Category: Rockefeller

I read Titan: The life of John D. Rockefeller Sr, a biography by Ron Chernow, and today I will share an important lesson I have realized through my reading of this work. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, and moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was fourteen. He was a…

Daniel Yergin starts the section by saying: ‘There was the matter of the missing $526.08.’ This missing cash was in regards to a for-pay examine risk attempted by Benjamin Silliman, Jr. in the mission for additional salary. Silliman Jr. was hard up for money when money was difficult to get, and his educator’s compensation was…

In 1855, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., a professor of chemistry, fumed when he did not receive payment for the report on ‘rock oil’ he had prepared for a group of investors led by George Bissel. The test ran by the chemist proved that they could distill a superior, economical fuel for lamps, while a different process…

Due to the high efficiency of Standard Oil (high quality and low prices), the company’s share of the oil products market grew from 4% in 1870 to 25% in 1874 and to about 85 per cent in 1880. All these features characterized Standard Oil as a monopoly. Was John Rockefeller’s plans to become a monopolist…