Notes for: John Davison Rockefeller

An oil magnate, John D. Rockefeller started refining oil in Cleveland, Ohio in 1862, and in 1870 founded the Standard Oil Company (Ohio). He moved to take over other oil refineries, until by the early 1880s he had succeeded in holding a near monopoly of oil production in the United States. In 1890 a strong anti-trust mood in the United States led to Congress's passing of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which was directed at such trusts as Standard Oil, the largest of them all. Rockefeller tried to dodge this law by breaking the company into "separate" state corporations--which were still held together by a single directorate, incorporated in 1899 as the holding company, Standard Oil of New Jersey. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court held that this arrangement violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and broke up the holding company. But by this time Rockefeller had turned his interests to works of philanthropy, especially those related to university education in America. In his lifetime he and his Rockefeller Foundation gave away 500 million dollars in education grants. [www.newgenevacenter.org/movers/19th-cen2.htm] A quote attributed to him: "The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well."