John D Rockefeller Research Paper

John D. Rockefeller was the owner of Standard Oil Company. John was born into a very poor family and had to work very hard to start Standard Oil. He also had many problems later in his career. One of the problems he had during his career was the antitrust laws which made him disband his trust into many of the different companies that made up the trust. After Rockefeller stopped working at Standard Oil day to day he became a philanthropist and donated a lot of his money to help different causes.

John Davison Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839 in Richford, New York. Both of his parents came to America from Germany. His father was William Avery Rockefeller and was not around much in Rockefeller’s childhood. This meant that John was influenced
With this borrowed money and the money he had made with his other business, he bought the largest oil refinery in Cleveland, Ohio and started Standard Oil. Rockefeller formed Standard Oil with his younger brother William Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, and a group of other men. John was the company’s president and the largest shareholder. Over the next few years, Rockefeller made new partners and grew his business interest in the growing oil industry. In 1882 these companies combined to form the Standard Oil Trust. This trust would soon control about 90% of the nation’s refineries and pipelines in America. One of the reasons Standard Oil was so successful was that they bought rival companies and started companies for distributing and marketing their products. “In order to exploit economies of scale, Standard Oil did everything from building it’s own barrels to employing scientists to figure out a use for petroleum by products.” Because of Rockefeller’s enormous wealth and fame, he was often the target of people spreading rumours about how he ran his business and how he became successful. As the New York Times reported in 1937: “ He was accused of crushing out competition, getting rich on rebates from railroads, bribing men to spy on competing companies, making secret agreements, coercing rivals to join the Standard Oil Trust under threat of being forced out of business, building up enormous fortunes on the ruins of other men, and so