EPUB paragraph 74 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Another perceptive author developed intense affection for Rogers. In 1896, the sixteen-year-old Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, met him and Twain at a gathering to raise money for her future education. Even before the meeting, Twain laid the groundwork, telling Mrs. Rogers, “It won’t do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her studies because of poverty.” Rogers paid for much of Helen Keller’s education at Radcliffe College, which she gratefully acknowledged. “That I haven’t missed my small part of usefulness in the world, I owe to Mr. Clemens and Mr. Rogers,” she wrote. After graduating cum laude, Helen stayed in touch with Rogers and poignantly dedicated her book The World I Live In to “My Dear Friend of Many Years.” Before he died, Rogers established an annuity that gave her lifelong security. Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, later revealed that “Mr. Rockefeller [Junior] and his father have been interested in Helen most of her life.” Unlike the help from Rogers, the Rockefeller money was given anonymously.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Mark Twain · United States · Susy Clemens · Helen Keller · Anne Sullivan · The World I Live In · Rogers · Helen · Radcliffe College
EPUB paragraph 75 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
In the 1890s, Rockefeller stumbled, almost by accident, into owning most of the iron ore on the Mesabi Range, the last business project that he executed on a monumental scale.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Mesabi Range
EPUB paragraph 76 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
This legendary investment began as another blunder bequeathed by his bumbling former advisers, Colby and Hoyt. When Gates first examined the iron-ore properties the two had bought in Cuba, Michigan, and Wisconsin, he thought they were worthless holes. Colby and Hoyt had, however, unearthed one promising entity: the Minnesota Iron Company. Gates was impressed on a westward journey by the potential of the Mesabi Range, which contained a broad band of iron ore laid across a 120-mile strip in northern Minnesota. Though it held out hope of being the richest such vein ever found in North America, its commercial utility had not been demonstrated. Unlike hard rock dug from underground mines and fed into blast furnaces, the Mesabi ore was fine, powdery stuff that either clogged furnaces or blew out their chimneys, scattering dust across the countryside. On the other hand, it lay close to the surface and in such abundance that it could be scooped out by steam shovels at a fraction of the expense of underground mines.
Names: Frederick T. Gates · Colgate Hoyt · North America · Mesabi Range · Minnesota · Michigan · Wisconsin · Colby · Fed · Cuba · Minnesota Iron Company
EPUB paragraph 77 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Among the pioneers in Mesabi ore were the backwoods Merritt family. These so-called seven men of iron—four brothers and three nephews—borrowed recklessly, snapped up tremendous tracts of land, then launched construction of a railroad to carry the ore to Lake Superior. When the 1893 panic savaged iron prices, however, they faced a severe cash squeeze. The atmosphere in Duluth grew incendiary as workers with drawn pistols forced their way into the office of the Merritts’ railroad to demand payment of overdue wages.
Names: Merritt family · Lake Superior · Mesabi Range · Duluth
EPUB paragraph 78 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
In rescuing the Merritts, Rockefeller reenacted his old pattern of swooping down, fortified with cash, on distressed properties and seizing a commanding position. As with the malodorous Lima oil, he wagered that the Mesabi ore would someday be of value—even as Andrew Carnegie and his experts gleefully scoffed at this preposterous idea. As Carnegie’s right-hand man, Charles Schwab, said of these naysayers, “They couldn’t understand how [Rockefeller], without knowledge of the iron business, could invest money in ores that were useless—at least for a long time to come.” To which Rockefeller retorted tersely, “It was a surprise to me that the great iron and steel manufacturers did not place what seemed to be an adequate value on these mines.” He believed that, like the early days in oil, the steel industry was on the verge of overproduction and would soon fall prey to suicidal competition unless stabilized by strong owners. An expert in the strategic importance of transportation, he avidly eyed the extensive rail and dock facilities controlled by the Merritts.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · Merritt family · Lima · Mesabi Range · Charles Schwab
EPUB paragraph 79 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
When Rockefeller advanced money to the Merritts in the panic summer of 1893, he was one of the few people who could have saved them. Naively, he expected to disburse a modest $100,000, and he never imagined that the Mesabi project would tax his colossal resources and consume eight years of his time. In exchange for his investment, Rockefeller negotiated a deal with the Merritts to set up a holding company, the Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines, which would combine the Merritts’ rail and mining assets and the rather mediocre mining properties cobbled together by Colby and Hoyt. The idea was that the Merritts would run the company and employ Rockefeller’s cash infusion to finish the stalled railroad. At first, Rockefeller owned only a fifth of the stock, but he exercised final control through his first mortgage bonds, which enjoyed a lien on the entire company in the event of a default.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Colgate Hoyt · Merritt family · Mesabi Range · Colby · Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines
EPUB paragraph 80 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Given their intertwined fates, it seems odd that Rockefeller met the head of the Minnesota family, Leonidas Merritt, on only a single occasion and then briefly in June 1893. Gates tried to shield Rockefeller from such contacts, but Merritt warmly insisted that he wished to shake his savior’s hand. When they met at 26 Broadway, the meeting lasted five minutes, and Rockefeller was the pattern of affability. He touted the virtues of the Mesabi venture then turned to the Minnesota weather. After a few more pleasantries, he politely excused himself and never saw any of the Merritts again. Afterward, Gates made it clear that his boss would now withdraw behind his customary screen. “In talking to me,” he told Leonidas Merritt, “you are talking to Mr. Rockefeller.” Even by his own extremely reclusive standards, Rockefeller was remarkably aloof during his eight-year fling in the iron business. Though he became chief landlord of the Mesabi Range, he set foot on its slopes only once and that was long after he had disposed of his properties.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Leonidas Merritt · Frederick T. Gates · Merritt family · 26 Broadway · Mesabi Range · Minnesota · Merritt
EPUB paragraph 81 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
In the autumn, Rockefeller’s goodwill toward the Merritts ebbed. As their notes matured, they frantically pressed Gates for cash, and Rockefeller reluctantly obliged them with loans. Gates matured as a businessman during this crisis, and Rockefeller bestowed exceptional authority on him. When Gates visited Duluth in September, Rockefeller confided to Cettie, “[Gates] reports progress daily, and has one hundred thousand dollars in his pocket to use at his discretion.” By October, the initial loan had burgeoned to nearly $2 million, with no guarantee that the Mesabi ore would ever demonstrate commercial value. It all seemed a gamble gone hideously wrong. Pacing the Forest Hill porches, Rockefeller later remembered the harrowing, sometimes daily emergencies forced upon him by the uncouth Merritts, who kept their securities stuffed in their pockets: “I had to loan my personal securities to raise money, and finally we were compelled to supply a great deal of actual cash, and to get it we were obliged to go into the then greatly upset money market and buy currency at a high premium and ship west by express to pay the laborers and the railroad and to keep them alive.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Frederick T. Gates · Merritt family · Forest Hill · Mesabi Range · Duluth
EPUB paragraph 82 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
In early 1894, still burdened by debt, the Merritts were forced to offer Rockefeller ninety thousand shares of Consolidated stock at ten dollars a share. As with Standard Oil, Rockefeller kept adding to his Consolidated holdings, the ten-dollar price being on a par with his other purchases at the time; the Merritts, though, vociferously claimed they had been swindled. A year later, they had to forfeit to Rockefeller an option on another 55,000 shares of Consolidated stock, surrendering to him complete control of the company. With full-throated passion, Gates urged Rockefeller to expand his investment. “It is, in my opinion, the opportunity of a lifetime, one of those opportunities, the seizing or failing to seize, which marks the difference between success and failure in life.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · Standard Oil · Merritt family · Consolidated
EPUB paragraph 83 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
During the next few years, as steelmakers found ways to adapt their furnaces to the bargain-priced Mesabi ore, Consolidated stock rose to stratospheric heights. In a paroxysm of frustrated rage, the Merritts demonized the man they had earlier heralded as their savior. In a rancorous suit filed against Rockefeller in federal circuit court in Duluth, they portrayed themselves as innocent lumberjacks fleeced by the eastern mogul. Fearing a biased local jury, Rockefeller retained a Minnesota newspaperman to counteract local hostility toward him and even stepped up his Baptist-missionary donations in the state. As Rockefeller feared, the Duluth jury reached a verdict in favor of the Merritts, though it was overturned on appeal. The whole feud was finally settled out of court: Rockefeller paid $525,000 to the Merritts, who publicly retracted their charges. Of this settlement, Rockefeller commented sarcastically, “We settled, paid money, rather than submit to larger robbery by the twelve just and good men, as we could not get to a higher court.” Stung by the controversy, Gates was still defending his behavior almost twenty years later in a short polemical pamphlet, The Truth About Mr. Rockefeller and the Merritts, which he mailed out gratis to ten thousand people.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · Merritt family · Mesabi Range · Minnesota · Consolidated · Duluth
EPUB paragraph 84 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
While Rockefeller and Gates were irked by the Merritts’ ingratitude, they were not entirely blameless. The Merritts alleged that Rockefeller had inflated the value of the mining properties he contributed to Consolidated, a charge that seems substantiated by Gates’s own papers. In early 1893, he had written two letters to Frank Rockefeller, expressing shock at the high prices Colby and Hoyt had paid for the mines. He summed up their value as follows: “Whatever induced Colby Hoyt & Co. to form syndicates to pay such enormous figures for these worthless properties, I cannot understand. I mean to keep pegging along at it from time to time until the whole thing comes out.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frank Rockefeller · Frederick T. Gates · Colgate Hoyt · Merritt family · Consolidated · Colby · Colby Hoyt & Co.
EPUB paragraph 85 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Having acquired several million tons of iron ore and a railroad to cart it off, Rockefeller was now stymied by a group of Lake Superior shippers who would lease him vessels only at extortionate rates. To end the deadlock, Rockefeller again recruited a talented man from the enemy ranks, Samuel Mather of Cleveland, a son-in-law of Amasa Stone. On one of those historic occasions when the curtain parted fleetingly to reveal the wizard working the levers, Rockefeller held a cordial, ten-minute, predinner chat with Mather at West Fifty-fourth Street. The visitor left with a three-million-dollar order to build twelve ore-carrying ships, steel monsters that would surpass in size anything ever floated on the Great Lakes. After shaking hands with Rockefeller, Mather never saw him again.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Cleveland · Lake Superior · Samuel Mather · Amasa Stone · Great Lakes · Mather · West Fifty-fourth Street
EPUB paragraph 86 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Given the large number of ships that he had to build, Mather figured that the shipyards would gang up and gouge him, so he pretended that he needed only one or two. After the contractors submitted their bids, they were stunned to discover that they all had contracts. The operation of this fleet required another engineering feat: the creation of specially constructed docks on Lake Superior with long railroad trestles extending hundreds of feet into the water. As the lake’s shipping cartel watched in consternation, the Rockefeller operation began to load ore at the stupefying rate of ten thousand tons every six hours. Where the schooners had charged $4.20 a ton, Rockefeller’s operators carried their mineral cargo at a cost of 80 cents a ton.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Lake Superior · Mather
EPUB paragraph 87 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
When Mather declined to manage the fleet, Rockefeller asked Gates to suggest an experienced firm to pilot the ships. “No,” said Gates, increasingly showing flashes of a quirky independence, “I do not know of any firm to suggest at the moment, but why not run them ourselves?” Taken aback, Rockefeller replied, “You don’t know anything about ships, do you?” Gates confessed not but nominated his uncle LaMont Montgomery Bowers as a candidate. “He lives up the state, and never was on a ship in his life. He probably wouldn’t know the bow from the stern, or a sea-anchor from an umbrella, but he has good sense, he is honest, enterprising, keen, and thrifty.” Having often hired people based on general ability, not specific skills—Gates himself being a prime example—Rockefeller acceded to the choice.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · LaMont Montgomery Bowers · Mather
EPUB paragraph 88 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Bald and well-tailored, Bowers had an extensive business résumé, ranging from selling soap to running a real-estate agency in Omaha to selling groceries in upstate New York. Much to Rockefeller’s delight, he not only ably commanded but considerably expanded the fleet. Mostly under the aegis of the Cleveland-based Bessemer Steamship Company, Rockefeller acquired fifty-six steel vessels, the largest fleet on the Great Lakes and the world’s biggest assemblage of ore carriers. His position in lake shipping was so unassailable that he could dictate rates on Lake Superior, much as they had been dictated to him a few years earlier—a situation that galvanized Andrew Carnegie into organizing the competing Pittsburgh Steamship Company.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · LaMont Montgomery Bowers · Cleveland · New York State · Lake Superior · Great Lakes · Omaha · Bessemer Steamship Company · Pittsburgh Steamship Company
EPUB paragraph 89 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Tutored by Gates in the eccentric ways of Mr. Rockefeller, Bowers was told that he must not, under any circumstances, communicate with the boss. Rockefeller never saw the vast majority of ships in his armada. One day, however, Rockefeller dropped by unexpectedly to consult him on a shipping matter, prompting a humorous exchange. “You are making me break the orders I have from your own office, Mr. Rockefeller,” Bowers reminded him. “Oh, Mr. Bowers, I am getting along in years,” Rockefeller replied in his droll, midwestern manner. “I think I may really be allowed a little liberty by my office!” Bowers’s success in managing the fleet was perhaps unfortunate, for it led directly to his later assignment to a Rockefeller-controlled mining venture in the Rocky Mountains called Colorado Fuel and Iron, where he would bring lasting disgrace to the Rockefeller name.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · LaMont Montgomery Bowers · Colorado Fuel and Iron · Rocky Mountains
EPUB paragraph 90 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Rockefeller’s success on the Mesabi Range precipitated a clash between America’s two wealthiest individuals, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. In their approach to business, the two men had often mirrored each other, stressing attention to detail, ruthlessly slashing costs, and keeping dividends low. Both had struggled with their own unacknowledged avarice, pioneered in philanthropy, and prided themselves on being friends of the working man. Yet they never seemed to get along. Each Christmas, they perfunctorily exchanged gifts, Rockefeller giving Carnegie a paper vest, while Carnegie sent the teetotaler excellent whiskey. In letters to his colleagues, Carnegie often struck a jeering tone toward Rockefeller, refusing to concede his business acumen, and he suffered under the misapprehension that Rockefeller had conspired with Standard Oil colleagues in the Mesabi venture. Upon first hearing of his pact with the Merritts, Carnegie lectured his steel-company board, “Remember Rockafellows [sic] & Porter will own the [railroad] and that’s like owning the pipe lines—Producers will not have much of a show.… I don’t think Standard people will succeed in making ore a monopoly like oil, they have failed in every new venture and Rockefeller’s reputation now is one of the poorest investors in the world.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · Standard Oil · Merritt family · United States · Mesabi Range · Porter
EPUB paragraph 91 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Much too patronizing toward Rockefeller, Carnegie had seriously misjudged developments in the ore business. Having moved decisively to control coke and coal supplies, he assumed that ore would always remain cheap and plentiful and flatly told colleagues that their “brilliant and talented young partners” should stay clear of that business. When a colorful Pittsburgh promoter, Henry Oliver, tried to interest Carnegie in a joint venture with the Merritts, he responded with a tongue-lashing: “If there is any department of business which offers no inducement, it is ore.” Luckily, Carnegie’s subordinates overruled him and took a stake in the Mesabi ore. As a result, Carnegie Steel was not entirely excluded from the rush to secure properties in northern Minnesota.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · Merritt family · Pittsburgh · Mesabi Range · Henry Oliver · Minnesota · Carnegie Steel
EPUB paragraph 92 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Having failed to move aggressively, Carnegie looked on impotently as Rockefeller applied to iron ore lessons he had learned in oil, such as controlling an industry through transportation and demoralizing competitors with prices too low for them to match. Two industry trends finally compelled Carnegie to broker a deal with Rockefeller. As mergers consolidated the steel industry, it became essential to pin down sure sources of supply. And as new furnaces were equipped to use the dirt-cheap Mesabi ore, it developed into the industry standard. By 1896, the press buzzed with speculation that Rockefeller would build a huge steel mill in Cleveland or south Chicago, forge a steel trust on the Standard Oil model, and go head-to-head with Andrew Carnegie. Meanwhile, Rockefeller poured another nineteen million dollars into the Mesabi Range to buttress his railroad and shipping operations.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Chicago · Mesabi Range
EPUB paragraph 93 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
It vexed Carnegie that Rockefeller, an oilman, had possessed such superior foresight in the iron-ore business. In his private correspondence, he vented his frustration in petty digs, referring to him derisively as Rockafellow and later on as Wreckafellow. In December 1896, a humbled Carnegie at last consented to a sweeping deal. He promised to consume the entire output of Rockefeller’s chief mines (a minimum of 600,000 tons of ore) at the rock-bottom royalty rate of twenty-five cents a ton. In exchange for this steep discount, however, Carnegie agreed to ship the entire amount plus another 600,000 tons from his own mines over Rockefeller’s railroads and on his vessels. It was the same kind of back-scratching arrangement that Rockefeller had negotiated with the railroads to monopolize the oil industry. To complete their truce, Carnegie pledged to refrain from buying new Mesabi fields or transporting iron ore, while Rockefeller renounced any ambition to construct a steel mill. A generation later, Carnegie still boasted of this deal before a Senate committee. “Don’t you know, it does my heart good to think I got ahead of John D. Rockefeller on a bargain.” In fact, the bargain had been Carnegie’s belated attempt to redress his own error.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Andrew Carnegie · Mesabi Range · Wreckafellow
EPUB paragraph 94 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Small competitors found it impossible to survive the union of the largest producer and largest consumer of iron ore, and Carnegie and Rockefeller profited smartly. As with oil, ore prices skidded lower, bankrupting marginal producers and bolstering the Rockefeller-Carnegie alliance. As the decade closed, ferocious competition broke out for the remaining Mesabi properties. The price of Lake Superior Consolidated stock that Rockefeller had bought for $10 in 1894 levitated to $60 in 1899, $70 in 1900, then a staggering $100 in 1901.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Andrew Carnegie · Mesabi Range · Lake Superior Consolidated
EPUB paragraph 95 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
America now stood on the threshold of an era of economic consolidation that saw trusts spread to many industries. What Rockefeller had accomplished in oil a generation earlier was now being imitated in steel, copper, rubber, tobacco, leather, and other products—much to the alarm of many voters. The ideological lines were drawn sharply in the 1896 presidential election. The Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, an eloquent orator adored by socialists, populists, and silverites, vied with former Ohio governor William McKinley, a staunch advocate of tariffs, trusts, and hard currency. Apprehensive about a Bryan presidency, businessmen transformed the McKinley campaign into a crusade against trustbusting infidels. Standard Oil supplied $250,000 to McKinley’s coffers—equal to half of the total Democratic contributions—and Rockefeller sent another $2,500 to campaign manager Mark Hanna. For a man normally scornful of politicians, Rockefeller displayed unusual passion for McKinley, asserting, “I can see nothing else for us to do, to serve the Country and our honor.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Mark Hanna · William McKinley · Standard Oil · United States · William Jennings Bryan · Ohio
EPUB paragraph 96 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
The business community reacted to the McKinley victory as if America had been blessedly spared a revolution, a mood summed up in Hanna’s congratulatory telegram to McKinley: “God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the world.” During the next few years, a new faith arose in business circles about the inevitability and unrivaled efficiency of monopolies. Mark Hanna, now tagged “Dollar Mark” by the press, proclaimed loudly that the Sherman Antitrust Act would never be allowed to thwart this trend in a Republican administration.
Names: Mark Hanna · William McKinley · United States · Sherman · Antitrust · Mark
EPUB paragraph 97 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Stimulated by the Spanish-American War, the Klondike gold strike, and McKinley’s reassuring presence, the American economy surged ahead in the late 1890s, propelling the United States past all other nations in industrial capacity. In a country that still liked to picture itself as composed of small businesses, huge companies now blanketed markets from coast to coast. As satirist Finley Peter Dunne observed in 1897, “I have seen America spread out from th’ Atlantic to th’ Pacific, with a branch office iv th’ Standard Ile Comp’ny in ivry hamlet.” Between 1898 and 1902, 198 trusts or giant new corporations were created in coal, sugar, and other industries, prompting a growing backlash. At a Chicago antitrust conference in 1898, William Jennings Bryan drew roars from the faithful when he shouted, “One of the great purposes of government is to put rings in the noses of hogs!” The McKinley administration, true to its promises, stood guard over the new corporate giants.
Names: William McKinley · Standard Oil · Chicago · United States · William Jennings Bryan · Finley Peter Dunne · Atlantic · Klondike · Pacific
EPUB paragraph 98 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
The merger wave conferred a new centrality on Wall Street investment houses, for the capital needs of the new trusts dwarfed the resources of small-town banks and private individuals. Only the prestigious Wall Street firms such as J. P. Morgan and Company or Kuhn, Loeb could tap the foreign and domestic capital needed to execute these transactions. Switching their focus from railroad bonds to industrial securities, they forged the new trusts, issued their stock, tucked away shares for themselves, and handpicked their executives. However much reformers deplored the trusts, they excited many investors, who absorbed wave after wave of new issues sponsored by Wall Street. While many Americans quaked before these giant new concerns, many others were trying to figure out how to profit from them.
Names: J. P. Morgan · Kuhn, Loeb · Wall Street
EPUB paragraph 99 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
When J. P. Morgan decided to create a steel trust in late 1900, he knew he would have to tangle with two men who were confirmed cynics about Wall Street: Carnegie, master of the steel mills, and Rockefeller, king of the iron ore. Morgan was worried that Carnegie would diversify into finished steel products and threaten his recently launched Federal Steel Company, while Carnegie feared a reverse maneuver by Morgan. Meanwhile, Carnegie and Morgan were both alarmed by reports that Rockefeller might diversify into steel mills. To avert overbuilding and internecine price wars, Morgan decided to spearhead a new steel consolidation.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · J. P. Morgan · Andrew Carnegie · Wall Street · Federal Steel Company
EPUB paragraph 100 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Morgan was not thrilled about catering to Rockefeller, who had flouted Wall Street by financing his trust from retained earnings and holding cash reserves equal to those of many banks. He was also well aware of William Rockefeller’s intimacy with James Stillman of National City Bank. When Morgan contemplated a merger with the London house of Barings in 1904, his counterpart, Lord Revelstoke, reported afterward to a partner that Morgan “inveighed bitterly against the growing power of the Jews and of the Rockefeller crowd, and said more than once that our firm and his were the only two composed of white men in New York.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Rockefeller · James Stillman · J. P. Morgan · National City Bank · New York · London · Lord Revelstoke · Wall Street · Barings
EPUB paragraph 101 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
In many respects, Rockefeller and Morgan were antithetical types, offering a vivid contrast between the ascetic and the sybarite, the Roundhead and the Cavalier. As the chieftain of the Anglo-American financial establishment, the wellborn Morgan, expensively educated in America and Europe, was a consummate insider in the business world. For more than forty years, he had been the chief conduit for British capital that had financed American railroads and industry. Blustery and theatrical, Morgan was impetuous and hot-blooded, cursed with a short attention span. At his headquarters at 23 Wall Street, he often seemed harried, ruling by brilliant snap judgments. Fond of luxury, Morgan inhabited the world of the ultrarich, with their gargantuan cigars, fine port, and oversized steam yachts.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · J. P. Morgan · United States · Europe · Wall Street
EPUB paragraph 102 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
For Rockefeller, Morgan embodied all the sins of pride, luxury, and arrogance. When they first met at William Rockefeller’s Hudson River mansion, they took an instant dislike to each other. “We had a few pleasant words,” noted Rockefeller. “But I could see that Mr. Morgan was very much—well, like Mr. Morgan; very haughty, very inclined to look down on other men. I looked at him. For my part, I have never been able to see why any man should have such a high and mighty feeling about himself.” For Morgan, Rockefeller was too dry and prudish, devoid of manly charms and vices. And how could he not grumble at the effrontery of someone who had created a cartel without him?
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Rockefeller · J. P. Morgan · Hudson River
EPUB paragraph 103 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
Nevertheless, both men detested competition as a destructive force, a dangerously antiquated notion. For years, Morgan had arbitrated disputes among railroad presidents, helping them to carve up territories, and his formation of industrial trusts constituted a logical progression in his career. When Judge Elbert H. Gary informed Morgan in early 1901 that Rockefeller’s Mesabi interests had to form part of any steel cartel, Morgan balked. “We have got all we can attend to,” he told Gary. When Gary persisted, Morgan glumly agreed that they had to incorporate Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines and Bessemer Steamship into U.S. Steel.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · J. P. Morgan · U.S. Steel · Mesabi Range · Elbert H. Gary · Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines · Bessemer Steamship
EPUB paragraph 104 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
“How are we going to get them?” he asked.
Names:
EPUB paragraph 105 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c20_r1.htm
“You are going to talk to Mr. Rockefeller,” said Gary.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elbert H. Gary
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.