Abstract
John D. Rockefeller remains a pivotal figure in American economic history. Muckrakers painted a dismal portrait of Rockefeller and his associates. Standard Oil reduced the price of refined oil to consumers, albeit by consolidating the industry and by initially relying upon rebates from the railroads. The firms receiving rebates often shared the benefits with consumers in the form of lower retail prices. Many of Rockefeller’s tactics were not illegal but were certainly ruthless. Standard Oil, however, operated in an environment of increasing competition.
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Notes
- 1.
This is similar to how many lawyers pursue negligence cases: Some plaintiffs’ attorneys seem to believe that we live in a world where nothing bad would happen except through negligence.
- 2.
The author shares Rockefeller’s amazement at earning interest on his savings account; as a seven-year-old, the added pennies of interest each quarter pleased the author no end. The author considers it a seminal moment in his life.
- 3.
Other Standard Oil officials gave similar testimony, including the story of refunding the drawback.
- 4.
- 5.
Turner presents a more favorable view of Wealth against Commonwealth in his article (1994, 67–68).
- 6.
Lloyd wanted Americans to return to the ethical code of man should love his neighbor as himself. He criticized orthodox economics, especially laissez-faire economics and its claim to have reconciled self-interest with the harmony of others (Turner 1994, 54–57).
- 7.
Russian oil eventually captured 20 percent of the European market by 1889 (Chandler 1985, 363).
- 8.
One bizarre story, which even the Oil Investors’ Journal labeled a “jack-assey story,” had the Standard Oil building a pipeline under cover of night designed to pump salt water from the Gulf of Mexico into the Spindletop field (Pratt 1980, 821). Even Montgomery Burns of The Simpsons would find such an audacious attempt incredible, although he might have wished he had “thought of that,” however.
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Surdam, D.G. (2020). John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. In: Business Ethics from the 19th Century to Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37169-2_6
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