JOHN D.

ROCKEFELLER

John Davison Rockefeller biography

John was born in Richford, New York, on July 8, 1839.
He grew up in a family descended from German-Jewish immigrants who arrived in
the United States in 1733. John was the son of William Avery Rockefeller, a
traveling salesman who, among other things, claimed to be able to cure cancer
with his potions and charged his customers up to twenty-five dollars per treatment.
John watched his father travel from town to town for months and then return home
with significant sums of money in his pockets. His mother, Eliza Davison
Rockefeller, was a very religious woman who instilled in her son a passion for
work, saving, and helping others. At just twelve years old, John had managed to
save fifty dollars by working for his neighbors and raising turkeys for his mother. It
would be his own mother who urged him to lend fifty dollars at seven percent
interest to a neighboring farmer, payable in one year. Rockefeller would later
confess that when the farmer finally repaid him the loan along with the interest, "at
that moment I decided that the money would work for me, and not me for the
money."
John D. Rockefeller was amazed by the return obtained from that loan. Then he
realized the possibilities of enrichment that the loan business offered him.
When he was 14, Rockefeller and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his
father became a real estate salesman. When he was 16 years old, he dropped out
of school to work full-time in the business world and help his family. On September
26, 1855, Rockefeller took his first job as an assistant bookkeeper at the Hewitt
and Tuttle firm in Cleveland. Three years later, the young man was already earning
six hundred dollars a year. But that was not enough for him and he asked for a
raise, which was denied. Then he started thinking about starting his own business.
From a young age, he showed entrepreneurial skills and dedicated himself to doing
business to help his family survive.

BEGINING AND END OF HIS POWER

John D. Rockefeller's rise to power and consolidation of a monopoly in the oil

industry through his company, Standard Oil, was facilitated by strategies such as
vertical integration, price control, exclusivity agreements, pressure on competitors,
and control of key resources. This enabled him to dominate nearly every aspect of
the oil industry in the United States, from extraction to distribution. His control over
the industry granted him significant political and economic influence, although it
also attracted criticism and ultimately led to the enforcement of antitrust laws.

The end of John D. Rockefeller's power and that of his company, Standard Oil,
primarily resulted from the enforcement of antitrust laws by the United States
government. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was among the initial legal
measures used t combat monopolies, and it was applied to Standard Oil in 1911.
The U.S. government filed an antitrust case against Standard Oil, arguing that its
control over the oil industry was detrimental to competition and the market. As a
result, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil into several
smaller companies in 1911, in a landmark case known as Standard Oil Co. of New
Jersey v. United States.

Following the dissolution, the different parts of Standard Oil became independent
companies, such as Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, and others. Although these companies
maintained significant influence in the oil industry, they no longer had the same
degree of monopolistic control as Standard Oil under Rockefeller's leadership.
While Rockefeller's direct power over the oil industry diminished with the
dissolution of Standard Oil, his influence and personal wealth remained
considerable until his death in 1937. Nevertheless, the end of Standard Oil's
monopoly marked a significant milestone in the history of antitrust regulation in the
United States and in the evolution of the oil industry.

Rockefeller's religious beliefs inclined him to put the fabulous fortune he had
amassed at the service of social works, devoting himself almost entirely to
philanthropy since he retired to live on a farm in 1896: he founded the University of
Chicago (1891), the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York (1901),
the General Board of Education (1902) and the Rockefeller Foundation (1913).
· University of Chicago:

Today, the University of Chicago is one of the world's leading research

universities, and is known for its contributions to philosophy, literature, social
sciences, natural sciences and medicine. Among its most notable
achievements are the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize.
The University of Chicago is a member of the Association of American
Universities and Research Schools (AAU).
· Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York:

The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was the first institution in the
U.S. devoted exclusively to biomedical research. In addition to a century of
award-winning breakthroughs, Rockefeller has devoted more than half a
century to training the next generation of innovative and pioneering
scientists. It is today one of the most important centers of biomedical
research in the world, and its scientists have made numerous contributions
to biology and medicine.
· General Board of Education:

The General Education Board (GEB) was devoted to the cause of improving
education throughout the United States. Its efforts included a number of key
initiatives focusing on public education in the South and the improvement of
medical education.
Agriculture was one of the earliest concerns of the Rockefeller
philanthropies. The General Education Board, established to improve
education in the southern United States, quickly realized that better farming
practices were the key to better schools. Its strategy was to increase crop
yield, thereby raising farm incomes and building a stronger tax base to help
fund public education.
· Rockefeller Foundation:

The Rockefeller Foundation is considered one of the largest philanthropic

organizations in the world and is also one of the oldest. In its beginnings, the
foundation was interested in developing cures for diseases such as malaria
and yellow fever, which led it to expand its influence in health issues by
establishing 25 research centers around the world, one of them in the Latin
American region. Among its achievements and milestones, the Foundation
boasts of having supported 221 men and women who have won Nobel
Prizes in various disciplines, mainly in medicine and science.
John Davison Rockefeller died on May 23, 1937 in Ormond Beach, Florida.