God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times

“His first reaction was a determination to put his side of the case before the people. He got plenty of advice. Much of it appealed to the old-timers: hire advertising space and tell your story, buy a newspaper. At this point someone suggested Ivy Lee as the most likely one for the job. Lee was acting as publicity man for the Pennsylvania Railroad with the title of executive assistant.”

CHAPTER XII. THE LUDLOW MASSACRE · p. 490

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship

DUR_ENDURING

Ivy Lee innovation: shape reality, not just message

“Young Rockefeller surveying the situation at Titusville quickly saw that this oil business divided itself into three departments: producing, refining, and transportation. It was plain to be seen there was money in the refining industry. Crude oil cost from two to twelve dollars a barrel and the cost of refining it was but thirty cents. As to producing, the disorder of this must have shocked Rockefeller.”

Chapter II: A Visitor at the Creek · p. 97

Strategy & Decision Making · Business & Entrepreneurship · Economics & Markets

DUR_ENDURING

Avoid production chaos, capture refining margin

“Mr. Rockefeller and his advisers had no intention of surrendering the substantial qualities of this precious possession. Already the original forty companies had been reduced to thirty and of these thirty many, like the Standard of New York and of New Jersey, were new. It was decided to wipe out ten or twelve of them, Pratt Manufacturing, Stone and Fleming, Archbold's Acme and others.”

CHAPTER VIII. DISSOLVING THE TRUST · p. 326

Strategy & Decision Making · Business & Entrepreneurship

DUR_ENDURING

Crisis as restructuring opportunity

“One day a farmer wished to borrow $50. The farmer was willing to pay seven per cent interest. Young John, only a little over ten, loaned the grown man the desired sum. A year later the farmer handed John his fifty dollars and the three dollars and fifty cents interest. The boy looked at his interest money with intentness. He had been hoeing potatoes for another man and had just been paid thirty-seven and a half cents a day. This $3.50 interest was as much as ten days' pay.”— John D. Rockefeller

Chapter II: The Land of Superior Cunning · p. 42

Economics & Markets · Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

First discovery: compound interest beats labor

“Rockefeller began to think about public opinion a little after Ludlow. Ivy Lee introduced something new into personal salesmanship. He asked Rockefeller and Standard Oil to look itself over, to mend its manners, to remove the harmful irritants from its methods and to consider the public reaction to its acts when making its policies.”

CHAPTER XIV. THE LAIRD OF KIJKUIT · p. 514

Culture & Society · History & Geopolitics

DUR_ENDURING

Ivy Lee + press ownership shift = Rockefeller rehabilitation

“Rockefeller sent Henry M. Flagler to General Devereaux with a proposition. The Lake Shore should give him 35 cents a barrel on crude from wells and $1.30 on refined from Cleveland to New York. In return Rockefeller would guarantee to ship 60 carloads a day and assume all risk of fire and load and unload his own oil.”

The Dream of Monopoly · p. 145

Strategy & Decision Making · Economics & Markets · Operations & Execution

DUR_ENDURING

Rebate justified by capital savings

“Rockefeller began with Warden of Philadelphia and Lockhart of Pittsburgh. Lockhart was one of the foremost men in the industry. He organized one of the first Pittsburgh refineries. He was the first American to sell oil in Europe. Rockefeller pressed the plan on Lockhart and Warden. Both were reluctant, weary of turmoil, wanting to go along in peace. But Rockefeller was relentless. He pressed the argument with all power of his shrewd and canny mind.”

The Grand Design · p. 187

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

DUR_ENDURING

Showed them his cost advantage

“Rockefeller brought to bear upon his giving the same patient intelligence he employed in his gathering. He assembled machinery to be sure his gifts were not wasted on unworthy objects. He aimed to put aside the salve box for the knife in reaching the cause of human suffering. He had a horror of giving where the gift was not needed. Some Brooklyn citizens wanted to build a hospital. Through St. John McKelway they asked Rockefeller to bear half the cost. He asked for time to consider.”

CHAPTER XIV. THE LAIRD OF KIJKUIT · p. 509

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

DUR_ENDURING

Strategic giving: research need, avoid duplication, demand match

“Rockefeller's achievement must be classified under the head of organization. He originated practically nothing. He added little or nothing to the innumerable devices by which the price of oil was brought down. But he led the way in the use of almost everything, in the organized employment of all the devices and forces which were available for large scale production. He was also among the first to deal with the new problems of industry.”

CHAPTER XIV. THE LAIRD OF KIJKUIT · p. 513

Strategy & Decision Making · History & Geopolitics · Economics & Markets

DUR_ENDURING

Rockefeller invented private planning; it failed without public voice

“First he and William Rockefeller took title to the mine properties, giving to Marcus Daly a check on the National City Bank for $39,000,000, with the understanding that the check was to be deposited in the bank and remain there for a definite time. At the same time Rogers organized the Amalgamated Copper Company with a lot of clerks as dummy directors. Next he transferred all the mines to this Amalgamated for $75,000,000. The Amalgamated gave him not cash, but all of its capital stock.”

CHAPTER II. THE STANDARD OIL GANG · p. 372

Business & Entrepreneurship · Economics & Markets

DUR_ENDURING

Rogers' dollar-making machine: six steps

“I am not anxious to sell my ore properties. But I do not want to stand in the way of a worthy enterprise. Now, Mr. Frick, I will tell you what I will do. I want only a just price. You know better than those gentlemen what that is. I know your judgment is good and I believe you to be a square man. I am willing, Mr. Frick, to put my interests in these properties in your hands. You need not hesitate, Mr. Frick. My confidence is complete. You will receive no complaint from me.”— John D. Rockefeller

CHAPTER II. THE STANDARD OIL GANG · p. 377

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Delegate pricing to trusted third party

“The Standard Oil Company has always been spoken of as a combination of capital. It was that, but, far more important, it was a combination of brains. That was Rockefeller's great design. It was not an accident that a board of directors should include so many brilliant business men. They did not just happen to come together. They were deliberately handpicked by a master assayist of human ability and put together cunningly, in accordance with a plan.”

The Grand Design · p. 189

Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

Brain combination not capital

“The dissolution presented the directors with a difficult problem. There were 983,383 shares of Standard of New Jersey valued at $98,338,300. Each holder of one share was to receive for it an equivalent in the shares of each company, thirty-four altogether. The liquidators worked over the problem for the full thirty days without giving out information as to what they would do. The distribution was made on the last day allowed.”

CHAPTER XI. MURDER WILL OUT · p. 476

Strategy & Decision Making · Economics & Markets

DUR_ENDURING

Dissolution without competition: shares up 33%, monopoly intact

“Rockefeller: I have small faith in the man who plans elaborately on paper. I once asked a landscape gardener to undertake improvement of 2,000 acres. He set to work on an elaborate scheme which I saw at a glance was impossible. He was not practical. He planned too much on paper. Rockefeller planned in his mind. His mind was a living plan. He made everything show up for some use or else rejected it. It has always been my rule in business to make everything count.”— John D. Rockefeller

Mr. Rockefeller · p. 174

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Every move must compound forward

“When news of this disaster to the powerful Pennsylvania Railroad reached the oil trade a tremor of despair ran through it. Men talked as if all were over. As soon as Dr. Hostetter heard the news he hurried to Rockefeller with an offer to sell. Rockefeller took the Columbia Conduit Company and so by the end of 1878 he had the entire pipe line business in his hands. At the same time he brought railroads together in a new oil freight pool. Rebates and drawbacks were not overlooked.”

The Battle with the Empire · p. 197

Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

Total monopoly by 1878

“One day Rockefeller, put on his high silk hat and walked across the Public Square to the office of a leading banker. I want you to have Oliver H. Payne here for a conference. Payne was Rockefeller's chief competitor, a proud, haughty man who bore himself with such an air one associate spoke of him as the kin of God. Rockefeller told Payne the oil business of Cleveland was doomed unless leading refiners got together.”— John D. Rockefeller

The Dream of Monopoly · p. 157

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

DUR_ENDURING

Went to strongest rival first

“Rockefeller: I wanted able men with me. I tried to make friends with these men. I admitted their ability and value of their enterprise. I worked to convince them it would be better for both to cooperate. If I had not succeeded in getting their friendship the whole plan of the Standard Oil Company would have fallen to the ground. I admit I tried to attract only the able men; and I have always had as little as possible to do with dull business men.”— John D. Rockefeller

The Combination · p. 177

Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

Recruit the best, avoid the dull

“The figure of the striding, ruthless monopolist in high hat and long coat gripping his walking stick and entering a courthouse has been replaced by pictures of a frail old man, playing golf with his neighbors, handing out dimes to children, distributing inspirational poems, and walking in peace amid his flowers. Another generation has rolled in upon us. He has outlived the men who denounced him and the generation which hated him. The world has changed.”

CHAPTER XIV. THE LAIRD OF KIJKUIT · p. 515

Culture & Society · History & Geopolitics

DUR_ENDURING

Press ownership shift from political to business interests

“Rockefeller in his soul was a bookkeeper. He watched his books with loving care. He prided himself on knowing each day how he stood with the world. He visited all plants and talked with superintendents. They called him the Sponge because he would soak from them whatever information they possessed about everything. Incessant planning was the key to his progress. For every occasion as it arose Rockefeller had a plan. He left, so far as he could control it, nothing to Chance.”

Mr. Rockefeller · p. 174

Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

Reduce luck through total awareness

“The gentlemen who accept the commission of these wealthy benefactors may usually be depended upon to possess a sufficient sense of eternal fitness not to permit subversive philosophy to creep into their class rooms. Before any of the buildings of the new university were fully finished and within a month of the opening, in a still uncompleted building, a Journal of Political Economy appeared in print.”

CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT BAPTIST DREAM · p. 333

History & Geopolitics · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Academic silence on trusts without orders