ten cents per day for superintending paths. Rockefeller took pride in training his children as miniature household workers. Years later, riding on a train with his thirteen-year-old daughter, he told a traveling companion, “This little girl is earning money already. You never could imagine how she does it. I have learned what my gas bills should average when the gas is managed with care, and I have told her that she can have for pin money all that she will save every month on this amount, so she goes around every night and keeps the gas turned down where it is not needed.” Rockefeller never tired of preaching economy and whenever a package arrived at home, he made a point of saving the paper and string.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller
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Cettie was equally vigilant. When the children clamored for bicycles, John suggested buying one for each child. “No,” said Cettie, “we will buy just one for all of them.” “But, my dear,” John protested, “tricycles do not cost much.” “That is true,” she replied. “It is not the cost. But if they have just one they will learn to give up to one another.” So the children shared a single bicycle. Amazingly enough, the four children probably grew up with a level of creature comforts not that far above what Rockefeller had known as a boy. Except on Sundays, the girls wore simple gingham dresses and hand-me-downs. In later life, John Jr. confessed sheepishly that until the age of eight he wore only dresses, because he was the youngest child and the three older siblings were girls.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · John
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Rockefeller’s home secretary saw much of the children because they liked to sit quietly and observe the mysterious clicking of the telegraph wires in her office. She described Rockefeller as extremely gentle with the children but attached to certain fixed principles that he expounded with didactic, wearying repetition. The children were told so often that cards were sinful that they couldn’t distinguish one card suit from another. To teach self-restraint, Rockefeller limited them to one piece of cheese daily. One afternoon, little Alta tattled on her younger sister Edith for having eaten two pieces of cheese, and Rockefeller professed shock at this epicurean indulgence. As the secretary recalled: “All that afternoon whenever Edith came within hearing her father would say, slowly and impressively, ‘Edith was greedy.’ At another time both little John and Alta called out, ‘Edith took the biggest.’ Repeatedly that afternoon, Mr. Rockefeller said in his impressive manner, ‘Edith was selfish.’ ”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · John
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Yet the thing to be husbanded most jealously was time. One could neither be too early nor too late. In fact, there was such a fetish about punctuality that it occasioned discernible anxiety among the children. Rockefeller’s home secretary said that John Jr. had computed, down to the second, how long it took to get from her telegraph office to the schoolroom upstairs. “After that, whenever I read to the children near school time, John would sit with watch in hand, and his rising was signal for the reading to stop and for the girls to follow him.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · John
EPUB paragraph 22 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c07_r1.htm
Each morning before breakfast, Rockefeller led the family in prayer, meting out a penny fine to latecomers. Everyone took turns reciting from scripture, and John or Cettie elucidated difficult portions and prayed for guidance. Before bed, Cettie listened to the children recite their prayers, and nothing could divert her from this sacred duty. They were encouraged to be active in prayer, especially at Friday night prayer meetings. As John Jr. recalled, at an early age they were encouraged “to take part like the older people, either in a brief word of prayer or a word of personal experience.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · John
Source: Ron Chernow, Titan. Names and relationships retain the full atlas’s extraction limits. Map points are references; historical sites and regions can be approximate. Open the full interactive atlas.