How Did Rockefeller's Impact On The Oil Industry

John Davison Rockefeller was perhaps the most influential force in the domination of the oil industry through his creation of the Standard Oil Trust. Even from a very young age, John Rockefeller was a strategic businessman with a powerful skill to utilize his resources. In 1870, when the Standard Oil Trust was formed, the oil industry was changed forever. Rockefeller was able to make oil affordable while still making an immense profit. Because of his staggering success in becoming one of the first successful trusts in the United States, Rockefeller generated a lot of controversy challenging his business methods and ideas. Although many considered him as a robber baron who exploited his workers and competition, the benefits he brought upon

Growing up, Rockefeller wasn’t handed his life on a silver platter like most other successful tycoons of the 1850’s. Although his family wasn’t rich and often struggled to make ends meet, Rockefeller’s father was a hardworking businessman, “rising at four in the morning to go to the snowy woods” and “keeping a tight rein on his employees” (Nevins) to provide for his family. It was because of his father’s work ethic that Rockefeller admired him as a “big, powerful man as quick as a flash and afraid of nothing” (Nevins). Rockefeller thus began his first business endeavor while attending Cleveland High school, working as “an assistant bookkeeper and clerk for 50 cents a day,” at the Hewitt and Tuttle Office (Folsom). On the job, Rockefeller

To buy land to drill for oil was a risky investment, “men paid high prices for land that proved barren as Sahara” but would in turn open it up to find “the gush” of oil (Nevins). This uncertainty was evident to Rockefeller and he found that “if production was highly speculative, refining offered greater certainties” (Nevins). In 1857, “one of the first connected with refining oil, Samuel Andrews” (Nevins) had come to Cleveland eager to launch a business. He spoke with Rockefeller’s business partner Clark about starting up this business as “Clark had money” (Nevins) as did Rockefeller, and nonetheless “the refining firm of Andrews, Clark & Co. was organized in 1863” (Nevins). From the very beginning, two things bothered Rockefeller, “the appalling waste and the fluctuating prices” (Folsom). Oil was often over produced and with the rapid growth of new markets, prices fluctuated a great deal, a barrel’s price would drop “from $4 to 35 cents” (Folsom). The excess oil would be poured into “oil creeks” (Folsom), and sometimes when cigarettes were dropped, they would start large fires. Rockefeller believed that the only way for his business to be successful was to “cut waste and produce the best product at the lowest price” (Folsom). To do this Rockefeller searched for ways to put the byproducts to use, he “used the gasoline for fuel, some of the tars for paving, and shipped the naphtha to