Rockefeller who is he

The 19th century was a period of great change and rapid industrialization. The iron and steel industry spawned new construction materials, the railroads connected the country and the discovery of oil provided a new source of fuel. The discovery of the Spindletop geyser in John Adams was a leader of the American Revolution and served as the second U.

The Massachusetts-born, Harvard-educated Adams began his career as a lawyer. Intelligent, patriotic, opinionated and blunt, Adams became a critic of Great Franklin D. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and On January 10, , an enormous geyser of oil exploded from a drilling site at Spindletop Hill, a mound created by an underground salt deposit located near Beaumont in Jefferson County, southeastern Texas.

Reaching a height of more than feet and producing close to , Jay served as the key Unlike many anti-slavery activists, he was not a pacifist and believed in aggressive action against slaveholders and any government officials who enabled them.

An entrepreneur who ran Taken prisoner after his plane was shot down, he suffered five and a half years of torture and confinement before his release in In , he began his long tenure as the U. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Rockefeller: Standard Oil In , Rockefeller borrowed money to buy out some of his partners and take control of the refinery, which had become the largest in Cleveland.

Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Rockefeller excelled at mental arithmetic and was able to solve difficult arithmetic problems in his head — a talent that would be very useful to him throughout his business career.

In other subjects Rockefeller was an average student but the quality of the education was very high. In , the Rockefellers moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and John attended high school from to He was very good at math and was on the debating team. The school encouraged public speaking and even though Rockefeller was only average, it was a skill that would prove to useful to him.

Early Business Career: In the spring of Rockefeller spent 10 weeks at Folsom's Commercial College — a "chain College" — where he learned single- and double-entry bookkeeping, penmanship, commercial history, mercantile customs, banking, and exchange. From his father he had learned how to draw up notes and other business papers. His father was very meticulous in matters of business and believed in the sacredness of contracts.

In August of , at the age of 16, Rockefeller began looking for work in Cleveland as a bookkeeper or clerk. Business was bad in Cleveland at the time and Rockefeller had problems finding a job. He was always neatly dressed in a dark suit and black tie. Cleveland was not a large city in and Rockefeller could easily visit every business in under a week's time.

He returned to many businesses three times. Rockefeller soon impressed his employers with his seriousness and diligence. He was very exacting and scrupulously honest.

For example, he would not write out a false bill of lading under any circumstances. He went to great lengths to collect overdue accounts. He was pleasant, persistent, and patient, and he got the company's money from the delinquents. For all this work, he was not well paid. But whatever he was paid, he always gave to his church and local charities.

He arranged complicated transportation deals that typically involved moving a single shipment of freight by railroad, canal, and lake boats. He began to engage in trading ventures on his own account. He was naturally cautious and only undertook a business venture when he calculated that it would be successful.

After he carefully weighed a course of action, he would then act quickly and boldly to see it through to fruition. He had iron nerves and would carry through very complicated deals without hesitation. This combination of caution, precision, and resolve soon brought him attention and respect in the broader business community in Cleveland.

On March 1, -- several months before his 20th birthday — Rockefeller went into business for himself, forming a partnership with a neighbor, Maurice Clark. During the Civil War their business expanded rapidly. Grain prices went up and so did their commissions. Rockefeller's style was very precise and calculated. He was not a gambler but a planner. He avoided speculation and refused to make advances or loans.

Rockefeller was extremely hard working. He traveled extensively, drumming up business throughout Ohio, and then would go to the banks and borrow large sums of money to handle the shipments. This aggressive style built the business up every year. However, by the early s, Rockefeller realized that the future of the commission merchant business in Cleveland was going to be limited.

He had become convinced that the railroads were going to become the primary means of transportation for agricultural commodities. This would be to the disadvantage of Cleveland, because its position as an important Lake Erie port was its primary transportation advantage. He saw that the rising grain output of the Midwest and the Northwest of J. Hill would change the nature of the business for good. The huge elevators on Lake Michigan and the flour-millers of Minneapolis would be the dominant players in the business.

Rockefeller came to believe that the future of Cleveland lay in the collection and shipment of raw industrial materials -- not agricultural commodities. This would allow Cleveland to exploit its geographical advantages -- mid-way between the Eastern seaboard and Chicago -- and accessible to both rail and water transportation. He saw his chance in -- oil. Oil Refining On August 27, , Edwin Drake struck oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania, setting off a frenzied oil boom in what soon became known as the "oil regions" of northwestern Pennsylvania.

They had obtained a sample of the Pennsylvania oil and had a Yale University chemist analyze it. The chemist determined that the Pennsylvania oil was of very high quality and could be refined into a variety of useful products. The technology used by Drake was not new. What was new was the idea of drilling for oil -- the idea that you could pump oil out of the ground like you could pump water.

The technology for drilling wells was quite advanced by To that time, wells were drilled for either water or salt more accurately, brine which would be refined to get the salt. In the process of drilling for salt all over the United States in the early 19th century it was not uncommon -- especially in the Pennsylvania area — to get oil seepage into the salt well. Most of the time this was regarded as a nuisance, but some enterprising merchants went into the business of selling the oil in small bottles as a "Natural Remedy" or "Curative Agent.

The technology for refining oil was also known by the early s. Doctor Abraham Gesner, a Canadian, in August patented a method for distilling kerosene a name he invented from the Greek "keros" — wax — and "elaion" — oil from coal. In , a Scottish industrial chemist, James Young, patented a method of obtaining "burning oils" from petroleum through destructive distillation. In two Boston chemists, Luther and William Atwood, began making lubricants from coal tar. Finally, in , Samuel Downer, a whale-oil merchant, bought out the Atwoods and boosted production to , gallons of refined oil a year.

By , coal-oil lamps were widespread and coal-oil was even made in Cleveland. Samuel Adams had experience with shale-oil refining, and Clark brought in his brothers.

This immediately gave Cleveland a transportation advantage over Pittsburgh, which was dominated by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania oil was of high quality.

Rockefeller abhorred waste and devoted considerable energy to increasing the efficiency of his refining business. He believed that the secret of success was attention to detail — to wringing little efficiencies out of every aspect of his business.

He hired his own plumber and bought his own plumbing supplies. He built his own cooperage shop and made his own barrels for the oil. He bought tracts of white-oak timber for making the barrels. Instead of transporting the freshly cut green timber directly to the cooperage shop, he had kilns built on the timber tracts to dry the wood on site, to reduce the shipping weight of the lumber.

He bought his own wagons and horses to transport the wood to the cooperage shop in Cleveland. We would call this "vertical integration" today. The Clarks had resisted borrowing money to expand and Rockefeller was convinced of the correctness of his course. He immediately moved to greatly extend his enterprise. He borrowed heavily and plowed all his profits back into the business in order to expand it further, and took decisive steps to strengthen and increase the efficiency of all aspects of the firm.

In , John D. They also opened a New York City office with William Rockefeller in charge, to handle the export business, which eventually became larger than the domestic business. Henry M. Flagler In , Henry M. Flagler had left school at age Not wanting to burden his poor family any further, he walked to the Erie Canal in and took it to Lake Erie, and then went to Ohio via a lake steamer.

Flagler and Rockefeller had met years earlier in Bellevue, Ohio, when Rockefeller was buying grain for his commission house and Flagler was a grain merchant. Flagler had gone into the salt well business but went broke in He began to recoup his fortune in in Cleveland as a manufacturer of oil barrels and had an office in the same building as Rockefeller.

He had hoped to attend college, but he determined that tuition was too expensive and an unnecessary financial burden on his family. He studied business practices, bookkeeping, and handwriting, graduating from the school in Upon graduation, Rockefeller's first position was as bookkeeper for Hewitt and Tuttle, merchants in Cleveland. In , Rockefeller left this firm and partnered with M. Clark to form his own business. The partners specialized in selling produce. During the American Civil War, Rockefeller and Clark profited tremendously as they sold supplies to the federal government.

In , the two partners joined with Samuel Andrews to establish an oil-refining company. The men purchased oil wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and constructed a well near Cleveland, Ohio. In this year alone, the business earned approximately , dollars. While Rockefeller reaped extensive wealth in , the oil industry was just beginning to grow. Most people only used oil for lighting. The market was limited. Prices fluctuated dramatically, as oil production waxed and waned during this period.

To try and stabilize oil prices Rockefeller and Andrews approached O. Payne, owner of the largest oil refinery in Cleveland. They proposed that the three men unite their companies together. By having a single oil company operating in northeastern Ohio, this company could hopefully fix prices and avoid the tremendous swings as production sometimes increased or dwindled. The company organizers convinced numerous other Cleveland firms to join with them.