(July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937)
Rockefeller’s childhood didn’t seem like the makings of a billionaire. His father was somewhat of a vagabond, struggling financially, inventing fast money schemes and avoiding hard work. “Trade dishes for platters [always get the better part of any deal,]” was his motto and he bragged he even cheated his own children. He was also absent from the family a great deal, frequently uprooting his wife and six children about upstate New York ─ eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio.
Yet “I was trained to work, to save, and to give,” said Rockefeller. This was likely due to his mother, a devout Baptist Christian, who provided stability and taught her children: honesty, helping others and the art of thrift. She told them ─ “willful waste makes woeful want.”
Young Rockefeller was well-behaved, serious and studious. At sixteen he became an assistant bookkeeper for 50 cents a day. He loved bookkeeping and showed a fixation for honest business, the long hours, and exhausting details of bookkeeping from the start. At times he dreamed up new projects in his sleep. He “was methodical to an extreme, careful about details and exacting to a fault … If there was a cent due he wanted it. If there was a cent due a customer he wanted the customer to have it,” say historians. This irritated some colleagues, but ultimately won the confidence of fellow businessmen.1
In June 1870, Rockefeller formed Standard Oil of Ohio. His success with the Standard Oil Company was largely due to three core beliefs: cut waste, produce the best product and offer the lowest price. Before this time, only the rich in America could afford to light their homes with whale oil and candles. Rockefeller saw himself as somewhat of a “savior,” delivering oil to light even the poor man’s home for one cent an hour.
As a whole new method of lighting emerged for Americans, Rockefeller dominated the oil industry. Other refiners at the time, were wasteful and dumped gasoline into rivers, or threw out its byproducts. By contrast Rockefeller and his partners worked to get the most kerosene out of each barrel and searched for creative ways to use all the leftovers. In the process, they developed over 300 oil-based products including, paint, Vaseline and chewing gum. By 1880, Rockefeller had bought out most of his rivals at fair prices, made some of his chief competitors his partners, and was refining over 90 percent of U.S. oil.1
He tithed his very first paycheck and every one thereafter and he was known for both his enormous earning and his enormous giving. He and his advisors invented the conditional grant and organized his charities in ways that “defined much of the structure of modern philanthropy today.”2
“I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week,” he once said. 1
Sources:
1 Burton W. Folsom Jr., John D. “Rockefeller and the Oil Industry” post, Oct. 1988.
2 Writer pool. Wikipedia, “John D. Rockefeller” post, 2010.
Story by Cindy R. Chamberlin, 2010.