EPUB paragraph 74 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Like Teddy Roosevelt, Tarbell did not condemn Standard Oil for its size but only for its abuses and did not argue for the automatic dismantling of all trusts; she pleaded only for the preservation of free competition in the marketplace. While she was by no means evenhanded, she was quick to acknowledge the genuine achievements of Rockefeller and his cohorts and even devoted one chapter to “The Legitimate Greatness of the Standard Oil Company.” “There was not a lazy bone in the organization, not an incompetent hand, nor a stupid head,” she wrote. It was the very fact that they could have succeeded without resorting to unethical acts that so exasperated her. As she said, “They had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Theodore Roosevelt · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 75 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
If Tarbell gave an oversimplified account of Standard Oil’s rise, her indictment was perhaps the more forceful for it. In the trust’s collusion with the railroads, the intricate system of rebates and drawbacks, she found her smoking gun, the irrefutable proof that Rockefeller’s empire was built by devious means. She was at pains to refute Rockefeller’s defense that everybody did it. “Everybody did not do it,” she protested indignantly. “In the nature of the offense everybody could not do it. The strong wrested from the railroads the privilege of preying upon the weak, and the railroads never dared give the privilege save under the promise of secrecy.” To the contention that rebates were still legal, Tarbell countered with the questionable theory that they violated the common law. She argued that Rockefeller had succeeded by imbuing subordinates with a ferocious desire to win at all costs, even if that meant trampling upon others. “Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair.” Tarbell rightly surmised that Standard Oil received secret kickbacks from the railroads on a more elaborate scale than its rivals did. This is abundantly borne out by Rockefeller’s private papers, which show that the practice was even more pervasive than Tarbell realized.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 76 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Beginning with the Cleveland Massacre of 1872, Tarbell showed that Rockefeller had taken over rival refineries in an orchestrated atmosphere of intimidation. She exposed the deceit of an organization that operated through a maze of secret subsidiaries in which the Standard Oil connection was kept secret from all but the highest-ranking employees. She sketched out many abuses of power by the Standard Oil pipelines, which used their monopoly position to keep refractory producers in line while favoring Standard’s own refineries. And she chronicled the terror tactics by which the trust’s marketing subsidiaries got retailers to stock their product exclusively. Like Lloyd, she also decried the trust’s threat to democracy and the subornation of state legislators, although she never guessed the depths of corruption revealed by Rockefeller’s papers.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Henry Demarest Lloyd · Standard Oil · Cleveland
EPUB paragraph 77 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Nevertheless, as Allan Nevins and other defenders of Rockefeller pointed out, Tarbell committed numerous errors, and her work must be cited with caution. To begin with, the SIC was initiated by the railroads, not Rockefeller, who doubted the plan’s efficacy. And for all its notoriety, the SIC did not cause the oil crisis of the early 1870s but was itself a response to the glut that forced almost everybody to operate at a loss. It is also true that, swayed by childhood memories, Tarbell ennobled the Oil Creek drillers, portraying them as exemplars of a superior morality. As she wrote: “They believed in independent effort—every man for himself and fair play for all. They wanted competition, loved open fight.” To support this statement, she had to overlook the baldly anticompetitive agreements proposed by the producers themselves. Far from being free-marketeers, they repeatedly tried to form their own cartel to restrict output and boost prices. And, as Rockefeller pointed out, they happily took rebates whenever they could. The world of the early oil industry was not, as Tarbell implied, a morality play of the evil Standard Oil versus the brave, noble independents of western Pennsylvania, but a harsh dog-eat-dog world.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Allan Nevins · Standard Oil · South Improvement Company · Oil Creek · Pennsylvania
EPUB paragraph 78 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Though billed as a history of Standard Oil, the Tarbell series presented Rockefeller as the protagonist and center of attention. Tarbell made Standard Oil and Rockefeller interchangeable, even when covering the period after Rockefeller retired. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether Rockefeller is a real person or a personification of the trust. Significantly, Tarbell chose for her epigraph the famous line from Emerson’s essay on self-reliance, “An Institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” When Henry Rogers questioned this approach, Tarbell noted the dramatic effect of focusing on one individual, writing in her notes after the meeting, “Illustrate it by Napoleon work and the effort to keep the attention centered on Napoleon, never mentioning anybody if I could help it.” This great-man approach to history gave a human face to the gigantic, amorphous entity known as Standard Oil but also turned the full force of public fury on Rockefeller. It did not acknowledge the bureaucratic reality of Standard Oil, with its labyrinthine committee system, and stigmatized Rockefeller to the exclusion of his associates. So Flagler came off relatively unscathed, even though he had negotiated the secret freight contracts that bulk so large in the McClure’s exposé.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry M. Flagler · Henry H. Rogers · Ida M. Tarbell · S. S. McClure · Standard Oil · Napoleon · Emerson
EPUB paragraph 79 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
However pathbreaking in its time and richly deserving of its accolades, the Tarbell series does not, finally, stand up as an enduring piece of history. The more closely one examines it, the more it seems a superior screed masquerading as sober history. In the end, Tarbell could not conquer her nostalgia for the Titusville of her girlhood, that lost paradise of heroic friends and neighbors who went forth doughtily to do battle with the all-devouring Standard Oil dragon.
Names: Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil · Titusville
EPUB paragraph 80 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
The most celebrated and widely quoted charge that Tarbell made against Rockefeller was the least deserved: that he had robbed Mrs. Fred M. Backus—forever known to history as “the Widow Backus”—blind when buying her Cleveland lubricating plant in 1878. If every melodrama needs a poor, lorn widow, cheated by a scheming cad, then Mrs. Backus perfectly fitted Tarbell’s portrait of Rockefeller. “If it were true,” Rockefeller later conceded, it “would represent a shocking instance of cruelty in crushing a defenceless woman. It is probable that its wide circulation and its acceptance as true by those who know nothing of the facts has awakened more hostility against the Standard Oil Company and against me personally than any charge which has been made.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Mrs. Fred M. Backus · Backus
EPUB paragraph 81 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
The background of the story is simple. In his early Cleveland days, Rockefeller had befriended Fred M. Backus, who worked as a bookkeeper in his office and taught in the Sunday school of their church. In time, Backus married, had three children, and started a small lubricating company. In 1874, the forty-year-old Backus died, likely from consumption, and his widow inherited an obsolete plant that consisted of little more than a primitive cluster of sheds, stills, and tanks. Its hilltop site meant that raw materials had to be hauled up the slope at great expense, and then the lubricating oils had to be carted down the same steep path—not the most efficient of venues. Before it entered the lubricating business, Standard Oil had tolerated this marginal operation. When it branched out into lubricating oils and greases in the late 1870s, it absorbed three small lubricating companies, of which Backus Oil was probably the most backward. In fact, the Backus operation was so outmoded that Standard Oil eventually shut it down. This did not prevent the Widow Backus from stirring up a rabid national controversy about Rockefeller’s supposed theft of her priceless plant.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Fred M. Backus · Backus · Backus Oil
EPUB paragraph 82 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
When Standard Oil first approached her about the purchase, she insisted upon dealing with Rockefeller who, for old time’s sake, agreed to meet her in her house. Appealing to her status as a widow and trusting to his gentlemanly honor, she pleaded for a fair price for her property. As she recalled, “he promised, with tears in his eyes, that he would stand by me in this transaction, and that I should not be wronged.… I thought that his feelings were such on the subject that I could trust him and that he would deal honourably by me.” Backus told a friend that Rockefeller suggested that they kneel together in prayer. Up until this point, her story tallied closely with Rockefeller’s, who said that he had been “moved by kindly consideration to an old employee.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Backus
EPUB paragraph 83 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
While Backus wanted Rockefeller to conduct the negotiations for her plant, he knew nothing about lubricants and sent his associates instead. According to Backus, Rockefeller’s hirelings bilked her unmercifully. She valued her operation between $150,000 and $200,000, whereas the Standard Oil people refused to pay more than $79,000—$19,000 for the oil on hand, plus $60,000 for the factory and goodwill. (Out of regard for Backus, Rockefeller had had his appraisers bump up this last figure by $10,000.) Backus’s negotiator, Charles H. Marr, later swore that his client, in an estimated inventory of her assets, had written down $71,000 for plant and goodwill—not much more than Rockefeller finally paid. Yet she grew incensed over the purchase price and drafted a savage letter to Rockefeller, accusing him of double-dealing, to which he made the following reply:
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Charles H. Marr · Backus
EPUB paragraph 84 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
In regard to the reference that you make as to my permitting the business of the Backus Oil Company to be taken from you, I say that in this, as in all else that you have written … you do me most grievous wrong. It was of but little moment to the interests represented by me whether the business of the Backus Oil Company was purchased or not. I believe that it was for your interest to make the sale, and am entirely candid in this statement, and beg to call your attention to the time, some two years ago, when you consulted Mr. Flagler and myself as to selling out your interests to Mr. Rose, at which time you were desirous of selling at considerably less price, and upon time, than you have now received in cash, and which sale you would have been glad to have closed if you could have obtained satisfactory security for the deferred payments.
Names: Henry M. Flagler · Wickliffe Rose · Backus Oil Company
EPUB paragraph 85 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
He then pointed out that the $60,000 paid for the property was two or three times the cost of constructing equal or better facilities—a statement corroborated by a Mr. Maloney, superintendent of the Backus plant. “I believe that if you would reconsider what you have written in your letter … you must admit having done me great injustice, and I am satisfied to await upon [your] innate sense of right for such admission.” In closing, Rockefeller offered to restore her business in return for the money or give her stock in the company at the same price paid by Standard Oil. It was an eminently fair offer, and yet the histrionic Backus flung the letter in the fire.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Backus · Maloney
EPUB paragraph 86 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Because Ida Tarbell insisted upon reviving this hoary story—Henry Demarest Lloyd had already wrung tears from readers with it—in 1905 Rockefeller’s attorneys leaked to the press a letter written by H. M. Backus, the widow’s brother-in-law. Having lived with his sister-in-law during the period in question, he was present the day Rockefeller paid his visit. As he told Rockefeller, “I know of the ten thousand dollars that was added to the purchase price of the property at your request, and I know that you paid 3 times the value of the property, and I know that all that ever saved our company from ruin was the sale of its property to you, and I simply want to easy my mind by doing justice to you by saying so.” It was exceedingly lucky for Backus that she bowed out of business, for Standard Oil built more modern lubricating plants, marketed 150 different lubricants, and drove prices far below the price at which she could have operated profitably. Had she stayed in business, she would have been bankrupt within a few years.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Henry Demarest Lloyd · Standard Oil · H. M. Backus · Backus
EPUB paragraph 87 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
By investing her proceeds in Cleveland real estate instead, Backus, far from being reduced to filth and misery, became an extremely rich woman. According to Allan Nevins, she was worth approximately $300,000 at her death. Nevertheless, the supposed theft of Backus Oil became an idée fixe, and she dredged up the story for anyone who cared to listen. The notion of Rockefeller gleefully ruining a poor widow was such a good story, with so fine a Dickensian ring, that gullible reporters gave it fresh circulation for many years.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Allan Nevins · Cleveland · Backus · Backus Oil
EPUB paragraph 88 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
If Tarbell perpetuated one myth about Rockefeller, she also had the honesty to debunk another: that Rockefeller had blown up a competing refinery in Buffalo. It was this allegation that so upset Henry Rogers that he cooperated with Tarbell to clear his name. Swallowed whole by Lloyd and constantly brandished by the World, the tale was a hardy perennial of the anti–Standard Oil literature.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry H. Rogers · Ida M. Tarbell · Henry Demarest Lloyd · Standard Oil · Buffalo · World
EPUB paragraph 89 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Like the Backus case, the incident dated back to the period when Standard Oil entered the lubricating business in the late 1870s. The trust had coveted the Vacuum Oil Works in Rochester, New York, owned by a father-and-son team, Hiram and Charles Everest. One day, John Archbold shepherded Hiram Everest into Rockefeller’s office and asked him point-blank to name a price for his firm. When Everest obliged, Archbold threw back his head and roared with laughter, dismissing the figure as absurd. Taking a suaver approach, Rockefeller leaned forward, touched Everest on the knee, and said, “Mr. Everest, don’t you think you would be making a mistake to go into a fight with young, active men, who mean to develop the entire petroleum industry?” When Everest shot back that he was a fighter, Rockefeller just smiled.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · New York · Charles Everest · Hiram Everest · Rochester · Backus · Everest · Hiram · Vacuum Oil Works
EPUB paragraph 90 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Everest eventually realized he was dealing with an immovable force and sold a three-fourths interest in his firm to Henry Rogers, John Archbold, and Ambrose McGregor, acting as agents for Standard Oil. Because the Everests remained the managers, the Standard executives were involved only tangentially. In 1881, a trio of Vacuum employees—J. Scott Wilson, Charles B. Matthews, and Albert Miller—defected to start a rival refinery, the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company. They brazenly planned to re-create their old firm by transferring technology, poaching clients, and copying processes patented by Vacuum. When the Everests learned of this, they threatened legal action. Albert Miller repented and sought help from Hiram Everest. Together, they consulted a Rochester lawyer, and at this meeting Everest allegedly floated the idea of Miller sabotaging the new plant: “Suppose he should arrange the machinery so it would bust up, or smash up, what would the consequences be?” A tall edifice of speculation would be erected on this query.
Names: John D. Archbold · Henry H. Rogers · Standard Oil · Hiram Everest · Ambrose McGregor · Charles B. Matthews · Albert Miller · Rochester · Miller · Everest · Vacuum · J. Scott Wilson · Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company
EPUB paragraph 91 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
According to a later conspiracy charge, on June 15, 1881, Miller ordered the fireman at the Buffalo plant to heat the still to such explosive temperatures that the heavy crude oil began to stir and boil. Pretty soon, the brickwork cracked, the safety valve blew off, and a large volume of gas hissed out—without kindling a fire. A week later, Miller met in New York with Hiram Everest and Henry Rogers, who packed him off to work at a California cannery. When the Everests filed patent-infringement suits against the Buffalo refinery, Charles Matthews, ringleader of the renegades, retaliated with his own civil suit, charging a conspiracy to blow up his Buffalo works and seeking $250,000 in damages. The three Standard Oil worthies on the Vacuum board—Rogers, Archbold, and McGregor—despite the distant nature of their involvement in Rochester, were indicted along with the Everests. Only vaguely aware of the brouhaha, never having met Miller, Rockefeller was roped into the case for publicity purposes and subpoenaed as a prosecution witness. The case always struck him as a petty irritant, distracting him from more pressing matters. Nothing in Rockefeller’s papers suggests that he regarded the suit as anything other than outright extortion.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Henry H. Rogers · Standard Oil · New York · Buffalo · Hiram Everest · Rochester · Rogers · California · Miller · McGregor · Vacuum · Charles Matthews
EPUB paragraph 92 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
In May 1887, Rockefeller sat captive in a packed Buffalo courtroom for eight days. Resentful of being turned into a public spectacle, he felt he was being served up as a sideshow freak to “this curious class of wonder-worshippers, the class whom P. T. Barnum capitalized [on] and made his fortune out of.” When Rockefeller testified, he displayed, as always, total forgetfulness, but in this instance he really knew little about the case. At the end of eight days, the judge dropped charges against Rogers, Archbold, and McGregor. While Rogers hugged a bunch of pansies given by a well-wisher, Rockefeller, in a rare display of public fury, rose from his seat, jaw clenched, and said, “I have no congratulations to offer you, Rogers. What should be done with people who bring an action against men in this way—what?” Wheeling about, he shook his fist at Charles Matthews. Then, muttering “what an unheard-of-thing,” he strode briskly from the courtroom, his retinue in tow. In later years, he fulminated against Matthews as a “scheming, trouble-making blackmailer” who offered to sell his refinery to Standard Oil for $100,000 and only initiated his nuisance suit after being rebuffed.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · Buffalo · Rogers · McGregor · Charles Matthews · Matthews · Wheeling · P. T. Barnum
EPUB paragraph 93 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
The Buffalo suit, in truth, had scant merit. The prosecution never established that an explosion had taken place or even that a high flame was necessarily hazardous when starting up the still. Though the Everests were convicted and fined $250 apiece, this small figure mirrored the jurors’ belief that the Everests did not conspire to blow up the refinery and were guilty only of luring away Albert Miller. If Henry Rogers cooperated with Ida Tarbell for the sake of vindication in the Buffalo case, he was amply rewarded. She stated categorically: “As a matter of fact, no refinery was burned in Buffalo, nor was it ever proved that Mr. Rogers knew anything of the attempts the Everests made to destroy Matthews’ business.” Yet the notion that Rockefeller enjoyed blowing up rival plants so tickled the popular fancy that it remained enshrined as a story much too good to retire, and it was duly revived, along with the musty canard about the Widow Backus, by Matthew Josephson in his 1934 book The Robber Barons.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry H. Rogers · Ida M. Tarbell · Buffalo · Matthew Josephson · Albert Miller · Rogers · Backus · Matthews · Robber Barons
EPUB paragraph 94 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
By the third installment in January 1903, President Roosevelt himself was voraciously reading Tarbell’s articles and even sent her a flattering note. Her celebrity spread with each issue, and her level gaze stared out from countless newspaper profiles. “The way you are generally esteemed and reverenced pleases me tremendously,” McClure told her. “You are today the most generally famous woman in America.” That she had succeeded in a traditionally masculine field only added to her mystique.
Names: Ida M. Tarbell · S. S. McClure · Theodore Roosevelt · United States
EPUB paragraph 95 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Samuel McClure would let a series run as long as the public kept snatching up copies. As Tarbell summarized this policy, “No response—no more chapters. A healthy response—as many chapters as the material justified.” Hence, her series was open-ended and profited from the tremendous crescendo of attention, which drew more and more Rockefeller critics from the woodwork. The circulation of McClure’s had risen to 375,000 by the time Tarbell’s series was finished. Though the series was published as a two-volume book in November 1904, she then capped it with a scathing two-part character study of Rockefeller in McClure’s in July and August of 1905.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · S. S. McClure
EPUB paragraph 96 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
It does not detract from her achievement to state that she enjoyed the services of a first-rate research assistant, John M. Siddall. Short, pudgy, and bespectacled, the young Siddall was an experienced hand, having been a cub reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and secretary to the Cleveland Board of Education during Mayor Tom Johnson’s reform administration. Based in Cleveland, he not only supplied Tarbell with numberless facts but charged her imagination. “I tell you this John D. Rockefeller is the strangest, most silent, most mysterious, and most interesting figure in America,” he wrote to her. “The people of this country know nothing about him. A brilliant character study of him would make a tremendous trump card for McClure’s.” At first, Siddall thought Rockefeller cold and humorless but had to modify the caricature. “My informant states that John has a real delightful way of cultivating the speaking acquaintance of all sorts of people—rich and poor, black and white. That only illustrates again the marvelous complexity of Rockefeller’s character.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · S. S. McClure · John M. Siddall · Cleveland · United States · Tom Johnson · Cleveland Plain Dealer · Cleveland Board of Education · John
EPUB paragraph 97 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
One of the first and most shocking revelations dug up by Tarbell and Siddall came from a teenage boy who had been assigned to burn records at a Standard Oil plant each month. He was about to incinerate some forms one night when he noticed the name of a former Sunday-school teacher who was an independent refiner and Standard Oil rival. Leafing through the documents sent for burning, he realized that they were secret records, obtained from the railroads, documenting the shipments of rival refiners. Tarbell knew Standard Oil was ruthless, but she was shocked by this outright criminal activity. “There was a littleness about it that seemed utterly contemptible compared to the immense genius and ability that had gone into the organization,” she said. At this point, she realized she was being snookered by Henry Rogers.
Names: Henry H. Rogers · Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil · John M. Siddall
EPUB paragraph 98 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Tarbell and Siddall were willing to take their own moral shortcuts to expose Rockefeller. To spy on him, Siddall had a friend from the Plain Dealer impersonate a Sunday-school teacher to sneak into the annual church picnic at Forest Hill. At Siddall’s behest, an old Rockefeller friend, Hiram Brown, pumped the mogul on several matters, including his reaction to the McClure’s series. At the mention of Tarbell’s name, Rockefeller steadied himself with a long breath. “I tell you, Hiram, things have changed since you and I were boys. The world is full of socialists and anarchists. Whenever a man succeeds remarkably in any particular line of business, they jump on him and cry him down.” To secure photos, Siddall had a friend pose as an agent of some distant Rockefeller relatives to obtain snapshots of the magnate from Cleveland photo studios. “Now of course these pictures were got under false pretenses,” Siddall reminded Tarbell, “and we must protect our over-zealous friend.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · S. S. McClure · John M. Siddall · Cleveland · Forest Hill · Hiram · Hiram Brown
EPUB paragraph 99 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Since Rockefeller banned Tarbell from his presence, Siddall searched for a way that she could obtain a firsthand glimpse. During summers at Forest Hill, Rockefeller appeared in public only for Sunday services at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. By the early 1900s, this event had taken on the air of a circus spectacle as hundreds of people massed outside the church to view him. As the Tarbell series swelled the gaping throngs, Rockefeller would gingerly approach his church bodyguard before the service and ask, “Are there any of our friends, the reporters, here?” Even though Pinkerton detectives mingled with the crowd, Rockefeller now felt anxious about public exposure. Sometimes, he confessed, he wanted to bolt from the service, but he feared that people would brand him a coward. At one Friday-evening prayer service, when a radical agitator sat opposite him all evening, his hand stuffed menacingly in his pocket, Rockefeller grew so rattled that he put away his planned speech on socialism.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Euclid Avenue Baptist Church · John M. Siddall · Forest Hill · Pinkerton detectives
EPUB paragraph 100 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
It probably hurt his image that he appeared in public only at church, for it played to the stereotype of a hypocrite cloaking himself in sanctity. In fact, his motivation for churchgoing was quite simple: Aside from the spiritual pleasure of prayer, he was loath to give up contact with ordinary people, many of them old friends. The church retained many blue-collar members, enabling Rockefeller to chat amiably with a blacksmith or mechanic. Such everyday experiences increasingly eluded him as he withdrew behind the high gates of his estates.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 101 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
On Sunday, June 14, 1903, John Siddall got a windfall beyond his most feverish hopes when Rockefeller not only appeared but delivered a short “Children’s Day” talk at the Sunday school. “If I had been able to foretell what happened yesterday I should have advised you to come from Titusville to spend Sunday in Cleveland,” Siddall told Tarbell. He described Rockefeller, in ministerial coat and silk hat, sitting before the pulpit and surveying the crowd apprehensively, as if fearful for his safety. “He bows his head and mutters his prayer, and sings the hymns, and nods his head, and claps his hands in a sort of a mechanical way. It’s all work to him—a part of his business. He thinks that after he has done this for an hour or two he has warded off the devil for another week.” Only months later did Siddall learn of the anonymous charity Rockefeller practiced each Sunday morning, handing out money in small envelopes to needy congregants. “Doesn’t this shake your belief in the theory of pure hypocrisy?” Siddall then asked Tarbell, noting the curiously compartmentalized nature of Rockefeller’s mind. “In one part is legitimate business, in another corrupt business, in another political depravity, in another—somewhere in his being—religious experience and life.” This was a richer, more accurate appraisal of Rockefeller than that contained in his earlier, reductive gibe.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · John M. Siddall · Cleveland · Titusville
EPUB paragraph 102 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
In the early fall, Siddall found out that Rockefeller, before returning to New York, would deliver a short farewell address at the Sunday school, and he begged Ida Tarbell to attend. “I will see that we have seats where we will have a full view of the man,” he promised her. “You will get him in action.” They planned to squeeze between them an illustrator, George Varian, who would execute rapid sketches of Rockefeller. Tarbell felt “a little mean” about secretly ambushing Rockefeller in church, and she dreaded that they would be caught. To prevent this, she asked Siddall to pack the pew with three or four tall confederates who would shield Varian and his notebook.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · John M. Siddall · New York · George Varian
EPUB paragraph 103 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
When Tarbell and Siddall arrived at the Sunday-school room that morning, she wrinkled her nose at the shabby surroundings, “a dismal room with barbaric dark green paper with big gold designs, cheap stained-glass windows, awkward gas fixtures.” Suddenly, Siddall gave her a violent dig in the ribs. “There he is,” he breathed. The hairless figure in the doorway did not disappoint Tarbell. As she wrote, “There was an awful age in his face—the oldest man I had ever seen, I thought, but what power!” He slowly doffed his coat and hat, slid a black skullcap over his bald head, and sat flush against the wall, giving him an unobstructed view of the room—which Tarbell thought a security precaution. During his brief talk to the children, she was impressed by the clear strength of his voice. After the Sunday-school speech, the McClure’s contingent packed a church pew in the auditorium for the service. Self-conscious about being there, Tarbell was convinced that Rockefeller would pick her out of the crowd, but he apparently did not.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · S. S. McClure · John M. Siddall
EPUB paragraph 104 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
In her 1905 character study, Tarbell stressed Rockefeller’s fidgety behavior, the way he craned his neck and scanned the room, as if searching for assassins. “My two hours study of Mr. Rockefeller aroused a feeling I had not expected, which time has intensified. I was sorry for him. I know no companion so terrible as fear. Mr. Rockefeller, for all the conscious power written in face and voice and figure, was afraid, I told myself, afraid of his own kind.” It did not occur to her that she had contributed to that fear. This edgy behavior was vitally important for Tarbell because it suggested that Rockefeller had a guilt-ridden conscience, that God was torturing him, that he could not enjoy his ill-gotten wealth; the ordinary reader could find no more satisfying fantasy. “For what good this undoubted power of achievement, for what good this towering wealth, if one must be forever peering to see what is behind!” It certainly never occurred to Tarbell that Rockefeller might be searching the congregation for charity recipients.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell
EPUB paragraph 105 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Despite her fears, Tarbell and her associates evaded detection at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church that Sunday morning. It was the only time that Tarbell ever actually stood in Rockefeller’s presence. Ironically, he never knowingly set eyes on the woman who did more than any other person to transmogrify his image.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Euclid Avenue Baptist Church
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.