Rockefeller refined oil when competitors drilled and wasted it
A Cleveland bookkeeper who tracked freight rebates built Standard Oil into a kerosene giant controlling ninety percent of US production. Antitrust breakup made him America's first billionaire—and spun off the companies that later became Exxon and Chevron.
John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 in Richford, New York, to a thrifty Baptist mother and an absent con-artist father who boasted of cheating his sons to sharpen them. At sixteen he became an assistant bookkeeper at Hewitt & Tuttle, learning that posted shipping rates could be negotiated through rebates—a lesson he applied for decades.
In 1859 Rockefeller partnered with Maurice Clark, raising $4,000 capital—$800 of his savings plus a $1,000 loan from his father at ten percent interest. Civil War profits from supplying the Union Army led them toward oil refining in 1863. While speculators wastefully drilled, Rockefeller focused on kerosene, which undercut whale oil for lighting. He founded Standard Oil Company in 1870.
Standard Oil lowered costs through vertical integration and technological innovation, controlling about ninety percent of US oil production by 1900. Critics including Ida Tarbell attacked its practices; the Supreme Court ordered breakup in 1911 into thirty-four entities including predecessors of ExxonMobil and Chevron. Rockefeller's 1913 fortune of $900 million equaled 2.3 percent of US GDP; he became America's first billionaire on 28 September 1916.
Retiring to Kykuit in Westchester, Rockefeller spent forty years systematizing philanthropy through foundations supporting medicine, education, and Southern modernization. His giving helped near-eradicate hookworm and yellow fever in the United States and funded the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University. He abstained from alcohol and tobacco, taught Sunday school, and credited religious discipline for his success.
Source: John D. Rockefeller
