American capitalist, born in Richford, Tioga county, NY, on the 8th of July 1839. In 1853 his family removed to Ohio, living after 1857 in Cleveland, where Rockefeller had begun to work as a bookkeeper in 1855 and where in 1858 he went into the produce commission business. His firm, Clark & Rockefeller, in 1862 invested in an oil refinery, planned by Samuel Andrews, and in 1865 Rockefeller sold out his share to his partner Clark, bought for $72,500 a larger share in another refinery, and formed the partnership of Rockefeller & Andrews. At about the same time another refinery was started by Rockefeller’s brother William (1841–1922), but in 1867 Rockefeller & Andrews absorbed this business, and Henry M. Flagler was added to the partnership. In 1870 the two Rockefellers, Flagler, Andrews and a refiner named Stephen V. Harkness formed the Standard Oil Company, with a capital of $1,000,000 (increased in 1872 to $2,500,000 and in 1874 to $3,500,000), of which John D. Rockefeller was president. This great corporation gradually established itself in practical control of the oil production in America, by means of business methods and financial operations which have been severely criticized, but which brought immense wealth to those concerned. Its capital was further increased in 1882, when separate companies were organized in each state; and in later years, as the first great American “trust,” the Standard Oil Company was hotly attacked during the anti-trust movement. Into the merits of this question it is impossible to enter here. Rockefeller himself retired from active business in 1895; he had for a time large iron interests (mines and ore-carrying vessels) on Lake Superior, which he sold to the United States Steel Corporation, and his personal wealth was probably greater than that of any other man in the country. In private life he was a devoted member of the Baptist church, and his benefactions were numerous. To “the University of Chicago founded by John D. Rockefeller” (in 1892) he had given, up to 1910, $24,809,666, while to the General Education Board he had given $43,000,000; he founded (1901) and supported the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City; he gave large sums to Rush Medical College in Chicago, to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, to Barnard College in New York City and to the Baptist Missionary Society; and in 1909 he gave $1,000,000 to endow a medical commission to investigate the nature of the hook-worm and to suppress the hook-worm disease.
Rockefeller continued after 1910 to live a retired life, and to give great sums for charitable and educational purposes. In 1913 the Rockefeller Foundation was chartered under the laws of the state of New York (Congress having refused to enact the legislation necessary for a national charter) “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” To this, the most extensive of his benefactions, Rockefeller had given in all $180,000,000 by 1921. The income and $10,000,000 of the original gifts were expended from time to time by its trustees. With increasing definiteness the Rockefeller Foundation focussed its efforts in the fields of medical education and public health. After 1913 it supported by appropriations the International Health Board, an independent organization engaged, in cooperation with governmental agencies, in demonstrations for the control of hookworm disease in fourteen southern states of the United States and twenty-two foreign states or countries; of yellow fever in five South and Central American countries and of malaria in ten southern states of the United States. In addition, the International Health Board, with funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, organized in 1917, partly as a war measure, the Commission for Prevention of Tuberculosis in France; this commission conducted in limited areas, as demonstrations, vigorous campaigns of popular education in hygiene, and provided for the training of French women as health visitors. By the end of 1920 arrangements were under way for the continuation of the work of the Commission by French authorities. In 1914 the Rockefeller Foundation established the China Medical Board to promote the development of scientific medicine and hygiene in China through medical schools, hospitals, and training schools for nurses. In 1919 the Peking Union Medical College, founded by it, was opened together with pre-medical and nurse-training schools. Gifts have been made also to other institutions in China offering pre-medical courses, and to hospitals. In 1920 the Foundation established a Division of Medical Education, through whose advice large pledges of money were made for the development of medical centres in London, and in various cities of Canada. As a part of its public-health work, the Rockefeller Foundation also made grants for the support of schools of hygiene at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and at the university of São Paulo, Brazil. A special feature of the work was provision for fellowships to persons from many different countries engaged in study in medical education and public health. During the year 1920, seventy-one fellows from thirteen countries (including the United States) were supported. During the World War the Foundation contributed to war work agencies; and before crystallization of its general policy of limiting its work to medical education and public health, it made appropriations to a number of objects in other fields.
To the General Education Board, the next largest of his charities, Rockefeller had given up to December 1920 over $115,000,000. By the close of the fiscal year 1920, this Board had contributed more than $32,000,000 towards the endowments of different colleges, excluding professional departments, the general practice being to make gifts contingent upon the raising of additional sums. Among medical schools which received help were Washington University, $2,345,000; Johns Hopkins, over $2,200,000; University of Chicago, $2,000,000 (joint fund with the Rockefeller Foundation, 1916); Vanderbilt, $4,000,000 (1919); Rochester, $5,000,000 (1920); Yale Medical School, $1,582,000; and the Meharry Medical College (for negroes), Nashville, TN, $150,000 (1920). The Board’s facilities for aiding medical education were greatly increased in 1919 by a further gift from Rockefeller of $20,000,000, both principal and interest to be expended in the United States during the next fifty years. In 1919 it gave $500,000 towards the endowment of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard, opened the following year; and in 1920 appropriated $1,000,000 to the proposed building fund of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, the largest gift yet made to any institution for training teachers. To the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York, Rockefeller gave in all upwards of $25,000,000. In November 1920 announcement was made that he had given more than $63,000,000 to the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, New York, largely for the continuing of charities in which Mrs. Rockefeller, who died in 1915, had been interested. By that time more than $8,000,000 had already been appropriated, chiefly for the benefit of women and children.
It was estimated at the beginning of 1921 that the total amount given by Mr. Rockefeller for philanthropic and charitable purposes exceeded $500,000,000. Nearly four-fifths of this had gone to the four great charitable corporations which he created: The Rockefeller Foundation, General Education Board, The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Quite as significant as the magnitude of these gifts was the fact that they were free from all restrictions, having been given for the general purposes of the respective corporations, the trustees of which have power to dispose of the principal as well as the income. As the corporate purposes of these organizations are extremely broad, and the gifts are free from restrictions, they will always be adaptable to the changing needs of the future generations. While it was probably true that Mr. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world, it would appear, in view of the statements made by competent authorities, that his wealth in 1921 was less than $500,000,000, and that in making his gifts he had drawn very heavily upon capital as well as income.
See Ida M. Tarbell’s History of the Standard Oil Company (New York, 1903), a severe attack on the Trust; also his own Random Reminiscences (1909).
