The Word "Billionaire" Was Invented For One Man

Every time you fill up your car, you are paying a company John D. Rockefeller built. Exxon. Mobil. Chevron. All of them are pieces of one company that was broken up for being too powerful — more than a hundred years ago. In six weeks he took twenty-two of the twenty-six oil refineries in his city. Not one of them wanted to sell. By 1882 he controlled nine barrels of oil out of every ten in America. In 1916 the newspapers had to invent a word for him: billionaire. He also taught Sunday school every week of his adult life. He never drank and never raised his voice at anyone. He gave away more than half of everything he ever made, and a laboratory his money built produced the yellow fever vaccine that is still used today. And in April 1914, men working for a company he owned opened fire on a tent camp in Colorado. Eleven children suffocated in a pit dug under a burning tent. A hundred years later, people still cannot agree what he was. This is the whole file — how he started, how he actually won, and what it cost. So what was he? Tell me in the comments. — Further reading Ida Tarbell — The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) Ron Chernow — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998) Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911) Reports of the Colorado Coalfield War and the Ludlow Massacre, 1913–1914 Archival images: Library of Congress · National Archives · Wikimedia Commons · Digital Public Library of America · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Cleveland Museum of Art · Smithsonian American Art Museum Every story has a file. We open the ones worth knowing. #Rockefeller #StandardOil #Documentary #History #BusinessHistory