Biography of J. D. Rockefeller

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J. D. Rockefeller: The Business Tycoon Who Changed American Society

For 29 years, the Standard Oil Trust dominated the oil refining business around the globe. The head of this magnificent franchise was the industrialist of the century, John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. Coming from humble beginnings, Rockefeller had to work hard to prosper in life. By the time he died, Rockefeller had become the richest man to have ever lived. He created the first American trust, which was soon copied by other businesses thus changing American society. The idea of the trust created a huge gap between America’s middle-class population and the “gilded” upper-class that controlled all the big businesses and corporations by the middle of the 20th century.

J. D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839 into a humble middle-class family in Richford, New York. With a strictly baptist mother, Rockefeller’s childhood was religiously oriented, a tool his mom used to infuse stability in his house. From the time of his birth, his mother moved his family all across the United States to look for the perfect place to reside. In 1853, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and settled there. Rockefeller graduated from high school there and attended commercial college for a few months. At the age of 16, Rockefeller got a job clerking in a produce commision house. Rockefeller entered the same business at age 19, with a young Englishman named Maurice Clark. The two men profited greatly from the company named Clark and

Rockefeller. With Clark’s exceptional field work, and Rockefeller’s organized office management and bookkeeping, their business thrived during the Civil War. The company also branched out after the Pennsylvania Oil Strike in 1859...

... middle of paper ...

...ent. Instead, family members worked together in closely knit communities.

After Standard Oil’s empire was washed away, America changed a lot financially and economically. More and more huge corporations began to fill the landscape, in which skilled labor of the past was being rapidly replaced by machines and unskilled labor. As more and more

corporations started to hand out minimum wage, the owners of the companies kept getting richer and the workers earned barely enough to survive. As a result of this, the wealth of the middle-class stayed about the same, but the wealth of the upper-class grew exponentially. This kick started America’s Gilded Age in which industrialization grew rapidly, but the level of poverty rose because of lowered minimum wage. In turn, the middle-class started to suffer greatly, but the upper-class lived very affluently.

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