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In retrospect, it seems clear that Rockefeller’s press critics profited from a fleeting transitional moment when corporations had not adapted to the new media and lacked any public-relations apparatus. For nearly three years, Standard Oil was assailed by Ida Tarbell and made only halfhearted responses.
It also meant that by 1919 Rockefeller had already given away an amount roughly equal to the $350 million that Andrew Carnegie gave away in his entire lifetime; the titan would donate another $180 million before he died. Since his son gave away an additional $537 million directly and another $540 million through the Rockefeller philanthropies, Rockefeller far surpassed his great rival’s benefactions and must rank as the greatest philanthropist in American history.
As taxes became steeper and more progressive in the coming decades, it became a daunting task for any businessman to amass the money that Rockefeller had earned in a laissez-faire world devoid of antitrust laws.
For years, the Colorado coalfields had been scarred by labor warfare. This was raw capitalism such as Karl Marx pictured it: dangerous mines run by harsh bosses and policed by armed guards in a desolate, hellish place. During 1913 alone, 464 men were killed or maimed in local mining accidents. Blackened by soot from coke ovens, workers lived in filth, shopped in company stores, and were ripe for unionism.
In the polyglot mining communities, workers came from thirty-two countries and spoke twenty-seven languages; some of them were so ignorant of American ways that they imagined Rockefeller was president of the United States.
Yet these gifts were extremely modest compared to what Cleveland would have received had it not antagonized him. Rankled, Rockefeller transferred his love and loyalty to his adopted town. “New York has always treated me more fairly than Cleveland, much more.”11 How many New York hospitals, museums, and churches would be enriched by Cleveland’s blunder!
Without citing a shred of evidence, he manufactured a cockeyed fantasy that Ida Tarbell was now tortured by guilt for having defamed him. “And if she could only cause the general public to forget what she said and the venomous way she said it, would she not live a more peaceful life, and wouldn’t she die a more peaceful death? Peace to her ashes!”38
During the Wall Street boom of the 1920s, Rockefeller took a guilty thrill in playing the stock market, despite Junior’s reproaches. If his son was present when somebody alluded to his trading, Rockefeller, like a naughty child, would shift the subject.
In truth, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had left behind a contradictory legacy. An amalgam of godliness and greed, compassion and fiendish cunning, he personified the ambiguous heritage of America’s Puritan ancestors, who had encouraged thrift and enterprise but had also spurred overly acquisitive instincts.
By the time Rockefeller died, in fact, so much good had unexpectedly flowered from so much evil that God might even have greeted him on the other side, as the titan had so confidently expected all along.
