EPUB paragraph 72 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Having always loathed hymns, Edith shared Harold’s affection for the opera—she paid for the translation of several librettos into English—and they frequently threw dinner parties on opera nights. In a habit that curiously parodied her father, Edith kept a small jeweled clock at the dinner table and held the guests to a precise schedule, so that everyone arrived at the opera on time. When she pressed a button for the next course, the team of waiters whisked plates away from the startled guests, whether they were finished or not. Edith ran a hierarchical household and never addressed most of the servants directly, dealing exclusively with the top two of them.
EPUB paragraph 73 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
It is easy to satirize Edith’s foibles and dismiss her as dilettante, yet she was fiercely devoted to her adopted causes. After she had five children—John, Fowler, Muriel, Editha, and Mathilde—Edith created a kindergarten for girls, with classes held in French. Senior doted on her eldest son, John Rockefeller McCormick, known as Jack. During the winter of 1900–1901, Jack and Fowler were staying at Pocantico when both boys contracted scarlet fever. Whatever the latent tensions between them, Edith gratefully remembered her father’s behavior during Jack’s illness. “As long as I live I shall never forget the great love and the untiring effort which you put forth to save dear Jack’s life,” she wrote to him a few years later. “Absolutely forgetful of self and showing a love much like the Christ love.” To confine the disease, Rockefeller constructed a special staircase that allowed the children and nurses to go from the upstairs sickroom to a glass-enclosed porch without infecting other household members. Rockefeller offered one New York physician a half-million dollars to save the two boys. Little was then known about the cause or treatment of scarlet fever, and although Fowler recovered, John Rockefeller McCormick, nearly four years old, died at Pocantico on January 2, 1901. The shock was no less profound to Rockefeller than to Edith and Harold. A scurrilous rumor later circulated that Edith had learned of Jack’s death from a butler during a dinner party at her Chicago mansion, but the report was bogus. Edith happened to be at Pocantico at the time.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Harold McCormick · Fowler McCormick · Muriel McCormick · Mathilde McCormick Oser · John Rockefeller McCormick · Editha McCormick · New York · Pocantico Hills · Chicago · John
EPUB paragraph 74 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Jack McCormick’s death strengthened Rockefeller’s resolve to endow a medical-research institute. A year later, as a memorial to their son, Edith and Harold created the John McCormick Institution of Infectious Diseases in Chicago. Among the grants it gave out was one to researchers at Johns Hopkins, who isolated the bacterium that causes scarlet fever and set the stage for a treatment.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Harold McCormick · John Rockefeller McCormick · Chicago · Johns Hopkins · John McCormick Institution of Infectious Diseases
EPUB paragraph 75 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
After Jack’s death, Harold succumbed to depression. His charm and gaiety had always veiled a deep vein of melancholy, and he now sought psychiatric help in Switzerland. In 1908, he returned as a patient to the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic outside Zurich under the care of Dr. Carl Jung. Edith had also long exhibited manic-depressive mood swings that only widened after the birth of Mathilde in April 1905. Because she had been ill during the pregnancy, Edith and Harold toured Europe by automobile that summer, leaving the baby with John and Cettie. After a fleeting improvement in her health, Edith relapsed the next spring and was belatedly diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis of the kidney. Rockefeller knew his daughter’s troubles were as much psychological as physical in origin and observed to Harold’s brother Cyrus that Edith would “require quiet and rest for some time, after all the severe strain through which she has passed in the last few years.” For both Harold and Edith, the lure of Europe deepened over the years, a magnetic attraction that the provincial Rockefellers found difficult to fathom.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Harold McCormick · Mathilde McCormick Oser · Carl Jung · John Rockefeller McCormick · Rockefeller family · Zurich · Europe · Switzerland · Cyrus · Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic · John
EPUB paragraph 76 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Edith’s marriage to Harold McCormick brought Rockefeller under renewed scrutiny because it attached him to the reaper trust as well as the oil trust and steel trust. In August 1902, George Perkins, a J. P. Morgan partner, amalgamated McCormick Harvesting Machine, Deering Harvester, and three smaller competitors into International Harvester, a behemoth with 85 percent of the farm-equipment market. Harold McCormick was named vice president and brother Cyrus president of the company. It was a troubled merger, and the McCormicks feared that Perkins and the Deerings were secretly plotting to gain control of the company. To create a counterweight, they persuaded Rockefeller to take a five-million-dollar block of preferred stock. Never one to do things by halves, Rockefeller soon expanded his stake to between twenty-five and thirty million dollars. His loans to International Harvester later rose as high as $60 million, and he took stock in the trust as collateral.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Harold McCormick · J. P. Morgan · International Harvester · George Perkins · McCormicks · Cyrus · Perkins · Deerings · McCormick Harvesting Machine · Deering Harvester
EPUB paragraph 77 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
This discreet collaboration did not thaw the icy relations between the Rockefeller family and the house of Morgan. On the contrary, the Rockefellers spied conspiracies everywhere. When Junior learned that control of International Harvester would be vested in a three-man voting-trust committee composed of Perkins, Cyrus McCormick, and one of the Deerings, he felt their worst fears were confirmed. “The object of so tying up these securities is that J.P. Morgan & Co. may be assured of the control of the business for a given period of years, and they have made every effort to make it difficult, yes well nigh impossible, for the securities to change hands,” he wrote to Senior. Though Rockefeller requested a board seat, George Perkins countered that this would tip the power balance toward the McCormicks and “engender feelings so strong that he could not hope to harmonize them,” as Junior told his father. Since the Rockefellers thought that J. P. Morgan and Company secretly exercised the Deering shares, they were not entirely surprised when their vigorous dissent came to nothing.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · J. P. Morgan · International Harvester · Rockefeller family · Cyrus McCormick · George Perkins · McCormicks · Perkins · Deerings · J.P. Morgan & Co. · Deering
EPUB paragraph 78 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Equipped with a fine instinct for flattery, Harold professed the greatest admiration for Senior’s business abilities. “I have always taken you and the Standard Oil Company as my ideals in the progress of a large company,” he told him a year after the reaper trust was formed. Rockefeller did not reciprocate the sentiment and grew critical of Harold’s stewardship of International Harvester. He developed a lengthy list of grievances, including Harold’s failure to notify him of upcoming earnings reports. Sounding an old refrain, he also chastised Harold for paying excessive dividends. In time, George Perkins grew adamant that the dividend should be boosted, even though the company was borrowing heavily. When Gates went to Morgan to protest, he came away convinced that the house of Morgan was milking the stock for short-term profit. “It is further highly probable,” he told Rockefeller, “that the reason why Morgan & Co. are so insistent on increasing the dividend from 4 to 6% is to enable them to sell out their stocks at a very high figure on the basis of the increased dividend. The stock has lately been manipulated upward clearly by an insider namely Mr. Perkins who knew that it was closely held and little was to be had.” Senior was dismayed when Harold and Cyrus McCormick protested this only in the lamest fashion. When the voting trust expired in 1912, the McCormicks, with a majority of shares, grimly maintained control, but Rockefeller gradually sold off his position. He would not allow family sentiment to overrule his business judgment.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Harold McCormick · J. P. Morgan · Frederick T. Gates · Standard Oil · International Harvester · Cyrus McCormick · George Perkins · McCormicks · Perkins · Morgan & Co.
EPUB paragraph 79 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Unlike the nonconformist Edith, the middle daughter, Alta, was kind and obedient and always eager to please her parents. Slender and dainty, she was an anxious teenager and wrote to her brother reassuringly from the Rye Female Seminary, “Classes are not very large and I shall not be frightened.” Of the three daughters, she probably felt most affectionate toward father and never strayed too far from the family fold. “No, I don’t change,” she once confessed to a friend. “I’m still wearing cotton stockings.” She could exhibit a touching innocence and even when married with children radiated a girlish charm. “She seemed just like the 16 years old daughter of the home,” Cettie told her diary after a visit from the forty-one-year-old Alta.
Names: Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Rye Female Seminary
EPUB paragraph 80 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
As would happen to her brother, Alta suffered from terrible headaches. At age eight or nine, she had an attack of scarlet fever that left her partly deaf in one ear, an affliction that brought her closer to her parents. She later found significant relief with a Viennese physician, Dr. Isidor Muller, and for decades thereafter made annual pilgrimages to Karlsbad to renew this ear treatment. Alta was such a fine singer and pianist that many people did not detect the handicap, but close observers noted the quick, subtle way she flicked her good ear toward the speaker to catch his words.
Names: Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Isidor Muller · Karlsbad
EPUB paragraph 81 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Forever vigilant against fortune hunters with designs on his daughters, John D. worried the most about Alta, who was passionate and impressionable. Easily smitten, she was constantly falling in love with the wrong men, prompting family rescue operations. Often her crushes were mixed up with a missionary impulse to redeem her beloved from some presumed failing.
EPUB paragraph 82 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
If Rockefeller had thought Alta safe in the sanctuary of the Baptist Church, he was rudely awakened in early 1891. Though the Rockefellers had moved to Manhattan, they resumed their involvement in the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church every summer when they returned to Forest Hill. As a deacon and superintendent of the Sunday school, Rockefeller still paid half the church expenses from his own pocket. While teaching in the Sunday school, Alta, nineteen, became infatuated with the forty-seven-year-old pastor, the Reverend Dr. L. A. Crandall. Despite the considerable age difference between them, Alta tried to wean him from his evil smoking habit. Though only five years younger than Rockefeller himself, Reverend Crandall was highly susceptible to Alta’s adoration. His wife had died a year and a half earlier, leaving him with a son in college, a daughter in private school, and an emotional void in his life.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Euclid Avenue Baptist Church · Rockefeller family · Forest Hill · Manhattan · L. A. Crandall · Baptist Church
EPUB paragraph 83 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Persuaded that Alta genuinely loved him, Crandall began to talk to her about marriage. When Rockefeller heard rumors of this, he refused to believe them at first, then summoned people to his home, quizzed them, and was stunned to discover the truth. Rockefeller delivered a stern ultimatum to Dr. Crandall: Either he would resign or the Rockefellers would withdraw from the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. The church would have been devastated without the Rockefeller money and torn apart by the scandal. Submitting to a superior force, Dr. Crandall left for a Chicago pastorate under the cover that he was moving there to seek a superior education for his children.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Euclid Avenue Baptist Church · Rockefeller family · Chicago · L. A. Crandall
EPUB paragraph 84 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Three years later, Alta fell in love with a young minister named Robert A. Ashworth, who was in poor health. When Rockefeller got wind of his daughter’s attachment, he tried to figure out how to cure her of it without showing his hand. In late December 1894, he suddenly organized a party of young people, including Junior, Alta, and Ashworth, for a festive sledding and tobogganing trip to the Adirondack Mountains. Rockefeller chose to emphasize vigorous sports that would expose Ashworth’s frailty to Alta. “Most of the young men taken along were highly robust, and the minister in his physical weakness cut a sorry figure beside them,” said Junior’s friend Everett Colby. The ploy apparently worked and the problematic relationship ended a week later.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Robert A. Ashworth · Everett Colby · Adirondack Mountains
EPUB paragraph 85 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Of all the Rockefeller children, Alta was the most affected by the plight of the poor immigrant populations crowding into American cities in the late nineteenth century. Where her father exercised his benevolence at a distance, Alta rolled up her sleeves, went into the slums, and administered self-help programs for the poor. At Tenth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street in Manhattan, she set up a sewing school for indigent girls, drafted a corps of volunteer teachers, and enrolled 125 pupils. She also set up a small private clinic for invalid women.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Manhattan · Tenth Avenue
EPUB paragraph 86 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Despite her managerial talents, Alta departed from her father’s penchant for building large institutions and favored small-scale charities, of which the best example was Alta House in Cleveland. In the 1890s, a local minister interested Rockefeller and his daughter in a charity, the Day Nursery and Free Kindergarten Association, serving poor Italian immigrants in the Murray Hill district, the Little Italy of Cleveland. Many working couples left their children there during the day. Rockefeller agreed to construct a new settlement building, Alta House, which was dedicated in February 1900 and furnished with a family laundry and medical dispensary. Although he supplied the money and covered the budget for its first twenty years, Alta did the legwork. She enjoyed direct contact with the immigrant families and took special delight in dressing up dolls for their children.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Cleveland · Alta House · Free Kindergarten Association · Murray Hill · Little Italy of Cleveland
EPUB paragraph 87 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
After completion of the settlement house, Alta was desperately eager to marry. When Edith married Harold McCormick in 1895, Alta was openly envious and told her brother that “I must try to enter heartily into all her happiness.” Through Harold McCormick, Alta met Ezra Parmalee Prentice, then working in Chicago as general counsel for the Illinois Steel Company. Cold and smart, a rigid perfectionist, Parmalee was also an amateur scientist with a large collection of meteorological instruments. The scion of an old Albany family and a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School, he underwent the same microscopic scrutiny that awaited any supplicant for Alta’s hand. As she told Junior in early 1900, “[Parmalee] gave Father the names of four of his friends who would answer any questions about him that Father might want to ask and said that he would add to this list if it were desired.” When Parmalee passed muster, he and Alta were married the following year, but Parmalee and Senior had a remote relationship and seldom saw each other. Parmalee penned formal letters to his father-in-law that began, “Dear Mr. Rockefeller” and were signed, “E. Parmalee Prentice.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Harold McCormick · E. Parmalee Prentice · Chicago · Albany · Harvard Law School · Illinois Steel Company · Amherst College
EPUB paragraph 88 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Unlike Edith, Alta wanted to live near her parents. Perhaps Parmalee erred by abandoning his Chicago job to practice law in New York and join a firm that would one day evolve into Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy. Surrendering his freedom by slow degrees, he allowed Junior to buy and furnish a new home for them at 5 West Fifty-third Street. A gift from Senior, this house stood behind his own home on West Fifty-fourth Street. “Uncle John did furnish that house,” one of Alta and Parmalee’s children said. “My father could not have cared less and my mother did not have the know-how. She had grown up in the same rut as Uncle John and had no one to pull her out. She was timid, spiritual like her mother, and besides, she had the idea that her brother always knew best.” Parmalee had a fine legal mind, authored two legal books, and argued cases before the Supreme Court. At first, Rockefeller referred legal work to him and advised other moguls to follow suit, but he never got the expected gratitude from his proud son-in-law. In 1905, when Rockefeller asked him to reorganize Colorado Fuel and Iron, he was not only outraged by the fees Parmalee charged but indignant at his high-handed treatment of the bondholder representatives. At that point, Rockefeller advised Gates to refer less business to Parmalee’s firm. Unable to compromise on business principles, Rockefeller chose to jeopardize family relations instead.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · E. Parmalee Prentice · Herbert S. Hadley · Frederick T. Gates · Colorado Fuel and Iron · New York · Chicago · Supreme Court · West · Uncle John · Milbank · Tweed · McCloy · West Fifty-fourth Street
EPUB paragraph 89 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Instead of distributing money to his children at maturity, Rockefeller kept them on allowances after they married and reserved the right to oversee their finances. Junior was appointed family auditor, and this turned him, perforce, into an irritating, censorious presence in the lives of his three brothers-in-law. When Junior decided in 1904 that Alta and Parmalee were spending twice as much as their income warranted, Parmalee bristled at this intrusion into their private lives. The prodigal generosity displayed by Senior after Alta’s wedding now turned into its opposite, and she was placed in the demeaning position of having to beg him for money. After a point, she did not disguise her anger. “Ten years ago when we came into the house you were good enough to pay for all the lace curtains,” she wrote to her father. “These curtains are now worn out and I have bought new ones.… Would you help me out by buying the curtains. If so, I shall be greatly pleased. If not, of course it will be all right.” Once he had made them feel punished for earlier extravagance, Senior would relent and disburse the money. As long as the right conditions were met, this controlling father was always happy to be generous. In 1910, he offered Alta and Parmalee $250,000 to purchase a house and land, and they bought a thousand-acre farm, which they christened Mount Hope, in the Berkshire Mountains near Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · E. Parmalee Prentice · Massachusetts · Mount Hope · Berkshire Mountains · Williamstown
EPUB paragraph 90 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
It is interesting that both Alta and Bessie married cold, remote, self-absorbed men. One can speculate that they chose these men because of their resemblance to their father, yet neither Charles Strong nor Parmalee Prentice had Rockefeller’s redeeming cordiality or spontaneous interest in other people. Many observers felt that Alta had blundered in marrying the autocratic Parmalee. Priggish and straitlaced, he demanded that their three children dress formally for dinner each night, and he never allowed them to bring friends to the table. Highly cerebral, Parmalee translated Treasure Island into Latin and insisted that the children converse with him in Latin each evening. Each Sunday, he prepared an essay on a theme and led a family discussion. Parmalee was so fearsome a father that even Junior’s children felt their own home positively wild and decadent in comparison.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · E. Parmalee Prentice · Charles Strong · Treasure Island
EPUB paragraph 91 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Whatever her frustrations, Alta put the best face on the marriage. “Parmalee is beautiful in his thoughts for me and his consideration of me, and if he had his way nothing would ever be allowed to fret me nor disturb me for one single minute,” she wrote to her father. “He makes my life one long, glad song.” While Parmalee had rather cool relations with his children, Alta insisted to her father that they “love him as dearly and respect him so much that they cannot bear to see even the slightest shadow cross his face.” The compliment can also be read to connote a certain fear that the children had of him.
EPUB paragraph 92 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
After purchasing the farm, Alta and her husband increasingly inhabited a rural world, tramping about the muddy fields and growing corn, oats, potatoes, buckwheat, and McIntosh apples. Alta’s letters abound in talk of plowing, threshing, and manure. Prompted by an interest in Gregor Mendel’s genetic theories, Parmalee began to experiment with scientific agriculture and studied ways to boost the output of their potato crop, dairy herd, and hens. Visitors to Mount Hope were far more likely to meet geneticists from Williams College than society figures. When Parmalee organized an experiment to cross black and white mice, Alta had to photograph a thousand mice. Where Edith had ventured out into the world, Alta—who had little contact with her sister—stuck to a simple life that revolved around her husband, children, farm, and horses.
Names: Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · E. Parmalee Prentice · Gregor Mendel · Mount Hope · McIntosh · Williams College
EPUB paragraph 93 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
Senior wanted all three sons-in-law, along with Junior, to be involved in the Rockefeller philanthropies; for reasons discussed later, he skipped over his three daughters. Senior and Junior made intermittent efforts to interest Parmalee, but he habitually declined their offers. At one point, Harold McCormick tried to relieve tensions between Junior and Parmalee. While admitting to Senior that Parmalee had “a proud and perhaps even haughty spirit,” Harold maintained that he was a good-hearted man who suffered from a “feeling on the part of the harsh world … that he is discredited by his family or even viewed with indifference.” Citing the hostility between Junior and Parmalee, Harold added, “Alta is torn almost in two in her love.” Apparently, Senior was not convinced. Soon after Harold’s plea, he complained to Edith that Junior was overburdened with charitable work and explicitly blamed his sons-in-law: “I could wish that Harold and Parmalee, with their broad shoulders, were heart and soul in this work with us.” Yet it was never clear how they could do that without subordinating their identities to Rockefeller, who never understood their need for freedom from his domineering presence.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Harold McCormick · E. Parmalee Prentice
EPUB paragraph 94 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c21_r1.htm
While Parmalee craved distance from Senior, he did not renounce the financial rewards that came with the relationship. In 1912, Rockefeller guaranteed him a $30,000 annual income from his legal work; if he failed to reach that level, Rockefeller would make up the difference. Whether Parmalee suddenly grew lazy or suffered a sharp downturn in business is unclear, but two years later Rockefeller had to pay $26,000 of his salary. Two years after that, he doubled Parmalee’s annual guaranteed salary to $60,000. Meanwhile, Alta’s annual allowance was boosted to $50,000 in 1914. By transferring more money to Alta and Parmalee and giving them the means to pay their own bills, Rockefeller hoped to end the constant tussles between them and Junior over money—something that he should have done in the first place.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · E. Parmalee Prentice
EPUB paragraph 1 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
he relief that washed through Standard Oil after William McKinley’s 1896 election had proved short-lived. Despite a sudden upsurge of prosperity, the electorate remained wary of the new monopolies and the muscular arrivistes who had created them. The crusade to curtail the trusts was very much alive, if temporarily shunted to the state level. Once again, the first salvo against Standard Oil was fired in Ohio. The state attorney general, Frank Monnett—successor to the crusading David K. Watson—was the son of a Methodist preacher, a former railroad attorney, and a hardworking public servant. In 1897, he received a visit from the maverick refiner George Rice, who persuaded him that Standard Oil had never complied with the 1892 decision to sever Ohio Standard from the trust. To check up on his adversaries, Rice had bought six shares of Standard Oil trust certificates. When he tried to redeem them for fractional shares in the twenty constituent companies spun off by the 1892 decision, the liquidating trustees—including Rockefeller—procrastinated for four years. Now, five years after the verdict, $27 million in trust certificates remained unredeemed. On November 9, 1897, Monnett charged that Standard of Ohio had never seriously planned to leave the trust and was in contempt of court. It had all been a charade to pacify trustbusters.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · George Rice · William McKinley · Frank S. Monnett · Standard Oil · Standard Oil of Ohio · David K. Watson · Ohio · Rice
EPUB paragraph 2 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Rockefeller’s retirement began to assume the inexorable nature of a Greek tragedy: Just as he sought to extricate himself from the trust, its legal troubles deepened. Conditioned by a long history of Standard Oil mendacity, both press and public mocked his so-called retirement as a tawdry ruse to evade testimony. It defied the common conception of villainy to think that such a man could simply walk away from his creation.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 3 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
To expedite the case, Monnett had a master commissioner interrogate witnesses in New York. On October 11, 1898, Rockefeller was summoned to testify at the New Amsterdam Hotel, the prosecution hoping to prod him into an admission that he had stalled in liquidating the trust. Through more than five hours of questioning, Rockefeller, as imperturbable as ever, spoke in such a low voice that people strained to hear him, and he conceded so little that the next day’s World ran the headline, “Rockefeller Imitates a Clam.” Standard lawyers spent much more time objecting to questions than Rockefeller did in answering them. Once again, he presented the past as a dense fog that he could scarcely penetrate. As the World dryly observed, “The virtue of forgetting, which is one of the most valuable virtues that a monopolist can have under cross-examination, is possessed by Mr. Rockefeller in its highest degree.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frank S. Monnett · Standard Oil · New York · World · New Amsterdam Hotel
EPUB paragraph 4 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
Rockefeller, as always, refused to believe that anybody could have a legitimate objection to Standard Oil. Once again, he fell back on his all-purpose explanation that the suits filed against him were just extortion rackets posing as public service. Later on, he said that Monnett’s motive was to “blackmail the Standard Oil Company” and that he was a “comrade in schemes with George Rice.” Rockefeller suppressed signs of irritation at the hearing, yet he seemed edgier than on earlier occasions. Reporters noted telltale nervous habits that called into question his surface composure—the way he kept shifting his weight, crossing and recrossing his legs, rubbing his nape, blowing out his cheeks, and biting his mustache.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · George Rice · Frank S. Monnett · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 5 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
At the end of his testimony, Rockefeller, discernibly relieved, did something very unusual for him: He bounded straight over to George Rice, extended his hand, and tried to engage him in conversation. He suddenly grew very chatty, as two newspapers reported:
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · George Rice
EPUB paragraph 6 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
“How are you, Mr. Rice? We are getting to be old men now, eh? Don’t you wish you had taken my advice years ago?”
Names: Rice
EPUB paragraph 7 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
“Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had,” said Rice, glaring at him. “You have ruined my business, as you said you would.”
Names: Rice
EPUB paragraph 8 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
“Pshaw! Pshaw!” replied Rockefeller, moving away.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 9 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c22_r1.htm
“You did, you ruined me,” persisted Rice, chasing him. (Rice, a well-to-do businessman, perhaps overstated his case.)
Names: Rice
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