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John Rockefeller


            Standard Oil and 19th Century Business.
             John Davidson Rockefeller (1839-1937) was the founding father of one of the strongest corporations in the history of the business world. His peerless leadership abilities and his dynamic attention to the details of his business enabled him to erect the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry in the decades leading into the 20th century. However, the Standard Oil Company caused great controversy in the [Rockefeller].
             business world during this time because of Rockefeller's controversial vertical integration approach to business, drastic price cuts and building of trusts. The Standard Oil Company was forced to disseminate in 1911, by ruling of the Supreme Court, into thirty-eight individual firms (Rockefeller 2). Some historians may say that Rockefeller's largest mistake was his enormous success in his great business venture.
             In The American Spirit, a book of historical documents and excerpts, by authors David M. Kennedy and Thomas A. Bailey, Rockefeller's famous tactics are broken down in a commentary by George Rice, a competitor of Rockefeller's, entitled "An Oil Man Goes Bankrupt (1899)". The writer of this powerful piece illustrates his difficulties with the Standard Oil Trust throughout his thirty-year career in the petroleum and refinery business. He discusses how Standard Oil built an unlawful empire through tainting the rates of the railroad and freight industries and controlling the prices of goods completely to their own discretion (Kennedy and Bailey 71). Rice explains in vivid detail, the price cuts that Rockefeller would place on his goods to lure customers away from his competition. Rice states, " they [Standard Oil] could temporarily cut only my customers" prices, and below cost", he also says, " they could effectively do this without causing themselves any significant financial harm" (Kennedy and Bailey 71).


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