JOHN D. ROCKEFFELER

John Davidson Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American oil industry business magnate, industrialist, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the wealthiest American of all time, and the richest person in modern history. He amassed a fortune of about 300-400 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation), only surpassed by people such as Augustus Caesar, who "privately own all of Egypt", and Mansa Musa, whose generosity cause inflation of gold in the Saharan Africa.

He was born in 1839 in New York in a poor family. His father, claiming to be a "botanical expert", is a trader of elixir and known for his shady business. At a young age, he started his career as a bookeeper. He was told by his mother "to work, to save, and to give", and he always give a portion of his income to the poor.

His business career began in Cleveland with his partner, Maurice Clark. They both found the potential of oil that most person doesn't recognize. At the time, the oil boom in Pennsylvania is ongoing and everyone is mining. But this two person has another idea. Rather than drilling the oil, they will buy all of the oil and refine it. Usually, people will take the usable part of the oil and throw the rest onto the river. Rockefeller, instead use it to power his refinery, most importantly kerosene. At the time, there was no electricity yet, so all of America light their places with oil gained from killing whales, making it very expensive. By producing kerosene, light is now very cheap for poor people, at least until Edison/ Tesla came.

Rockefeller is obsessed with controlling every aspect of his industry. Oil requires barrel to store, so he bought the barrel producing company, and instead buying the wood, he own a forest.

This business is a success and other people started to open their own refining companies. But Rockefeller did not want competition. So he, which will be his future business model, started to eliminate competition and after partnering with Samuel Andrews, he bought out the Clark's shares. Soon he, his brother William, Andrews, and a man named Pfleger join and create the largest oil refining company at its time.

In 1870, they merge the various companies into one companies, the Standard Oil. Transportation of oil requires trains, so so he control the train company, and use it only to transport his oils, only his oils, instead of passenger. This made SO's product way cheaper than competition, meaning price can be lower while still maintaining profit. With his monopoly, Rockefeller will soon buy out other companies and stamp out competition. If they refuse, Rockefeller will start a "price war", where he dropped the oil price to the point that they start losing money, however their consumer would start exclusively buy Standard Oil's product, therefor their competitor will be unable to compete and soon be bankrupt.

This practice would only repeat and repeat and repeat until Standard oil controlled 90% of the US oil supply. Public animosity is high against this company and finally in 1890 the government pass the Sherman Anti-Trust act, which basically outlaw the monopoly he was conducting. But at this point the company has grown so big that they can bribe the politician into looking the other way. This will take a man brave enough to stand against this practice, and the man is Teddy Roosevelt. Finally in 1911 the supreme court rule out that the Standard Oil Company has been in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for about twenty years and dissolve the company into more than 90 companies.

However, all of those companies is still owned by Rockefeller. After the dissolution, the stocks that he have would double in value, leading him to own 300-400 billion dollars.

Today, public opinion about this man is diverse. Most people saw him as an evil capitalist trying to get every dollar but some see him as a generous person giving 6% of his income to charity since he was a bookkeeper and actively combat slavery of African-American (though some might say that he is trying to replace them with wage slaves). But he taught us that with bravery, cleverness, and most importantly hard work, we can achieve anything that we want.