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John D Rockefeller began as a humble oil business book-keeper in Cleveland, Ohio and in just seven years rose to control a tenth of the entire US oil industry. In the late 19th century the oil industry was a free-for-all, the law of the jungle ruled. Rockefeller used this 'individual freedom' to pursue several extremely successful, if deceitful tactics to accumulate capital.
He would create new oil related companies such as engineering and pipeline firms that seemed to be independent operators. Rockefeller and his close colleagues secretly controlled the firms and gave Standard Oil of California, Rockefeller's main oil company, hidden rebates.
Another tactic was to buy up a competing oil company, again secretly. Officials from this company could then be used very effectively to spy on, and give advanced warning of, deals being hatched by his real competitors.
Probably the most effective secret deals done by Rockefeller and his partners were with the railroads. These 'in harmony' deals meant those refineries and oil traders not 'in harmony' with standard would find that railroads would refuse point blank to move their oil, whatever the price.
Oil, of course, is free at source, so once the investment in refining and extraction plant has been made the only really important cost was transportation. Rockefeller's secret railroad rebates on the transportation of his oil kept his competitors guessing for years. None of them could understand how he kept pump prices so low. They were all bemused that Standard Oil had being growing at such a rate. How he managed to persuade the railroads to give him rebates and keep the deals secret is still not clear.
Allun Nevins has produced an official biography¹ of the Rockefeller empire but even he cannot help but question its morality. Of a railroad contract signed on 17 October 1877 he says, "The commission was excessive for the services performed. It was ethically indefensible." "Today," he says, "we must condemn the misuse of power not only as a crushing blow to the company's competitors but as an indirect tax on the public."
At judicial enquiries such as the Hepburn Committee which delivered its report on January 22nd 1880 Standard Oil representatives and those 'in harmony' were tight lipped. They often refused to attend court hearings and regularly disputed its validity. They would give disdainful, condecending replies to the examiners which spoke of an seeming immunity to the rule of law. The committee decided that "Standard Oil violated... social justice" in its monopolistic deals with the railroads.
Standard Oil Of California, or SOCAL, had its own intelligence and espionage service. Rockefeller saw that a little knowledge can be decisive in the business world so he combined this good supply of information on his competitors with a total wall of silence he himself presented to the outside world. 'No comment' was all that journalists came to expect from the SOCAL offices.
But what about the man himself? Old film of John Rockefeller shows him moving in a curiously stiff and wooden fashion, expressionless. He was a Baptist who went to church regularly, but did he enjoy it? Anthony Sampson in his book 'The Seven Sisters' quotes John Rockefeller as having a favourite maxim; 'Don't let good fellowship get the least hold of you'. Jerome Greene called him, "the most unemotional man I have ever known".
One shadowy deal that SOCAL struck back in the 1930's changed the face of urban America for ever. The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Phillips Petroleum Co., Mack Truck and General Motors collaborated on a project with SOCAL called National City Lines. The tram systems in the urban US were suffering from under-investment and often crippling debt repayments so National City Lines stepped in across the States to liberate the populous from their cheap and cheerful old 'streetcar' systems. They were replaced with motor buses or they were gradually closed down completely.
The demand for motor cars soared returning massive profits for all involved in the deal. By 1940 General Motors alone had been responsible for the disposal of more than 100 urban streetcar operations. In the late forties the consortium was found guilty by the federal grand jury under anti-trust (anti-competitive) legislation but the $5,000 fine was laughable. It did not even amount to the annual profit returned from the conversion of a single streetcar.
National City Lines sold the dream of the bus and the car to businessmen and politicians right across the continent. In Detroit, even the chairman of the rapid transit company declared the car as the 'magic carpet of transportation for all mankind'. Mayor LeGuardia in NYC said the car represented the best of modern civilisation, whereas the tram was simply an old-fashioned obstacle to progress.
So where are the Rockefellers now? The current head of the family is David Rockefeller, Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank and prime mover in the secret 'Bilderberg' and 'Trilateral Commission' elite groups.
His personal secretary, Alice Victor, was one of the only woman present at the 1996 covert Bilderberg meeting just outside Montreal. Amongst the 120 or so most were Peter Job, Chief executive of Reuters, James D Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada and representatives from most of the boards of US and European Banks.
Press coverage of these conferences of the super-powerful is virtually nil. The entire meeting is 'off the record' for the mere likes of you or I.
They may have moved the core of their interests from Oil to Banking and branched out considerably butthe Rockefeller family have not given up the fascination of clandestine operations to keep their business empire beating at the heart of the capitalist machine.
The oil war of 1872 ftp://ftp.shout.net/pub/users/bigred/vol11/cn11-18
Frenzied Finance -- II The interlocking system known as "Standard Oil," much more than a mere seller of oil, has been responsible for more hell than any other trust or financial thing since the world began. ftp://ftp.shout.net/pub/users/bigred/vol11/cn11-10
The Rockefeller Syndicate http://www.afn.org/~govern/rockfeller.html
Rockefellers screwing up America and the world http://www-douzzer.ai.mit.edu:8080/conspiracy.html
¹'Study In Power, John D Rockefeller, industrialist and philanthropist', Allan Nevins, pub: Scribners.