HAVANA, Cuba.- On May 23, 1937, at the age of 98, New York magnate John Davison Rockefeller, author of impressive and controversial business achievements, which ended up making him one of the richest men of the 19th century, closed his eyes.
Born into a middle-class home, he inherited from his mother a sense of order, dedication and strict morals. From an early age he proved to be intelligent and diligent, trained in public schools and with a natural interest in business, which led him to enroll in the Cleveland Business School, from which he graduated at the age of 16.
By 1857 he had become one of the highest paid bookkeepers in Cleveland, but when he was denied a raise, he decided to start his own business and get in on the big game.
With his partner MB Clark he founded the firm Clark & Rockefeller, which in the first year made profits of $4,000 and in the second quadrupled the amount. The young New Yorker was on the right track, and he wanted so much more.
The Civil War marked the beginning of his fortune. A Republican and staunch abolitionist, he voted for President Abraham Lincoln and supported the Union Army. Instead of going to war, he paid soldiers to take his place and went about his business with resounding and growing success. On the basis of lending money and reinvesting the profits, controlling costs and taking advantage of all the by-products of oil activity, by 1868 the Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler firm owned two refineries in Cleveland and a subsidiary in New York. The refinery was born Petroleum largest in the world, but still it was nothing compared to what would come next.
On January 10, 1870, Rockefeller founded Standard Oil, with which he practically monopolized the United States oil industry, controlling the extraction, refining, and transportation of the valuable fuel in the nation, while holding important monopolies in several European countries. and Latin America.
For more than forty years, he consolidated Standard Oil as the largest oil company in the world, revolutionizing the industry at all levels and demonstrating an extraordinary and relentless competitive capacity. Likewise, he dedicated a large part of his fortune and resources to important projects of social and economic impact, such as the founding of the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious in the world, and the Rockefeller University, in NYdedicated to biomedical sciences, the first of its kind in the Americas.
Despite the fact that JD Rockefeller promoted programs in various areas of education, science, and medicine, his voracity as an entrepreneur was criticized by journalists and researchers, until the United States government decided to confront him in a lengthy lawsuit to force him to break up his business. giant oil company.
Until today, Rockefeller has been the only businessman who managed to build a monopoly so consolidated and effective that the US government itself had to intervene to dilute it. He is considered the richest man in history. He was the patriarch of the powerful family of billionaires that still exists, with the same last name and economic power.
