The Richest Man In The World Who Nickeled And Dimed Everybody

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

I really didn’t want to know that much about John D. Rockefeller, but I just couldn’t pass up a bargain when I found a 775-page biography in a Sun City West Goodwill store for about 50 cents a pound called “The Titan” by Ron Chernow. I ended up consuming each page like a real bookworm. Here was the richest man in the world at the age of 97 who would pray at breakfast to make more money, then go for a drive on the roads of his estate, groping curious local women in the backseat of his limo. He seemed driven and torn between two opposing forces. Gabriel on his righteous shoulder would argue for the good, religious man to control events, while Lucifer on his left shoulder lobbied the corrupt businessman who would cheat members of his own family to make another dime. As Chernow puts it, Rockefeller’s “good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad.” That’s what makes him such a fascinating character.

In this column I’m going to try to maintain a balance between Gabriel and Lucifer, but what a pyschological case study Rockefeller makes. He was a rapacious businessman who extorted rebates, created monopolies, bribed local, state, and federal politicians, and cheated on his taxes. But he was also a man who taught Sunday School all his life—and one day a year would hand his pastor an envelope containing a check which would cover the total costs of his church for the year.

Perhaps John D. is a good example of how the science of genetics works. He was born of the scrum of William Avery Rockefeller, a scam artist, snake oil salesman, fake doctor, and bigamist, and Eliza Davison, a rock-ribbed, Bible-thumping Southern Baptist farm girl, innocent of the real world. “Big Bill” even brought his girl friend to work in his house as a “housekeeper” and fathered children by both wife and mistress at the same time. Perhaps Bill was an incubus!
As a young adult John D. rang the church bells, fired up the furnace in the basement, and snuffed out the candles at the end of the service because people should “save when you can and not when you have to.”

Chernow quoted one congregant: “The girls all liked John D. because of his goodness, his religious fervor…and his apparent sincerity and honesty of purpose.” But records indicate and subsequent trials for corruption proved that John D. and his Standard Oil employees bribed members of the Pennsylvania Legislature and Congress in stopping rival pipeline and railroad companies from competing in the transportation of crude oil and the refining of it.

Rockefeller: “God Gave Me My Money”

John D. quickly absorbed the teachings of his fundamentalist Baptist church and was reinforced by friendly Bible verses that supported his views on money and business. He thought that the ultimate purpose in life was the making of money. He burnished his public image by teaching Sunday School for almost eight decades. When he was in his twenties and far from rich, he was rejected by a bank officer when he asked for a loan. In that he felt God would have given him the loan because of his religious beliefs, John D. revealed his “faith” by yelling at the man in great anger: “Some day I’ll be the richest man in the world.”
He was.

Wealthy men could buy their way out of military service in the Civil War. John D. hired a soldier sub for the going price of $300. I don’t think that any historian has ever tried to determine how many “subs” were among the 600,000 Americans killed in the Civil War. John D. claimed that he financed between 20 and 30 soldiers, but a Rockefeller ledger only itemized $138.09 for the support of the war over a four-year span. Rockefeller had a reputation for accounting for every nickel spent publicly or privately–even when he was worth $90 billion in 1980 dollars–so he might have been stretching his financial “patriotism.”Usually a reticent, close-mouthed, secretive man, John D. was very enthusiastic about making a buck. Chernow, who examined thousands of letters and communications about John D., discovered these candid remarks by a Standard Oil employee: “The only time I saw John Rockefeller enthusiastic was when his buyer secured a cargo of oil at a figure much below the market price. He bounded from his chair with a shout of joy, danced up and down, hugged me, threw up his hat, acted so much like a madman that I have never forgotten it.”

The Hand That Rocks The Money Cradle…....

During the period when Rockefeller was concentrating on becoming the richest man in the world, he was under terrific strain and time constraints. He later admitted “fretting endlessly” about creating his oil empire to the point where “I tossed about in bed night after night, never having a full night’s sleep. All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.”

Ida Tarbell, the reporter who was more responsible for the eventual breakup of Standard Oil during Teddy Roosevelt’s time than anybody else, described what she saw in John D.: “a living mummy, hideous and diseased, leprous, and reptilian, [with] concentration, craftiness, cruelty, and something indefinably repulsive.”

Rockefeller put so much pressure on himself to “succeed” he lost all of his body hair, including eyelashes and eyebrows to the disease alopecia. Tarbell just didn’t like him: “Mr. Rockefeller may have made himself the richest man in the world, but he has paid. The big cheeks are puffy, bulging unpleasantly under the eyes, and the skin which covers them has a curiously unhealthy pallor. It is this puffiness, this unclean flesh, which repels, as the thin slit of a mouth terrifies.” Whew!! Rockefeller spent a small fortune on toupees so he would look normal, having several trimmed to fake hair growth by the day—and then weekly haircuts.

39 Drops Instead Of 40

Rockefeller was always looking for ways to save pennies. He often bragged about the time he reduced the drops of solder from 40 to 39 in sealing five-gallon kerosene cans for export to Europe, thus saving $2,500 a year in solder costs. This was the exchange with the soldering expert:
John D.: “How many drops of solder do you use on each can? (Forty.) Have you ever tried 38? (No.) Would you mind having some sealed with 38 and let me know?” When 38 drops were applied a small percentage of cans leaked, so 39 drops became the new standard.

When on vacation with his family John D. thoroughly checked each bill in making sure he wasn’t cheated. When John D. took a long time in determining whether the family had really consumed two whole chickens at lunch in a Paris restaurant, his exasperated wife finally interrogated the children on their consumption of chicken legs. She told her husband: “Four legs were eaten. There must have been two whole chickens. Pay the bill.”

Rockefeller never lost his idea of thrift. In his 90’s the world’s richest man stared at the fire in the fireplace at his retirement home in Ormond, Florida and asked his butler to make sure that the next load of firewood be cut to 12 inches long instead of the 14-inch logs being used. When the new length was being tested, Rockefeller determined that the 12-inch heated well, so 12-inch logs became the new standard for the household.

Was God An Honorary Shareholder In Standard Oil?

Was Rockefeller just using his talents, or was he assisting in one of God’s miracles? He labeled the whole oil business as being a part of religious mystery. He once said: “The whole process seems a miracle. What a blessing the oil has been for mankind! (It certainly blessed his pockets,too.) In an interview with a reporter John D. outlined his religious mission on earth: “I believe the power to make money is a gift from God—just as are the instincts for art, music, literature, the doctor’s talent, the nurses’s, yours–to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.”

When he ruined other men and businesses by bribery, extortion, price-cutting, and exorbitant rebates, he often explained his actions by using religious imagery and metaphors: “The Standard (Oil) was an angel of mercy, reaching down from the sky and saying, ‘Get into the ark. Put in your old junk. We’ll take all the risks!’” Whenever Rockefeller testified in court, he always made a big show of kissing the Bible when he was sworn. A reporter summed it up with a touch of irony: “He certainly underscored which party had God on his side.”

When he decided to give most of his money away, he favored institutions that concentrated on pure research. His main competitor for the-richest-man-in-the-world title was Andrew Carnegie, the Pittsburg steel magnate. Carnegie decided early on he would build education and recreation facilities for the poor and the middle class. Carnegie built 2,800 public libraries across the United States and many athletic and music facilities, including New York’s Carnegie Hall. He probably forced Rockefeller into philanthropy, because Carnegie, as ruthless in business as Rockefeller, had a much better public relations program crew. Rockefeller did start two colleges, Spelman College in Georgia and the University of Chicago. He endowed the University of Chicago so that the Baptist Convention would have a major university in the North.

Gabriel And Lucifer Kept Talking To Him Until His Death

When his son John, Jr. was 21 and he was the richest man in the world, Sr. gave Jr. $21 in fresh bills on his birthday. I think that’s strange enough to demand a case study. In 1917 when he was 78 he started to divvy up his huge fortune to his sons and daughters and to the Rockefeller Foundation. On February 17, 1920 he sent a short note to John Jr.: “Dear Son: I am this day giving you $65,000,000 par value of United States Government First Liberty Loan 3 and 1/2 percent bonds. Affectionately, Father.” That’s what I would call a terrific note to receive from Daddy. It was a complete surprise to John Jr.

John D. had a rather unusual “life” insurance policy. He paid his premiums for a $5 million policy which would pay him that total if he lived beyond 96. He lived to be 97. He tried to live to be 100, and did some rather strange things to reach it. He chewed each piece of food ten times. He even chewed water when he drank it. He would often take a half an hour longer to eat than any other person at the table. But he was a shrunken man at his death, weighing less than 100 pounds.

For decades whenever John D. appeared in public one pocket was stuffed with dimes and one with nickels. His personal guard carried a sack with a reserve supply of both. He was often pictured in newsreels giving dimes to children, but he often gave them to his rich friends when they played a good round of golf or told a good story. A new employee got a dime if spotted by John D. An old employee only got a nickel.

Rockefeller was an avid golfer and often spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on the sport. But when he came to water holes on the course he insisted that his foursome switch to old balls. When he noticed other players using new balls around these hazards, the richest man of the world would say: “They must be very rich!” He would often add: “Only fools get swelled up over money.”

“The Titan” is a good read. It covers an epic battle between Gabriel and Lucifer.

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