Trustees of the church, which position he held till his absence from the
city in the past few years prevented his serving. He has been the
superintendent of the Sunday-school of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church
for about thirty years. When he had held the office for twenty-five
years the Sunday-school celebrated the event by a reception for their
leader. After addresses and music, each one of the five hundred or more
persons present shook hands with Mr. Rockefeller, and laid a flower on
the table beside him. From the first he has won the love of the children
from his sympathy, kindness, and his interest in their welfare. No
picnic even would be satisfactory to them without his presence.
After two years passed in the Cleveland High School, the school-year
ending June, 1855, young Rockefeller took a summer course in the
Commercial College, and at sixteen was ready to see what obstacles the
business world presented to a boy. He found plenty of them. It was the
old story of every place seeming to be full; but he would not allow
himself to be discouraged by continued refusals. He visited
manufacturing establishments, stores, and shops, again and again,
determined to find a position.
He succeeded on the twenty-sixth day of September, 1855, and became
assistant bookkeeper in the forwarding and commission house of Hewitt &
Tuttle. He did not know what pay he was to receive; but he knew he had
taken the first step towards success,--he had obtained work. At the end
of the year, for the three months, October, November, and December, he
received fifty dollars,--not quite four dollars a week.
The next year he was paid twenty-five dollars a month, or three hundred
dollars a year, and at the end of fifteen months, took the vacant
position with the same firm, at five hundred dollars, as cashier and
bookkeeper, of a man who had been receiving a salary of two thousand
dollars.
Desirous of earning more, young Rockefeller after a time asked for eight
hundred dollars as wages; and, the firm declining to give over seven
hundred dollars a year, the enterprising youth, not yet nineteen,
decided to start in business for himself. He had industry and energy; he
was saving of both time and money; he had faith in his ability to
succeed, and the courage to try. He had managed to save about a thousand
dollars; and his father loaned him another thousand, on which he paid
ten per cent interest, receiving the principal as a gift when he became
twenty-one years of age. This certainly was a modest beginning for one
of the founders of the Standard Oil Company.
Having formed a partnership with Morris B. Clark, in 1858, in produce
commission and forwarding, the firm name became Clark & Rockefeller. The
closest attention was given to business. Mr. Rockefeller lived within
his means, and worked early and late, finding little or no time for
recreation or amusements, but always time for his accustomed work in the
church. There was always some person in sickness or sorrow to be
visited, some child to be brought into the Sunday-school, or some
stranger to be invited to the prayer-meetings.
The firm succeeded in business, and was continued with various partners
for seven years, until the spring of 1865. During this time some parts
of the country, especially Pennsylvania and Ohio, had become
enthusiastic over the finding of large quantities of oil through
drilling wells. _The Petroleum Age_ for December, 1881, gives a most
interesting account of the first oil-well in this country, drilled at
Titusville, on Oil Creek, a branch of the Alleghany River, in August,
1859.
Petroleum had long been known, both in Europe and America, under various
names. The Indians used it as a medicine, mixed it with paint to anoint
themselves for war, or set fire at night to the oil that floated upon
the surface of their creeks, making the illumination a part of their
religious ceremonies. In Ohio, in 1819, when, in boring for salt,
springs of petroleum were found, Professor Hildreth of Marietta wrote
that the oil was used in lamps in workshops, and believed it would be "a
valuable article for lighting the street-lamps in the future cities of
Ohio." But forty years went by before the first oil-well was drilled,
when men became almost as excited as in the rush to California for gold
in 1849.
Several refineries were started in Cleveland to prepare the crude oil
for illuminating purposes. Mr. Rockefeller, the young commission
merchant, like his father a keen observer of men and things, as early as
1860, the year after the first well was drilled, helped to establish an
oil-refining business under the firm name of Andrews, Clark, & Co.
The business increased so rapidly that Mr. Rockefeller sold his interest
in the commission house in 1865, and with Mr. Samuel Andrews bought out
their associates in the refining business, and established the firm of
Rockefeller & Andrews, the latter having charge of the practical
details.
Mr. Rockefeller was then less than twenty-six years old; but an
exceptional opportunity had presented itself, and a young man of
exceptional ability was ready for the opportunity. A good and cheap
illuminator was a world-wide necessity; and it required brain, and
system, and rare business ability to produce the best product, and send
it to all nations.
The brother of Mr. Rockefeller, William, entered into the partnership;
and a new firm was established, under the name of William Rockefeller &
Co. The necessity of a business house in New York for the sale of their
products soon became apparent, and all parties were united in the firm
of Rockefeller & Co.
In 1867 Mr. Henry M. Flagler, well known in connection with his
improvements in St. Augustine, Fla., was taken into the company, which
became Rockefeller, Andrews, & Flagler. Three years later, in 1870, the
Standard Oil Company of Ohio was established with a capital of
$1,000,000, Mr. Rockefeller being made president. He was also made
president of the National Refiners' Association.
He was now thirty-one years old, far-seeing, self-centred, quiet and
calm in manner, but untiring in work, and comprehensive in his grasp of
business. The determination which had won a position for him in youth,
even though it brought him but four dollars a week, the confidence in
his ability, integrity, and sound judgment, which made the banks willing
to lend him money, or men willing to invest their capital in his
enterprise, made him a power in the business world thus early in life.
Amid all his business and his church work, he had found time to form
another partnership, the wisest and best of all. In the same high school
with him for two years was a young girl near his own age, Laura C.
Spelman, a bright scholar, refined and sensible.
Her father was a merchant, a Representative in the Legislature of Ohio,
an earnest helper in the church, in temperance, and in all that lifts
the world upward. He was the friend of the slave; and the Spelman home
was one of the restful stations on that "underground railroad" to which
so many colored men and women owe their freedom. He was an active member
for years of Plymouth Congregational Church in Cleveland, and later of
Dr. Buddington's church in Brooklyn, and of the Broadway Tabernacle, New
York, under Dr. Wm. M. Taylor. He died in New York City, Oct. 10, 1881.
Mrs. Spelman, the mother, was also a devoted Christian. She now lives,
at the age of eighty-six, with her daughter, grateful, as she says, for
life's beautiful sunset. She is loved by everybody, and her sweet face
and voice would be sadly missed. She retains all her faculties, and has
as deep an interest as ever in all religious, philanthropic, and
political affairs.
The Spelman ancestors are English. Sir Henry Spelman, knighted by King
James I., died in 1641, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey. Henry S.,
the third son of Sir Henry, and first of the name in America, came to
Jamestown, Va., in 1609, and was killed by the Indians. Richard Spelman,
born in Danbury, England, in 1665, came to Middletown, Conn., in 1700,
and died in 1750. Laura's grandfather, Samuel, was the fourth in line
from Richard. He was one of the pioneers in Ohio, moving thither from
Granville, Mass. Her father, Harvey B. Spelman, was born in a log cabin
in Rootstown, Ohio. Her mother's family came also from Massachusetts,
from the town of Blanford; and her father and mother met and were
married in Ohio.
Laura Spelman was a member of the first graduating class of the
Cleveland High School, and has always retained the deepest interest in
her classmates. After graduating, and spending some time in a
boarding-school at the East, she taught very successfully for five years
in the Cleveland public schools, being assistant in one of the large
grammar schools.
At the age of twenty-five Mr. Rockefeller married Miss Spelman, Sept. 8,
1864. Disliking display or extravagance, fond of books, a wise adviser
in her home, a leader for many years of the infant department in the
Sunday-school, like her father a worker for temperance and in all
philanthropic movements, Mrs. Rockefeller has been an example to the
rich, and a friend and helper to the poor. Comparatively few men and
women can be intrusted with millions, and make the best use of the
money. With Mr. Rockefeller's married life thus happily and wisely
begun, business activities went on as before, perchance with less wear
of body and mind. It was, of course, impossible to organize and carry
forward a great business without anxiety and care.
In Cleave's "Biographical Cyclopædia of Cuyahoga County," it is stated
that, in 1872, two years after the organization of the Standard Oil
Company, "nearly the entire refining interest of Cleveland, and other
interests in New York and the oil-regions, were combined in this company
[the Standard Oil], the capital stock of which was raised to two and a
half millions, and its business reached in one year over twenty-five
million dollars,--the largest company of the kind in the world. The New
York establishment was enlarged in its refining departments; large
tracts of land were purchased, and fine warehouses erected for the
storage of petroleum; a considerable number of iron cars were procured,
and the business of transporting oil entered upon; interests were
purchased in oil-pipes in the producing regions.
"Works were erected for the manufacture of barrels, paints, and glue,
and everything used in the manufacture or shipment of oil. The works had
a capacity of distilling twenty-nine thousand barrels of crude oil per
day, and from thirty-five hundred to four thousand men were employed in
the various departments. The cooperage factory, the largest in the
world, turned out nine thousand barrels a day, which consumed over two
hundred thousand staves and headings, the product of from fifteen to
twenty acres of selected oak."
Ten years after this time, in 1882, the Standard Oil Trust was formed,
with a capital of $70,000,000, afterwards increased to $95,000,000,
which in a few years became possessed of large oil-producing interests,
and of the stock of the companies controlling the greater part of the
refining of petroleum in this country.
Ten years later, in 1892, the Supreme Court of Ohio having declared the
Trust to be illegal, it was dissolved, and the business is now conducted
by separate companies. In each of these Mr. Rockefeller is a
shareholder.
Mr. Rockefeller has proved himself a remarkable organizer. His
associates have been able men; and his vast business has been so
systematized, and the leaders of departments held responsible, that it
is managed with comparative ease.
The Standard Oil Companies own hundreds of thousands of acres of
oil-lands, and wells, refineries, and many thousand miles of pipe-lines
throughout the United States. They have business houses in the principal
cities of the Old World as well as the New, and carry their oil in their
own great oil-steamships abroad as easily as in their pipe-lines to the
American seaboard. They control the greater part of the petroleum
business of this country, and export much of the oil used abroad. They
employ from forty to fifty thousand men in this great industry, many of
whom have remained with the companies for twenty or thirty years. It is
said that strikes are unknown among them.
When it is stated, as in the last United States Census reports, that the
production of crude petroleum in this country is about thirty-five
million barrels a year, the capital invested in the production
$114,000,000, and the value of the exports of petroleum in various forms
amounts to nearly $50,000,000 a year, the vastness of the business is
apparent.
With such power in their hands, instead of selling their product at high
rates, they have kept oil at such low prices that the poorest all over
the world have been enabled to buy and use it.
Mr. Rockefeller has not confined his business interests to the Standard
Oil Company. He owns iron-mines and land in various States; he owns a
dozen or more immense vessels on the lakes, besides being largely
interested in other steamship lines on both the ocean and the great
lakes; he has investments in several railroads, and is connected with
many other industrial enterprises.
With all these different lines of business, and being necessarily a very
busy man, he never seems hurried or worried. His manner is always kindly
and considerate. He is a good talker, an equally good listener, and
gathers knowledge from every source. Meeting the best educators of the
country, coming in contact with leading business and professional men as
well, and having travelled abroad and in his own country, Mr.
Rockefeller has become a man of wide and varied intelligence. In
physique he is of medium height, light hair turning gray, blue eyes, and
pleasant face.
He is a lover of trees, never allowing one to be cut down on his grounds
unless necessity demands it, fond of flowers, knows the birds by their
song or plumage, and never tires of the beauties of nature.
He is as courteous to a servant as to a millionnaire, is social and
genial, and enjoys the pleasantry of bright conversation. He has great
power of concentration, is very systematic in business and also in his
every-day life, allotting certain hours to work, and other hours to
exercise, the bicycle being one of his chief out-door pleasures. He is
fond of animals, and owns several valuable horses. A great Saint Bernard
dog, white and yellow, called "Laddie," was for years the pet of the
household and the admiration of friends. When recently killed
accidentally by an electric wire, the dog was carefully buried, and the
grave covered with myrtle. A pretty stone, a foot and a half high, cut
in imitation of the trunk of an oak-tree, at whose base fern-leaves
cluster, marks the spot, with the words "Our dog Laddie; died, 1895,"
carved upon a tiny slab.
It may be comparatively easy to do great deeds, but the little deeds of
thoughtfulness and love for the dumb creatures who have loved us show
the real beauty and refinement of character.
Mr. Rockefeller belongs to few social organizations, his church work and
his home-life sufficing. He is a member of the New England Society, the
Union League Club of New York, and of the Empire State Sons of the
Revolution, as his ancestors, both on his father's and mother's side,
were in the Revolutionary War.
His home is a very happy one. Into it have been born five
children,--Bessie, Alice, who died early, Alta, Edith, and John D.
Rockefeller, Jr.
Bessie is married to Charles A. Strong, Associate Professor of
Psychology in Chicago University, a graduate of both the University of
Rochester and Harvard, and has been a student at the Universities of
Berlin and Paris. He is a son of the Rev. Dr. Augustus H. Strong,
President of Rochester Theological Seminary.
Edith is married to Harold F. McCormick of Chicago, a graduate of
Princeton, and son of the late Cyrus H. McCormick, whose invention of
the reaper has been a great blessing to the world. Mr. McCormick gave
generously of his millions after he had acquired wealth.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is at Brown University, and will probably be
associated with his father in business, for which he has shown much
aptitude.
The children have all been reared with the good sense and Christian
teaching that are the foundations of the best homes. They have dressed
simply, lived without display, been active in hospital, Sunday-school,
and other good works, and found their pleasures in music, in which all
the family are especially skilled, and in reading. They enjoy out-door
life, skating in winter, and rowing, walking, and riding in the summer;
but there is no lavish use of money for their pleasures.
The daughters know how to sew, and have made many garments for poor
children. They have been taught the useful things of home-life, and
often cook delicacies for the sick. They have found out in their youth
that the highest living is not for self. A recent gift from Miss Alta
Rockefeller is $1,200 annually to sustain an Italian day-nursery in the
eastern part of Cleveland. This summer, 1896, about fifty little people,
two years old and upwards, enjoyed a picnic in the grounds of their
benefactor. Mrs. Rockefeller's mother and sister, Miss Lucy M. Spelman,
a cultivated and philanthropic woman, are the other members of the
Rockefeller family.
Besides Mr. Rockefeller's summer home in Cleveland, he has another with
about one thousand acres of land at Pocantico Hills, near Tarrytown on
the Hudson. The place is picturesque and historic, made doubly
interesting through the legends of Washington Irving. From the summit of
Kaakoote Mountain the views are of rare beauty. Sleepy Hollow and the
grave of Irving are not far distant. The winter home in New York City is
a large brick house, with brown-stone front, near Fifth Avenue,
furnished richly but not showily, containing some choice paintings and a
fine library.
Mr. Rockefeller will be long remembered as a remarkable financier and
the founder of a great organization, but he will be remembered longest
and honored most as a remarkable giver. We have many rich men in
America, but not all are great givers; not all have learned that it is
really more blessed to give than to receive; not all remember that we go
through life but once, with its opportunities to brighten the lives
about us, and to help to bear the burdens of others.
Mr. Rockefeller began to give very early in life, and for the last forty
years has steadily increased his giving as his wealth has increased.
Always reticent about his gifts, it is impossible to learn how much he
has given or for what purposes. Of necessity some gifts become public,
such as his latest to Vassar College of $100,000, a like amount to
Rochester University and Theological Seminary, and the same, it is
believed, to Spelman Seminary, at Atlanta, Ga., named as a memorial to
his father-in-law.
This is a school for colored women and girls, with preparatory, normal,
musical, and industrial departments. The institute opened with eleven
pupils in 1881, and now has 744, with nine buildings on fourteen acres
of land. Dr. J. L. M. Curry said in his report for 1893, "In process of
erection is the finest school building for normal purposes in the South,
planned and constructed expressly with reference to the work of training
teachers, which will cost over $50,000." In the industrial department,
dress-cutting, sewing, cooking, and laundry work are taught. There is
also a training-school for nurses.
In a list of gifts for 1892, in the _New York Tribune_, Mr.
Rockefeller's name appears in connection with Des Moines College, Ia.,
$25,000; Bucknell College, $10,000; Shurtleff College $10,000; the
Memorial Baptist Church in New York, erected through the efforts of Dr.
Edward Judson in memory of his father, Dr. Adoniram Judson, $40,000;
besides large amounts to Chicago University. It is probable that, aside
from Chicago University, these were only a small proportion of his gifts
during that year.
An article in the press states that the recent anonymous gift of $25,000
to help purchase the land for the site of Barnard College of Columbia
University was from Mr. Rockefeller. He has also pledged $100,000
towards a million dollars, which are to be used for the construction of
model tenement houses for the poor in New York City.
He has given largely to the Cleveland Young Men's Christian Association,
and to Young Men's and Women's Christian Associations both in this
country and abroad. He has built churches, given yearly large sums to
foreign and home missions, charity organization societies, Indian
associations, hospital work, fresh-air funds, libraries, kindergartens,
Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for the education of
the colored people at the South, and to the Woman's Christian Temperance
Unions and to the National Temperance Society. He is a total abstainer,
and no wine is ever upon his table. He does not use tobacco in any form.
Mr. Rockefeller's private charities have been almost numberless. He has
aided young men and women through college, sometimes by gift and
sometimes by loan. He has provided the means for persons who were ill to
go abroad or elsewhere for rest. He does not forget, when his apples are
gathered at Pocantico Hills, to send hundreds of barrels to the various
charitable institutions in and near New York, or, when one of his
workingmen dies, to continue the support to his family while it is
needed. Some of us become too busy to think of the little ways of doing
good. It is said by those who know him best, that he gives more time to
his benevolences and to their consideration than to his business
affairs. He employs secretaries, whose time is given to the
investigation of requests for aid, and attending to such cases as are
favorably decided upon.
Mr. Rockefeller's usual plan of giving is to pledge a certain sum on
condition that others give, thus making them share in the blessings of
benevolence. At one time he gave conditionally about $300,000, and it
resulted in $1,700,000 being secured for some twenty or thirty
institutions of learning in all parts of the country. It is said by a
friend, that on his pledge-book are hundreds of charities to which he
gives regularly many thousand dollars each month.
His greatest gift has been that of $7,425,000 to the University of
Chicago. The first University of Chicago existed from 1858 to 1886, a
period of twenty-eight years, and was discontinued from lack of funds.
When the American Baptist Education Society, formed at Washington, D.C.,
in May, 1888, held its first anniversary in Tremont Temple, Boston, it
was resolved "to take immediate steps toward the founding of a
well-equipped college in the city of Chicago." Mr. Rockefeller had
already become interested in founding such an institution, and made a
subscription of $600,000 toward an endowment fund, conditioned on the
pledging by others of $400,000 before June 1, 1890. The Rev. T. W.
Goodspeed, and the Rev. E. T. Gates, Secretary of the Education Society,
succeeded in raising this amount, and in addition a block and a half of
ground as a site for the institution, valued at $125,000, given by Mr.
Marshall Field of Chicago. Two and a half blocks were purchased for
$282,500, making in all twenty-four acres, lying between the two great
south parks of Chicago, Washington and Jackson, and fronting on the
Midway Plaisance, a park connecting the other two. These parks contain a
thousand acres.
The university was incorporated in 1890, and Professor William Rainey
Harper of Yale University was elected President. The choice was an
eminently wise one, a man of progressive ideas being needed for the
great university. He had graduated at Muskingum College in 1870, taken
his degree of Ph.D. at Yale in 1875, been Professor of Hebrew and the
cognate languages at the Baptist Union Theological Seminary for seven
years, Professor of the Semitic Languages at Yale for five years, and
Woolsey Professor of Biblical Literature at Yale for two years, besides
filling other positions of influence.
In September, 1890, Mr. Rockefeller made a second subscription of
$1,000,000; and, in accordance with the terms of this gift, the
Theological Seminary was removed from Morgan Park to the University
site, as the Divinity School of the University, and dormitories erected,
and an academy of the University established at Morgan Park.