EPUB paragraph 39 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
It mortified Rockefeller that so few trusting souls took Standard Oil stock. Mostly, they doubted that Rockefeller and his Young Turks could realize their experimental plan. As he recalled, “So when I offered them either spot cash outright for their property or stock in the new company, they took my money and laughed in their sleeves at my folly.” Rockefeller knew, with his customary certitude, that the people who took shares would be enriched. Indeed, American high society in the twentieth century would be loaded with descendants of those refiners who opted for stock. At every opportunity, Rockefeller sounded a prophetic note about the future appreciation of these shares. One Cleveland refiner who took stock later ran into Rockefeller, who asked, “Do you still hold your stock?” When told that was the case, Rockefeller entreated him, “Sell everything you’ve got even to the shirt on your back, but hold on to the stock.” Not all of them did, and Rockefeller always fancied that much of the venom turned against him came from disgruntled refiners who regretted having declined the stock.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Cleveland
EPUB paragraph 40 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Despite his stupendous borrowing needs, Rockefeller no longer needed to truckle to bankers and defied the most fearsome of them all: Amasa Stone. Cold, stern, and unapproachable, Stone amassed a fortune building bridges and railroads and became managing director of the Lake Shore Railroad at the personal behest of Commodore Vanderbilt. Twenty years older than Rockefeller, he expected the refiner to defer to him, and this irked the younger man. To ensure a steady flow of credit, Rockefeller put Stone on Standard’s board, but when the latter grew arbitrary and domineering, Rockefeller plotted to banish him. He soon had his chance when Stone inadvertently let an option expire for buying more Standard Oil stock. Several weeks later, recognizing his error, Stone showed up at the Standard office and induced Flagler to extend the expiration date. Itching for a showdown, Rockefeller overrode Flagler and refused to sell Stone any more shares, prompting the irate banker to liquidate his stake in the company. Rockefeller now considered himself the equal of any Cleveland businessman and wouldn’t grovel to anyone.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry M. Flagler · Cornelius Vanderbilt · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Amasa Stone · Lake Shore Railroad · Stone
EPUB paragraph 41 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Just as he dreamed of emancipation from his bankers, Rockefeller hoped to escape the clutches of Vanderbilt, Gould, Scott, and other railroad barons. Early on, he had demonstrated the edge possessed by large-scale shippers in haggling with railroads. Now, he went a critical step further, figuring out how to insinuate himself into the very infrastructure of the industry.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Jay Gould · Vanderbilt · Scott
EPUB paragraph 42 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Still uneasy at the specter of the oil fields drying up, the railroads shrank from investments in custom-made facilities for handling oil, worried that this specialized equipment might someday be rendered worthless. Exploiting this fear, Rockefeller worked out a clever bargain with the Erie Railroad in April 1874. The railroad would transfer control of its Weehawken, New Jersey, terminal to Standard Oil if Standard met two conditions: First, it would have to outfit the rail yards with modern apparatuses that would help to expedite oil shipments to New England and the South; second, it would have to ship 50 percent of its western refinery output over Erie tracks. For Rockefeller, the arrangement promised multiple advantages, for he not only received preferential rates from Erie but could also chart the oil movements of competitors across the country. He could even block the export of rivals’ oil—an option that, having made this huge investment, he freely exercised. As he argued, “I know of no parallel case in other branches of business where the competitor felt injured because he could not use his rival’s capital and facilities for his own advantage and the disadvantage of the owner of the capital and facilities.”Rockefeller’s logic was unimpeachable—unless one accepted the still controversial proposition that railroads were common carriers and should deal with all shippers impartially.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Erie Railroad · South · New England · New Jersey · Erie · Weehawken
EPUB paragraph 43 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Rockefeller was embraced no less warmly by the New York Central, which was controlled by the Vanderbilt family. Commodore Vanderbilt reportedly said that Rockefeller was the one man in America who could dictate terms to him; meanwhile, his son, William H. Vanderbilt, discreetly purchased Standard Oil stock for his own account. It was the younger Vanderbilt who said presciently of Rockefeller in the 1870s: “He will become the richest man in the country,” thus inheriting the title from his father. Standard Oil eventually became so enmeshed in the railroad business that it controlled virtually all the oil traffic that traveled over the Erie and the New York Central tracks.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Cornelius Vanderbilt · William H. Vanderbilt · Standard Oil · New York Central · United States · Vanderbilt · Erie
EPUB paragraph 44 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Standard Oil also profited immeasurably from the revolution in oil transport as barrels gave way to tank cars. As Rockefeller later testified, “We soon discovered as the business grew that the primary method of transporting oil in barrels could not last. The package often cost more than the contents, and the forests of the country were not sufficient to supply the necessary material for an extended length of time.” Once again, the railroads balked at investing in rolling stock that couldn’t also transport general freight, so Rockefeller stepped boldly into the breach. In 1874, Standard Oil—with that kindly solicitude for the railroads’ welfare that artfully tied them up with myriad strings—began to raise tens of thousands of dollars to build oil-tank cars, which they would then lease to the roads for a special mileage allowance. Decades later, Armour and Company, the Chicago butcher, mimicked the same strategy by buying up refrigerator cars.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Chicago · Philip D. Armour
EPUB paragraph 45 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
As the owner of almost all the Erie and New York Central tank cars, Standard Oil’s position grew unassailable: At a moment’s notice, it could crush either railroad by threatening to withdraw its tank cars. It also prodded the railroads into granting favors for tank cars not enjoyed by the small refiners who shipped by barrel. For instance, railroads levied a charge for the return of empty barrels, while tank cars traveled free on the return route from the East Coast to the Midwest refineries. Tank-car clients also received the exact same leakage allowance received by barrel shippers, even though the tank cars didn’t leak—which effectively allowed Standard Oil to carry sixty-two gallons gratis in every tank car.
Names: Standard Oil · New York Central · Midwest · Erie · East Coast
EPUB paragraph 46 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In this impregnable position, Rockefeller fulfilled a longtime wish and abolished forever the freight advantage of the Oil Creek refiners. In high-level talks with railway officials at Long Branch, New Jersey, and Saratoga Springs in the summer of 1874, he made them equalize rates for all refiners shipping to the East Coast. Crude oil would now effectively travel free on the 150-mile stretch between Oil Creek and Cleveland, destroying the advantage of owning a refinery in the oil fields and creating parity for Cleveland. When this shocking news surfaced in the so-called Rutter Circular of September 9, 1874, it sparked mass meetings and howls of protest along Oil Creek, where Rockefeller was universally execrated. Unlike the situation with the SIC, the railroads didn’t tremble at the uproar but reacted with cool intransigence, knowing the independent refiners were now doomed. Three weeks passed before A. J. Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad issued a curt, unrepentant letter in defense of the new uniform rates. For a long time, the independents had fought a valiantly unequal contest with Standard Oil, but now that the railroads had fallen under Standard’s spell, the contest was over.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · A. J. Cassatt · Standard Oil · South Improvement Company · Pennsylvania Railroad · Cleveland · Oil Creek · Saratoga Springs · New Jersey · East Coast · Long Branch · Rutter Circular
EPUB paragraph 47 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Had oil been found in scattered places after the Civil War, it’s unlikely that even Standard Oil could have mustered the resources to control it so thoroughly. It was the confinement of oil to a desolate corner of northwest Pennsylvania that made it susceptible to monopoly control, especially with the emergence of pipelines. Pipelines unified the Pennsylvania wells into a single network and ultimately permitted Standard Oil to start or stop the flow of oil with the turn of a spigot. In time, they relegated collaboration with the railroads into something of a sideshow for Rockefeller.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Pennsylvania · Civil War
EPUB paragraph 48 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Only belatedly did Rockefeller discern the full potential of pipelines, and his entry into the business seemed somewhat of a defensive, rearguard action. He knew that the railroads felt threatened by the pipelines, and for a time he thought it worthwhile to help them safeguard their interests by delaying the introduction of this new technology. Then, one of the railroads forced him to modify his plans. During the summer of 1873, he was taken aback when the Pennsylvania Railroad expanded into pipelines through an aggressive, fast-freight subsidiary known as the Empire Transportation Company, which integrated two of the largest Oil Creek pipelines into its railroad network. Thus far, pipelines had only pumped oil short distances from the wellhead to the railroads, but this move presaged a time when pipelines would span great distances and supplant railroads altogether. Even worse from Rockefeller’s viewpoint, Empire seemed the harbinger of a pipeline monopoly under the thumb of his rival and sometime coconspirator Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rockefeller’s paranoia was fully justified. In the perpetual game of shifting alliances, Tom Scott had made his tactical compromises with Rockefeller, but he generally feared Standard Oil and sought to shatter its refining monopoly, presumably to replace it with his own.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Thomas A. Scott · Standard Oil · Pennsylvania Railroad · Oil Creek · Empire · Empire Transportation Company
EPUB paragraph 49 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
In a deft countermove, Rockefeller called upon Daniel O’Day, one of the most colorful figures in Standard history, to lay down a pipeline system. Born in County Clare, O’Day was a profane, two-fisted Irishman who tempered ruthless tactics with wit and charm. He inspired loyalty among subordinates and raw terror among adversaries. On his forehead O’Day bore a scar from an old Oil Creek brawl that was a constant reminder of his bare-knuckled approach to business. In 1874, under O’Day’s tutelage, Standard launched the American Transfer Company to construct a pipeline network. Jockeying for position, Rockefeller also acquired a one-third interest in Vandergrift and Forman, controlled by Jacob J. Vandergrift, the steamboat captain who had merged his refining interests with Standard Oil. The Vandergrift pipelines formed the core of a new venture, the United Pipe Lines, that pretended to be free of Standard Oil control. By giving small stakes in United to William H. Vanderbilt of the New York Central and Amasa Stone of the Lake Shore, Rockefeller tightened his grip over friendly railroads. This set him up to extract maximum advantage from both the railroads and pipelines so long as these two means of transport coexisted in the oil business. When the owners of the first pipeline systems established a pool to set rates and allocate quotas among putatively competing networks in the summer of 1874, Rockefeller’s pipelines gained an impressive 36 percent market share.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Daniel O’Day · Jacob J. Vandergrift · William H. Vanderbilt · Standard Oil · New York Central · Oil Creek · Amasa Stone · Lake Shore · United Pipe Lines · Clare · American Transfer Company
EPUB paragraph 50 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c09_r1.htm
Between American Transfer and United Pipe Lines, Rockefeller now sat astride nearly a third of the crude oil flowing from Oil Creek wells. Henceforth, Standard’s influence in petroleum transport would be no less pervasive and even more profitable than its unmatched position in refining. This power offered many temptations for abuse. An oilman could make a tremendous strike and suddenly feel fabulously rich, but if he couldn’t hook up the gushing black liquid to a pipeline, it was worthless. The drillers had always credited Rockefeller with a life-and-death hold over them, and as the Standard Oil pipelines encroached upon the oil fields, snaking across the slopes of Oil Creek, that power took on a frighteningly tangible form.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Oil Creek · United Pipe Lines · American Transfer
EPUB paragraph 1 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
n April 1874, as befitted the status of this new oil colossus, Standard Oil moved into a new four-story building that Rockefeller and Harkness had erected at 43 Euclid Avenue, east of the Public Square. Behind a heavy stone façade, the two Standard Oil floors were roomy and airy, drawing extra light from a skylight above the central stairway. Every morning at 9:15 sharp, Rockefeller arrived, elegantly attired, with the letter R neatly incised in his black onyx cuff links; for someone from a frugal, rural background, he was unexpectedly fastidious. “Mr. Rockefeller came in with an air of calm dignity,” recalled one clerk. “He was immaculately dressed—he looked as if he had been turned out of a bandbox. He carried an umbrella and his gloves, and wore a high silk hat.” He placed such faith in polished shoes that he provided, free of charge, a shoe-shining kit for each office unit. Tall and pale, with neatly trimmed reddish gold side-whiskers, he had a barber shave him each morning at the same hour. Extremely punctual for all appointments, he said, “A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Euclid Avenue · Harkness · Public Square
EPUB paragraph 2 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
In his imperturbable style, Rockefeller quietly bid his colleagues good morning, inquired after their health, then vanished into his modest office. Even within the Standard Oil kingdom, his employees found his movements as wraithlike as his most paranoid Titusville antagonists did. As one secretary remarked, “He is sly. I never have seen him enter the building or leave it.” “He’s never there, and yet he’s always there,” echoed an associate. Rockefeller seldom granted appointments to strangers and preferred to be approached in writing. Ever alert against industrial espionage, he never wanted people to know more than was required and warned one colleague, “I would be very careful about putting [someone] into a position where he could learn about our business and be troublesome to us.” Even close associates found him inscrutable and loath to reveal his thoughts. As one wrote, “His long silences, so that we could not locate even his objections, were sometimes baffling.”Schooled in secrecy, he trained his face to be a stony mask so that when underlings brought him telegrams, they couldn’t tell from his expression whether the news was favorable or not.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Titusville
EPUB paragraph 3 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Rockefeller equated silence with strength: Weak men had loose tongues and blabbed to reporters, while prudent businessmen kept their own counsel. Two of his most cherished maxims were “Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” and “A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.” Big Bill’s deaf-and-dumb routine curiously prefigured his son’s habit of hearing as much as possible and saying as little as possible to gain a tactical edge. When bargaining, he employed his Midwest taciturnity to effect, throwing people off stride and keeping them guessing. When angry, he tended to grow eerily quiet. He liked to tell how a blustering contractor stormed into his office and launched into a snarling tirade against him while he sat hunched over his writing desk and didn’t look up until the man had exhausted himself. Then, spinning about in his swivel chair, he looked up and coolly asked, “I didn’t catch what you were saying. Would you mind repeating that?”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Midwest
EPUB paragraph 4 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Much of the time, he was closeted in his office, where he had oil prices chalked on a blackboard. He paced this spartan office, hands laced behind his back. Periodically, he emerged from his lair, mounted a high stool, and studied ledgers, scribbling calculations on pad and paper. (During meetings, he was a restless doodler and note taker.) Frequently, he stared out the window, motionless as an idol, gazing at the sky for fifteen minutes at a stretch. He once asked rhetorically, “Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things … fail because we lack concentration—the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?”
Names:
EPUB paragraph 5 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Rockefeller adhered to a fixed schedule, moving through the day in a frictionless manner. He never wasted time on frivolities. Even his daily breaks—the midmorning snack of crackers and milk and the postprandial nap—were designed to conserve energy and help him to strike an ideal balance between his physical and mental forces. As he remarked, “It is not good to keep all the forces at tension all the time.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 6 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
In the early days, Rockefeller knew the name and face of each employee and occasionally perambulated about the office. He walked with a measured gait, steady as a metronome, always covering the same distance in the exact same time. He had the soundless movements and modulated voice of an undertaker. Gliding about with silent footfalls, he startled people by materializing at their desks and politely asking, in a mellow voice, to inspect their work. Since he was seldom seen, people often wondered about his whereabouts. “His was the least known face in the offices,” one employee recalled fifty years later, still perplexed about Rockefeller’s daily schedule. “He was reported to inhabit them three hours a day, but his appearances and disappearances were curtained, suggested private approaches, withdrawn stairways and corridors.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 7 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
A photograph of John D. Rockefeller that clearly shows his keen determination as a young businessman. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Rockefeller Archive Center
EPUB paragraph 8 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
As a former bookkeeper, Rockefeller devoted special attention to ledgers. One accountant recalled him stopping by his desk and saying courteously, “Permit me,” then flipping quickly through his books. “Very well kept,” he said, “very, indeed.” Then his eye leaped to a tiny error. “A little error here; will you correct it?” The accountant was flabbergasted by the speed with which Rockefeller had scanned so many dense columns of figures. “And I will take my oath,” he reported, “that it was the only error in the book!”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 9 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Everybody noted the man’s preternatural calm. Though he had honed his will into a perfect instrument, he was even-tempered by nature. As he remarked, “You could do or say the most outrageous thing at this moment and I would not show the least sign of excitement.” He was always proud of the fact that he had an abnormally low pulse of fifty-two. Many employees said he never lost his temper, raised his voice, uttered a profane or slang word, or acted discourteously. He defied many stereotypes of the overbearing tycoon and generally received excellent reviews from employees who regarded him as fair and benevolent, free of petty temper and dictatorial airs. This was nicely illustrated by an anecdote. As a fitness buff, Rockefeller placed in the accounting department a wood-and-rubber contrivance that he pushed and pulled for exercise. When he showed up one morning for exercise, a junior accountant didn’t recognize him, called the gadget a damned nuisance, and demanded that it be carted off. “All right,” said Rockefeller and had the contraption removed. Somewhat later, to his horror, the young man realized that he had berated the chief executive, yet he never endured one word of reprimand. Rockefeller even hesitated to punish serious offenses and instead of prosecuting the occasional embezzler simply dismissed him.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 10 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Throughout his life, Rockefeller was wounded deeply by accusations that he was a cold, malignant personality. In truth, like many retiring personalities, he provoked varied reactions in people. One cooper who sold him barrels in the early days told Ida Tarbell that “Rockefeller was never a great talker; that he was not liked by his fellows; that everybody was afraid of him; and that he was solitary.” But Rockefeller never turned the ferocity that he trained against rivals against his own employees and people who worked for him usually found him a model of propriety and paternalistic concern. As one refinery worker remembered him, “He always had a nod and a kind word for everybody. He never forgot anyone. We had some trying times in the business in those early years, but I’ve never seen Mr. Rockefeller when he was not friendly and kind and unruffled. Nothing excited him.” Rockefeller’s sister Mary Ann dismissed as an absurd canard the idea that he was a curmudgeon. “John could always get along so easily with anyone,” she declared. Indeed, had he not possessed some charm, or at least cordiality, he could never have accomplished so much in the business world.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Mary Ann Rockefeller Rudd · Ida M. Tarbell · John
EPUB paragraph 11 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
So highly did Rockefeller value personnel that during the first years of Standard Oil he personally attended to routine hiring matters. (After conquering the other refining centers, the payroll ballooned to 3,000 people, and this became impossible.) Taking for granted the growth of his empire, he hired talented people as found, not as needed.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 12 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Far more than a technocrat, Rockefeller was an inspirational leader who exerted a magnetic power over workers and especially prized executives with social skills. “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee,” he once said, “and I pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 13 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Employees were invited to send complaints or suggestions directly to him, and he always took an interest in their affairs. His correspondence is replete with inquiries about sick or retired employees. Reasonably generous in wages, salaries, and pensions, he paid somewhat above the industry average. Forty years later, a former subordinate wrote of the firm, with some exaggeration, “It has never had a strike or a dissatisfied workman; and today no business organization cares for its veterans in their old age as does the Standard Oil Company.” It is important to point out that oil refining was a capital-intensive industry without the seething discontents that afflicted the coal mines or steel mills. Even in lean years, Standard Oil was flush with profits, permitting it the luxury of good intentions. One biographer has gone so far as to say of Rockefeller, “He was the best employer of his time, instituting hospitalization and retirement pensions.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
He was a fine boss if workers abided by his rules, but if they did something foolish, like show interest in a union, they promptly forfeited his sympathy. Rockefeller never acknowledged the legitimacy of organized labor, nor did he tolerate union organizers on the premises. He also reserved the right to pass judgment on the private lives of employees. Imposing his own prudish standards on his staff, he penalized any executive implicated in an adulterous affair and frowned on divorce. Sabbath observance was de rigueur, and if colleagues wrote to him when they should have been in church, they tended not to put the real dates on their letters.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 15 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
The most remarkable instance of Rockefeller participating in an associate’s moral reformation occurred with John D. Archbold, the jovial young protégé whose pranks and infectious laughter so delighted Rockefeller. When Rockefeller initially entreated him to stop drinking, Archbold pretended to abide by the temperance pledge while keeping cloves in his vest pocket to mask telltale smells. By 1881, his drinking binges were too palpable and self-destructive to conceal, and he wrote a contrite letter to Rockefeller, renewing his pledge: “My Dear Mr. Rockefeller—Any words from me seem like a mockery. I give you the promise appreciating its solemnity and importance as I never did before. I will write you the letter every Sunday as long as our relation gives me the privilege, or until you ask me to stop.” Thereafter, every Sunday for eight months, Archbold sent Rockefeller a letter confirming his sobriety that week, writing for instance, “Please let this bear witness to the completion of the 5th period.”Archbold made a sincere effort, but he had at least one violent relapse four years later and felt mortified at having let his mentor down. “I have never before known him to be so thoroughly cast down and in such abject mental misery,” one Standard Oil executive told Rockefeller. “I do not think any one can fully realize the fight he must make against this unfortunate habit, nor the really heartbroken condition he is in after it has come over him.” Aware of Rockefeller’s dismay, other executives tried to make it seem that Archbold had unwittingly swallowed some alcoholic medicine.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 16 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
His employees tended to revere Rockefeller and vied to please him. As one said, “I have never heard of his equal in getting together a lot of the very best men in one team and inspiring each man to do his best for the enterprise.… He was so big, so broad, so patient; I don’t believe a man like him comes to this world oftener than once in five or six hundred years.” Rockefeller worked by subtle hints, doling out praise sparingly to employees and nudging them along. At first, he tested them exhaustively, yet once he trusted them, he bestowed enormous power upon them and didn’t intrude unless something radically misfired. “Often the best way to develop workers—when you are sure they have character and think they have ability—is to take them to a deep place, throw them in and make them sink or swim,” he observed, recalling a method that Big Bill had used with his sons on Owasco Lake. “They will not fail.” To orchestrate such a gigantic operation, he had to delegate authority, and part of the Standard Oil gospel was to train your subordinate to do your job. As Rockefeller instructed a recruit, “Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it.… As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.” True to this policy, Rockefeller tried to extricate himself from the intricate web of administrative details and dedicate more of his time to broad policy decisions.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Standard Oil · Owasco Lake
EPUB paragraph 17 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Most of all, Rockefeller inspired subordinates with his fanatic perfectionism. He never did anything haphazardly and wrote hundreds of thousands of business letters that were models of concision and balanced phrasing, the products of painstaking revision. Dictating letters to his secretary, he went through five or six drafts until he had eliminated every superfluous word and produced precisely the impression desired before affixing his signature with the best penmanship at his command. As one top aide recalled: “I have seen him sign his name to hundreds of papers at a sitting. He did each signature carefully as if this particular one was to be the only one by which he was to be remembered for all time. Each signature became in his mind a work of art.” This passion for excellence originated with Rockefeller and radiated throughout the organization. The ethos of Standard Oil’s operations around the world was John D. Rockefeller’s personality writ large.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 18 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
While Rockefeller was responsible for policy questions and formulated the theoretical underpinnings of the trust, he didn’t introduce many technical innovations associated with Standard Oil. Rather, he was a matchless executive, an unerring monitor of the stream of proposals channeled to him daily. He had an extraordinary reactive ability, a first-rate power of judgment when presented with options. Perhaps for this reason, he resembles modern chief executives more than he does his domineering industrial contemporaries.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 19 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Given the primitive communications and record keeping of the late nineteenth century, Rockefeller couldn’t have managed his decentralized empire without masterfully coordinating a vast array of data. The ledger book enabled him to play the puppeteer and manipulate his empire by invisible strings. By mastering numbers, he reduced the most varied systems to a common standard, and he accepted their harsh verdicts without hesitation. “I charted my course by figures, nothing but figures,” he once said. Mark Hanna disparaged Rockefeller as “a kind of economic super-clerk, the personification of ledger-keeping.” This comment not only overlooks the farsighted nature of Rockefeller’s leadership but discounts the importance of ledger keeping in modern corporations. Numbers gave Rockefeller an objective yardstick to compare his far-flung operations, enabling him to cut through the false claims of subordinates. It was the way that he extended rationality from the top of his organization down to the lowest rung: Every cost in the Standard Oil universe was computed to several decimal places.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Mark Hanna · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 20 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c10_r1.htm
Having always shown an aptitude for math, Rockefeller valued this quality in underlings. When he hired his young secretary, George D. Rogers, Rockefeller drew forth a watch to see how fast Rogers could total up a sheet of figures. At the end, Rockefeller said, “Well, you have completed it in the required time,” and then promptly hired the young man, who served him ably for many years. Rogers left some interesting recollections of his boss’s attention to detail and punctilious regard for money. When leaving the office one day, Rockefeller fished in his pockets and realized that he had forgotten his change purse. When he asked to borrow a nickel from Rogers, his assistant volunteered to make a gift of it, but Rockefeller protested. “No, Rogers,” he said, “don’t forget this transaction. This is a whole year’s interest on a dollar.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · George D. Rogers · Rogers
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