By about 1900, John D. Rockefeller had outstanding success in both business and philanthropy. But he was under broad attack, in both areas of his life. The attacks continued for the next fifteen years. Yet all the while there were people who wanted to find reasons to like Rockefeller; and indeed there were reasons for doing so. During the first dozen years of the twentieth century, Rockefeller became a great philanthropist. This is also when he became the wealthiest single individual in recorded world history.

Bad Rockefeller

In September 1894, two years after the opening of the University of Chicago, an investigative news reporter, Henry Demarest Lloyd, published Wealth against Commonwealth. Lloyd's book was some thirteen years in the making. He had published a short piece in 1881, titled ‘Story of a Great Monopoly’, but that early account only initiated Lloyd's interest. He set to work meticulously researching his subject, and in Wealth he revealed what he uncovered: Rockefeller employed a range of aggressive tactics to increase his company's profits, including the elimination of competition by employing trade agreements called rebates. Lloyd's attitude was influenced by Rockefeller's own testimony before the newly established Interstate Commerce Commission. Lloyd read Rockefeller's wording and decided that Rockefeller ‘will never sacrifice any of his plans for the restraints of law or patriotism or philanthropy’. Rockefeller's greed was rapacious.