I recently read Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society and noticed that Sowell had a much different opinion of Rockefeller and Standard Oil then those presented by Richard White in The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 from the Oxford Series on United States History. To resolve the matter I resolved to do a basic "spot check" of Sowell's claims to see whose opinion was closer to the truth: at least at some point in time... After procrastinating on this, one day a message arrived in my Inbox informing me that Ron Chernow's biography of Rockefeller was on sale. Was this a sign that this was a book I was meant to read? Almost certainly it was merely a coincidence but it did seem like the book would present me with more than enough information to get to the bottom of the different views of the Gilded Age's "Robber Barrons". It would, however, require a bit more reading than the "spot check" I had originally intended...
At the outset Chernow makes it clear that he wants to cover more aspects of Rockefeller's life than are typically covered by other books which tend to focus on Rockefeller's business career. Chernow decries the lack of coverage of Rockefeller’s long retirement years for instance. Indeed in his book Chernow gets to Rockefeller's somewhat early retirement by about half way through the book. Chernow's other big goal, as stated at the outset, is to try to explain the seeming "contradictions" in Rockefeller's personality and his resultant actions.
In terms of covering much more of Rockefeller's life than his business career, Chernow definitely succeeds. Rockefeller's philanthropy takes up about as much space as his business career; Rockefeller's family is described in sometimes exquisite and sometimes excruciating detail; There is also a good deal of discussion of contemporaneous writings and feeling regarding Rockefeller.
In terms of Chernow's second big goal---to explain the "contradictions" in Rockefeller's personality, Chernow definitely hits a home run. Chernow describes how devoutly religious Rockefeller was from a very early age and how he always tried to act in accord with Baptist principles. Rockefeller regarded his business success as a sign that he was acting in God's favor. Rockefeller also felt he was merely meant to be a good steward with the money he earned: his primarily obligation was to give it away to help better the world. The third crucial belief in explaining Rockefeller's actions was that he did not see competition as inherently good. In fact, his early experience in the oil fields---and he was fortunate enough to be working very close to the first discoveries---led him to believe that competition was not good: it just led to overproduction, most businesses going bust and harm from this that could spill over into lenders. Thus, in Rockefeller's mind, he was on a mission to dominate the oil markets, and replace competition with co-operation. His success showed to him that God favored him likely because he would follow his Christian duty to give away the resultant wealth. A surprising fact, given this, is that Rockefeller regarded Standard Oil's contribution to the world of making oil and derived products widely and cheaply available as a far greater accomplishment that his charitable work.
Beyond his core beliefs, or more likely generating them, Chernow feels that Rockefeller's seemingly contradictory personality resulted from having parents who, in most ways, were quite opposite. Rockefeller's father was a literal frontier's conman reminiscent of those portrayed in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Rockefeller's mother, by contrast, was a devout Baptist. Chernow sees Rockefeller's devotion to philanthropy, religion and family as arising from his mother's character and his ruthlessness in business as deriving from his father's anti-social aspects. Chernow mentions that pathological liars can miss out on great achievements they otherwise may be more capable of than most by getting caught up in their petty scams. Along these lines it is fascinating to think of Rockefeller and his conman father given that we now know that CEOs are more likely to exhibit "dark triad" traits than the general population. At the same time it is also hypothesized that personality disorders, such as anti-social personality disorder, run along a spectrum. In small amounts the traits are beneficial: e.g. a businessman pushing the rules as far as they will go but stopping just shy of going over. It is when they occur in too extreme amounts that they are harmful.
Although Chernow's tales of Rockefeller's father make for exciting reading his other family members are rarely as interesting. Chernow, however, seems to be determined to devote space to all of them including in-laws. Thus all of Rockefeller's siblings are covered: all sisters and brothers in-law, all sons and daughters in-law, all children, and all grandchildren. In some places this coverage for the sake of completeness goes a little overboard: especially regarding in-laws. In some places, e.g. Edith Rockefeller, it can delve a bit into a gossipy/tabloid feel.
Rockefeller Jr receives by far the most coverage. Although some of it is downright embarrassing, Jr is ultimately portrayed as a man with weaknesses but overall, although not rising to the level of his father, a competent heir able to come through in the most critical times and, in some cases, e.g. being able to acknowledge mishandling of the Ludlow Massacre, exceeding him. Overall Senior is portrayed as an extremely loving man devoted to his family. In the case of his brother Frank this was even despite the fact that Frank had grown to hate him, openly worked with his enemies against him, all while still maintaining a huge sense of entitlement to some of his brother's money.
In terms of philanthropy, Chernow portrays it as ultimately consuming even more of Rockefeller's energies and worries than did Standard Oil. Chernow describes how Rockefeller wanted to affect the greatest good by supporting the most fundamental issues: for example lack of quality education for black people in the South and a lack of quality medical research facilities in the United States. Chernow describes how Rockefeller's goal was to create entities which would survive his death and exist long into the future. Chernow's coverage here is excellent. With the exception of going into a little too much detail about the founding of the University of Chicago it did not suffer the problem of coverage just for the sake of completeness that coverage of Rockefeller's family did at times.
Overall Rockefeller is portrayed as an extremely and genuinely kind man who was genuinely modest in his dealings with people at all levels of society and always on guard for wealth harming his adherence to his Christian principles. Chernow has some anecdotes that are particularly successful in making this point. One anecdote is how Rockefeller, though he expected Junior to track every penny and never waste money, reacted when Junior had to inform him that he had lost $1 million dollars he did have in the stock market. The other describes Rockefeller's reaction to an employee, not knowing who he was, reacting to some exercise equipment that Rockefeller brought into the office.
Overall I rate the coverage of Rockefeller's life outside of Standard Oil as 5/5: in some cases rather tedious but still excellent overall. Unfortunately, beyond explaining how Rockefeller's ruthlessness in business arose without causing him to feel any contradictions with his Christian principles I did not feel that Chernow's coverage of Standard Oil was as strong as the rest of the book:
What seems to be the problem is that Chernow just takes it as a given that competition in business is a good thing as are anti-trust laws. A history book may not be the best place to get deep into an economic and ethical analysis but, although there is a consensus view that anti-trust laws are good in principle, it is by no means universally believed that the case is so axiomatic as to not require any discussion. I did not feel that Chernow did a good job of describing any net harm done by Standard Oil. Yes competition was suppressed but there is not enough detail or concrete examples to show how that was net detrimental to society. Standard Oil's anti-competitive practices did not seem to harm their innovativeness: new uses of petroleum products were constantly coming on the scene and Standard Oil could not and did not rest on its laurels. Rockefeller's perfectionism and desire to make as much money as possible to give away to charity would never have allowed for that.
After Rockefeller stepped away Standard Oil did raise prices on domestic oil products to offset price cuts they had to make to compete overseas. At the same time, however, a tariff limited foreign competitors' ability to compete with US oil producers so was the problem really Standard Oil or was it government intervention limiting competition? Ultimately, although it took time, people did find ways to compete with standard oil such that Chernow admits that the ultimate Supreme Court decision to break up Standard Oil was like closing the barn door after the horses had already escaped. Indeed, it seemed that Rockefeller ultimately paid nothing in the way of "punishment" for his business practices. Indeed the breakup probably ultimately benefitted him as new managers were now needed making the way for young folks with fresh ideas to come into the business.
Overall Chernow is supposedly emphasizing the "dual" character of Rockefeller and in the conclusion of the book thinks that maybe the good outweighed the bad and God may have allowed him into heaven. Presupposing the existence of a Christian God the case that it is even close does not seem to have been made. Indeed I thought the evidence presented showed that Standard Oil and its actions were clearly a net benefit to consumers with the added bonus that it was Rockefeller who ended up with the largest percentage of the money made in oil: If there had been more competition would his competitors have been as generous in philanthropy as he was? Chernow shows that Rockefeller was far and away the most generous philanthropist so the answer seems a clear "no".
The strongest case against Rockefeller's business practices seems to be that of food and supply store owners who were told to carry Standard Oil products exclusively otherwise they would face Standard Oil backed competitors selling food and supplies unrelated to oil at cost or even a loss to drive them out of business. This does, indeed, seem unfair, hence some residual questions after reading the book forms were: Is the feeling that a business practice is unfair sufficient to justify anti-trust laws preventing it? In the case of food and supply stores were they done great harm by being forced to carry only Standard Oil products? If the business practices were bad but resulted in a net benefit to society then is the typical argument for anti-trust laws turned on its head? Now there is right to fair competition even if that does not result in the greatest economic benefit to society whereas the argument generally seems to be that the right to do what you want with your own property and through contracts is limited if it does a great net harm to society or, in principle, could have even if did not occur in your particular case. A final question is: did the United States just get lucky with Rockefeller? If his and Standard Oil's existence does make a case against anti-trust laws is this just one data point that runs contrary to the others?
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