„Your father, Mr. Rockefeller, understood rather early that much more profit could be generated out of processing and transporting of oil than out of hauling it up from the rocks, with all these risks of exploring.
He was able to negotiate most privileged freight-conditions because two railway-lines were competing with each other, combined with the close-by access to the sea and his offer to guarantee a regular flow of oil for transport.
This combination of sheer size, efficiency and rebates established his advantage ahead of competitors; his vision was to avoid unnecessary costs and contests in pricing through the fusion of all refineries in one big organisation, in other words, he pursued the monopolisation of the trade.
In 1870, he had achieved this by founding the Standard Oil-Organisation.
The years to come saw the growing of this combine through take over of more oil-companies and refineries. Former owners received shares in Standard Oil, and they liked it because with the growth of its monopoly their profit would grow as well. This phase of rising to the top saw also — as a very common mode of action — secret deals of syndicates, purchases by straw men, dumping of prices, any type of illegal, even criminal acts. By 1897, Standard Oil controlled ninety per cent of the refinery-capacity of the U.S.A. — but, the name of Rockefeller was, by then, damaged by the rough and scrupulous methods of getting competitors out of the way.”

„My father reached the age of ninety eight! I was already sixty three when I stepped into his shoes, sir!”

Do you want us to believe the reputation was spoilt even before you grabbed the steering wheel, sir?

„Understandably a shock: as the only offspring already in retirement-age, the whole life being called Junior, now for the first time the effort to run the family-business on your own … and than this:
A strike at Rockefeller‘s Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. is getting out of hand, both sides use weapons. The strike had begun in 1914 in the mining-town of Ludlow / Colorado,
Workers are calling for the right to form a union. In response, the company forces them, together with their families, to leave the company-owned flats. It is winter, it is bitterly cold, and they find refuge in improvised tents and continue their strike until a first exchange of gunfire takes place with militia, hired by your company, Mr. Rockefeller. Machineguns are in use, when the striking workers run out of ammunition, the militia takes revenge. They pour oil across the tents and light it. Eleven children and two women die.
The following ten days, the fights continue, until President Wilson orders the army to come into action. Altogether, thirty-three people died in Colorado.
… The Ludlow-Massacre kept sticking to your name, Mr. Rockefeller — as the suppression of the Kronstadt-cadets kept sticking with me!”

„The Colorado strike was one of the most important things that ever happened to the family!”

That is what you told your official biographer, Raymond B. Fosdick, — and your personal consequence?
Some new image was asked for! One outside of Corporate Business. You created a complete new industrial offshoot called Public Relations, its only task: to guide public awareness towards social and cultural deeds which, with new emphasis, are now connecting to the name Rockefeller …
Junior handed over the running of the family-business to professional managers — and became a philanthropist!

„You see, Mr. Rockefeller, it is quite true, in the Soviet Union farmers did rise against us because we confiscated their grain for our soldiers; it is quite true, I had, as the peoples‘ commissar for war-affaires, to form an army from badly trained workers‘ militia and irregulars. Democratic voting would not have helped this Red Army against an enemy superbly trained and armed.
We had, Mr. Rockefeller, to fight back an invasion of grand dimension: on our territory we saw — besides Polish troops — seventy thousand Japanese, two thousand five hundred Britons, one thousand five hundred Frenchmen, the same number of Italians and — eight thousand U.S.-soldiers, yes — Americans too!
In addition, they were providing immense support in financial, material and personnel terms to our internal enemy, to the White Army! …
Why was that? What do you think, Mr. Rockefeller?
I am prepared to concede that a civil war is not a school for human behaviour. Idealists and pacifists have always blamed the revolution to create excesses. The difficulty of the matter is the fact that excesses rise from the true nature of revolution, which, in itself, is an excess of history. May those who would like to reject revolution for this reason do it, I do not reject it.”

— tazara — tazara — tazara ...