I don't see how anyone who apparently has read Ron Chernow's excellent biography can present such a distorted picture of Rockefeller. The idea that he gave away huge amounts of his own money in order to fend off some sort of popular uprising is laughable. Rockefeller had no fear of the common man, Congress, or anyone else. His philanthropies came out of his lifelong membership in the Baptist Church, and his belief that it was the right thing for a Christian to do. An old-fashioned point of view, perhaps, but after all, this was over 100 years ago. He even retired at an early age from the oil business so he could devote more time to his charities.

And the article mentions his founding of the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Foundation, etc., almost parenthetically, as if these were mere trifles. You might also have mentioned that he was the principal benefactor of Spelman College and other historically black colleges. Meanwhile Sanford Weill gave away $37 million last year -- a pittance by comparison.

There are plenty of things you can accuse Rockefeller of (his ferociously monopolistic business practices, for example), but having hypocritical motives for his philanthropy isn't one of them.

Fair enough, although one can't help pointing out that someone with 'no fear of the common man, Congress, or anyone else' might be mistaken for God himself. Rockefeller might well have grounded his philanthropy in his Christian faith, but that Christian spirit was conspicuously absent while he was extracting his fortune at the expense of his workers. Having wronged so many for so long, his use of philanthropy to purchase his own redemption would indeed be legitimately called hypocritical.

Rockefeller and his kind laid the foundations for the modern American economy, from which we still benefit today. If he exploited his workers, judged by today's standards, it at least wasn't any worse than what anybody else was doing at that time. And I doubt very much that's the reason he gave so much money away.

As far as I know there's no way to create wealth for the whole nation without creating wealth for a few individuals at the same time. And at least Rockefeller made his money by developing and marketing a useful product, which is more than today's Wall St. tycoons can say.

I'm not sure how much water the argument can hold: to give credit to Rockefeller for having developed a 'useful product' while also acknowledging, as you do, his 'ferociously monopolistic business practices'. Monopoly by its very nature involves stifling competitors, reducing productive output, and raising market price above levels that the open market would warrant, all in the pursuit of excess profit (monopoly rents). I'm not convinced that he departs too much from his counterparts' mold today.

And he exploited his workers even by the standards of his own time - the fact that he so vehemently opposed labour's efforts to unionise might be taken as evidence that he knew that his business practices vis-a-vis labour were not aligned with the demands or expectations that a unionised labour force might otherwise articulate. And positing that his actions weren't 'any worse than what anyone else what doing at that time' is perhaps a rationalisation of the most spurious type. The moral race to the bottom, as it were.

That said, I will concede that economic growth largely does not occur without some increase in inequality, if the Kuznets hypothesis is to be accepted; my objection, however, would be that said inequality need not be as extreme (as it was in Rockefeller's time, or as it is now) to arrive at the desired growth outcome.

More evidence that Rockefeller did NOT have only altruistic motives in his charity comes from the foundation's work in eradicating hookworm in the South. Hookworm contributes to anemia, which contributes to easy fatigue, not a good thing for manual laborers, at least as far as employers are concerned. Research was done to improve worker productivity, just as health care was improved in Africa in the 1920s and 1930s under the colonial powers. bjs

slobone wrote the following post at 10/21/2007 2:09 PM:

I don't see how anyone who apparently has read Ron Chernow's excellent biography can present such a distorted picture of Rockefeller. The idea that he gave away huge amounts of his own money in order to fend off some sort of popular uprising is laughable.( What was it really, as a percentage of his total fortune?).

Rockefeller had no fear of the common man, Congress, or anyone else. His philanthropies came out of his lifelong membership in the Baptist Church, and his belief that it was the right thing for a Christian to do. An old-fashioned point of view, perhaps, but after all, this was over 100 years ago.(was it the Christian thing to gun down people striking for better wages, including women and children? And so much else).

He even retired at an early age from the oil business so he could devote more time to his charities.(Yeah, thats the ticket).

And the article mentions his founding of the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Foundation, etc., almost parenthetically, as if these were mere trifles. You might also have mentioned that he was the principal benefactor of Spelman College and other historically black colleges. Meanwhile Sanford Weill gave away $37 million last year -- a pittance by comparison. (So this should make it ok that the general populations exploitation did help expand the education of the upper classes?)