John D. Rockefeller, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where John D. Rockefeller comes up
Standard Oil Part II (Extended Cut) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:30:05 David Rosenthal Did you read about Rockefeller's reaction when he gets the news?
- ▶ 1:31:46 David Rosenthal So Rockefeller, he had, he had come out of hiding at this point.
- ▶ 1:32:03 David Rosenthal He, he subpoenaed Rockefeller and was willing to, uh, cause he wanted him to come, you know, testify and was willing to grant him criminal immunity, uh, if he came to testify.
- ▶ 1:32:11 David Rosenthal So Rockefeller was like, I'll take that.
- ▶ 1:33:31 Ben Gilbert Oh, does Rockefeller buy?
- ▶ 1:33:32 David Rosenthal Rockefeller.
- ▶ 1:33:33 David Rosenthal Rockefeller.
- ▶ 1:34:14 David Rosenthal Rockefeller does Buffett one better.
- ▶ 1:36:06 David Rosenthal He turns to the priest smiling, and he says, Father Lennon, whose name is Lennon, um, have you some money, and everybody in the golfing party is like, uh, geez, John, I mean, I know this is bad that Standard's going to get broken up, but…
- ▶ 1:36:32 David Rosenthal So he's like, what, uh, Father Lenin's like, uh, uh, what, why do you ask John?
- ▶ 1:36:39 David Rosenthal Rockefeller says, because if you did, you should buy some standard oil stock right now.
- ▶ 1:37:01 David Rosenthal Uh, but in the long run, uh, to Rockefeller, you know, the whole, the, the line, and it's true is that he made more money in retirement and after Standard Oil was broken up than he did while he was working.
- ▶ 1:37:12 David Rosenthal So what happens, and it turns out right here, this was literally the luckiest stroke of Rockefeller's career.
- ▶ 1:37:19 David Rosenthal Precisely because he lost the antitrust suit, Rockefeller was converted from a mere millionaire with an estimated worth of net worth of three hundred million in 1911 into something just short of history's first billionaire.
- ▶ 1:40:08 David Rosenthal I don't know if it was alongside the sports section or whatnot, keeping track of Rockefeller's net worth.
- ▶ 1:40:57 David Rosenthal Instead, at JD's suggestion, you know, sort of like voice from, from the golf course, he's like, how about y'all meet for coffee at 10:30 instead?
- ▶ 1:45:30 David Rosenthal Um, that's not what Rockefeller and the cronies and all the people that were having lunch at 26 Broadway or coffee,
- ▶ 1:47:52 unnamed speaker Which is a little cute wink wink nudge nudge by Rockefeller and crew to say, and we're still S-O.
- ▶ 1:50:38 Ben Gilbert I want to end with just, like, illustrating Standard's wealth here, because, uh, uh, or in more, more in particular, Rockefeller's wealth, because we've talked about a few figures over time.
- ▶ 1:52:26 Ben Gilbert But, you know, there is no one who controls two to three percent of the nation's GDP in their pockets the way that, that Rockefeller did in 1913.
- ▶ 1:52:42 David Rosenthal He had already given away about half of his wealth at that point.
- ▶ 1:53:16 Ben Gilbert Like, if you think that Rockefeller, he sort of had the potential to have, like, seven, eight hundred billion in terms of the amount of, of sort of influence of the nation's wealth that he controlled.
- ▶ 1:53:46 David Rosenthal Uh, but, uh, but this is the scale, like, yeah, nobody could touch Rockefeller.
- ▶ 1:56:53 David Rosenthal You know, again, because like when we're talking about the philanthropy, like Rockefeller didn't want his name on stuff.
- ▶ 1:57:46 Ben Gilbert So it's this really interesting thing where Junior, whereas Senior kind of
- ▶ 1:58:05 Ben Gilbert In fact, Carnegie, he was, Rockefeller was so well known for being the medical donor that, like, when Carnegie got approached with projects like this, he would go, I do believe you're looking for Mr.
- ▶ 1:58:16 Ben Gilbert So, like, that was, Rockefeller put his stamp there.
- ▶ 1:59:34 David Rosenthal Not the, I think they tore down the buildings, and the MoMA is a new building there, but that land was when the family first moved from Cleveland to New York, they, they built two, they, they bought two mansions next door to each other,…
- ▶ 2:00:36 David Rosenthal Senior loved ice skating.
- ▶ 2:01:06 David Rosenthal HBO and the, uh, Silicon Valley writers team could have a field day with Rockefeller if they were to go do, like, a retro version of Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 2:06:02 David Rosenthal China, you know, is Rockefeller's argument, right?
- ▶ 2:06:42 David Rosenthal Then they kept, especially after, after Rockefeller left, you know, Archbold and the other cronies, they kept using those tactics even after they'd already crossed the point, and that was bad.
- ▶ 2:07:45 David Rosenthal But once they did wipe out all the competition and Rockefeller was against this, but the cronies started doing it, uh, they started raising prices and exploiting monopolistic pricing power.
- ▶ 2:20:58 David Rosenthal When the Tarbell articles came out and Rockefeller and everybody was like, oh, we don't need to say anything here.
- ▶ 2:24:00 Ben Gilbert But to hear, you know, the, the John D's descendants pledging, you know, it's, it's this delicious dichotomy of, of John D believing that we should hold on to the standard shares because they're going to be so valuable forever and hoard…
Standard Oil Part I · Acquired
- ▶ 1:22 Ben Gilbert Well, this episode on Standard Oil is, of course, the oil monopoly founded in the 18 seventies by John D.
- ▶ 1:54 David Rosenthal So yeah, John Dee becomes the wealthiest person in like, you know, modern human history before gasoline.
- ▶ 3:33 David Rosenthal John D.
- ▶ 3:36 David Rosenthal Today he would have started his career working for Pilot.
- ▶ 6:50 David Rosenthal He wrote the book that Hamilton's based on, yep, and also wrote Titan, the biography, the definitive biography of John Davison Rockefeller that is the main source for this episode.
- ▶ 7:32 David Rosenthal And, and, uh, I, I gotta, I think the perfect place to, to start is with, uh, with one of Chernow's, one of Ron's quotes at the very beginning in the introduction to Titan, where he says, the story of John D.
- ▶ 9:23 David Rosenthal Of course, we're talking about John Rockefeller's father here.
- ▶ 13:40 David Rosenthal They named the boy John Davison Rockefeller.
- ▶ 13:46 David Rosenthal Uh, and oh boy, does little JD have a lot of both John Davison and Wild Bill Rockefeller in him.
- ▶ 13:54 David Rosenthal So on the Rockefeller side, uh, little John is like, he's like totally captivated by his dad.
- ▶ 14:07 David Rosenthal Uh, when he comes back, John like totally dotes on him.
- ▶ 14:12 David Rosenthal He, he would, he would even for the, like the rest of his life, Rockefeller would like intensely defend his father.
- ▶ 15:16 Ben Gilbert He'd make sure that everybody knew that there was at least one, maybe lots of hundreds in this fat wad of cash, whereas John Dee would grow up and detest shows of wealth.
- ▶ 16:44 David Rosenthal So here's where these, these two sides of John's, you know, uh, maternal and paternal sides here seem like oil and water.
- ▶ 17:14 David Rosenthal And this also has a huge impact on, on JD.
- ▶ 17:57 Ben Gilbert It is this incredibly unique thing about John D.
- ▶ 18:18 Ben Gilbert John Dee held these things to be intertwined, that he should go make as much money as possible, to give no penny away in any deal, in any business dealing, to always get as much as he could, and to be simultaneously incredibly…
- ▶ 19:01 David Rosenthal John D makes like, you know, uh, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg look like just children.
- ▶ 19:21 David Rosenthal In 1853, when John is 14, and sorta, you know, a teenager, sorta just on the cusp of manhood, uh, Bill sweeps in, comes back from one of his trips, and decides, announces that he is gonna move the family away from New York to Ohio,…
- ▶ 21:08 David Rosenthal Uh, so they show, they moved to Ohio, uh, and at first, before Bill marries his second wife concurrently, Margaret, um, he sends, uh, he sends John and his little brother William to a boarding house in Cleveland to go to like a real high…
- ▶ 21:35 David Rosenthal He sends a note to, he sends a letter to John and says, ah, you know, this, uh, schooling thing and the, well, well, well, plans have changed and I, I can't really pay anymore for you and William to go to school.
- ▶ 22:07 David Rosenthal Uh, and this, this really was not what John was planning, but, um, he does drop out of school and he decides, remember, he's got this, this love of money.
- ▶ 23:53 David Rosenthal And get this, for the rest of Rockefeller's, like, eighty-plus-year life,
- ▶ 24:45 David Rosenthal John betrayed a special affinity for accounting and an almost mystic faith in numbers.
- ▶ 24:51 David Rosenthal For Rockefeller, ledgers were sacred books that guided decisions and saved one from fallible,
- ▶ 25:17 David Rosenthal how, uh, I didn't talk about this earlier, but they're actually, supposedly, also, when John was a younger kid, he would also, like, go to the general store and, and buy, like, uh, a big block of candy and cut it up into little pieces and…
- ▶ 26:37 David Rosenthal So, um, uh, John D is, you know, rising quickly through the ranks, uh, pretty much immediately.
- ▶ 26:54 David Rosenthal Uh, so not quite two years after, uh, John joins the firm, Tuttle, the junior partner leaves, uh, to go seek his own, you know, fortunes, uh, out from, uh, the,
- ▶ 27:05 David Rosenthal Under the thumb of the senior partner, Hewitt, and Hewitt's like, all right, well, John, you're, you're, you're my new, uh, partner, not partner, but, you know, you're, you're gonna take, uh, Tuttle's role here.
- ▶ 27:17 David Rosenthal Um, John is like, well, that's nice.
- ▶ 27:30 David Rosenthal John is undeterred though.
- ▶ 28:33 David Rosenthal And Rockefeller put in half of it.
- ▶ 28:35 Ben Gilbert It wasn't Rockefeller, like, finding ways to borrow from Devil Bill at, like, kind of, I mean, it was like, 10% interest rates, and 15%, it was kind of like Devil Bill was kind of figuring out ways to take advantage of his son.
- ▶ 29:47 David Rosenthal Uh, one, Rockefeller doesn't fight in the civil war, despite being, uh,
- ▶ 30:07 Ben Gilbert He even has a, you know, Rockefeller's very, um, careful in how he messages the strife going on in his family.
- ▶ 34:17 David Rosenthal Right as, as Rockefeller and Clark have all this money that they need to have something to do with, people come up with the idea.
- ▶ 36:54 David Rosenthal So Rockefeller is like, oh, okay, cool.
- ▶ 37:06 Ben Gilbert But of course, Rockefeller is feeling a little hesitant to do too much of it, because he's like, ah, this is speculative.
- ▶ 37:57 David Rosenthal So this is, like, really hard to get knowledge, and it just so happens that the one guy in Cleveland, a guy named Samuel Andrews, who knows how to refine oil, is Bud's with Rockefeller's partner, Clark.
- ▶ 39:52 David Rosenthal But Rockefeller overhears what's going on, and he pipes in, and he's like, hey, actually, I think that's, that's, that's not a bad idea.
- ▶ 40:02 David Rosenthal Uh, and Clark, of course, knows that, you know, Rockefeller's really good at this stuff, and he's like, okay, uh, fine.
- ▶ 41:44 David Rosenthal You know, Andrews, the chemist is like, dude, I'm like the technical talent, but Rockefeller is like everything around it, the operations, how crude comes in, how they refine, like where things are located in the factory.
- ▶ 42:52 David Rosenthal So Rockefeller though, like he's, uh, you know, all, all of this, the behavior of the other folks, this causes huge gyrations in price.
- ▶ 43:33 David Rosenthal So Rockefeller though, like he's, he's just got this vision where he's like, oh man, the more profit I make, the more money, the more capital I can put into this, the more oil I can hold, the more I can produce.
- ▶ 45:54 David Rosenthal So, uh, Rockefeller is like, I mean, he, he, he's, he's like found his calling here.
- ▶ 46:13 David Rosenthal Clark is, like, not so into how much capital, uh, Rockefeller is tying up in the business here.
- ▶ 46:27 David Rosenthal And Rockefeller's like, no, like, reinvest in R&D and, like, CapEx and, uh, and inventory.
- ▶ 46:37 David Rosenthal Rockefeller starts going around all the banks and all the financers in Cleveland and lining up.
- ▶ 47:32 David Rosenthal Uh, Chernow has this amazing quote that he finds from Rockefeller.
- ▶ 47:40 David Rosenthal Rockefeller apparently like wrote or said this at some point.
- ▶ 47:55 David Rosenthal Rockefeller engineers a coup.
- ▶ 48:04 David Rosenthal So John baits them one day into threatening that, uh, that they should just dissolve the partnership.
- ▶ 48:11 David Rosenthal And John's like, okay, great.
- ▶ 48:43 David Rosenthal So he, Rockefeller immediately goes to the local paper, uh, and places a notice that the partnership is dissolving and that there's going to be an auction for, uh, the assets of the partnership, including the oil refineries.
- ▶ 48:56 David Rosenthal And it sets up this showdown where the Clark brothers and Rockefeller bid against each other for each other's 50%, uh, stake in the business.
- ▶ 49:26 David Rosenthal Uh, so Rockefeller though, remember he's got, he's been going and getting the relationships with all the banks and financers.
- ▶ 49:40 David Rosenthal He buys Clark's 50% of the oil business for 72,500 dollars, and an exchange also gives Clark, Rockefeller's, gives, gives Clark his 50% share of the produce trading.
- ▶ 50:13 David Rosenthal Uh, Rockefeller would say later, it was the day that determined my career.
- ▶ 50:38 David Rosenthal Uh, it was more than Rockefeller wanted to pay, but this happens in 18, 65 in the beginning of, in February of 18, 65 back to what's going on in America.
- ▶ 51:14 Ben Gilbert Well, because all these soldiers are coming back and getting jobs in factories, like, you have sort of an industrial boom here, and it's interesting how Rockefeller's sort of obsessed with, I'm not a speculator.
- ▶ 52:14 David Rosenthal Did, did Rockefeller know the war was gonna end in two months?
- ▶ 52:58 David Rosenthal Soon, John D.
- ▶ 54:33 Ben Gilbert And like, I think Rockefeller is basically observing that the kerosene that could power the world is, uh,
- ▶ 57:03 David Rosenthal Uh, he sends, he, he dispatches, Rockefeller dispatches his little brother, William, who's now working in the business, to New York City to go handle all of the export business for Standard Oil.
- ▶ 57:33 Ben Gilbert Rockefeller has a bit of his father in him, uh, sort of a flair for showmanship, and, um, he really needs 15,000 dollars.