"John D. Rockefeller" became the world's first billionaire and was known as the Oil Tycoon for controlling 90% of Oil through his Standard Oil Company.

"John D. Rockefeller" became the world's first billionaire and was known as the Oil Tycoon for controlling 90% of Oil through his Standard Oil Company.

He used ruthless and aggressive business tactics to eliminate any rivals which led to the collapse of his empire.

Let's know more of his past life and how he created such a powerful empire.

1. He started with doing odd jobs for 50 cents a day.

- John did many odd jobs like selling vegetables and turkeys, However, his first full-time job was working as a bookkeeper for a coal and grain company.

- He gained skills like the ability to negotiate shipping prices even though they were fixed before that helped him later in his career.

- He worked as an apprentice, for a period of three years, the last of which saw him compensated at the rate of $58 per month.

2. His father was a conman and a fake doctor with cancer cure.

- John's father had a gift for conning others and would spent time for going from place to place pretending to be deaf and soliciting free meals.

- Sometimes, he would hand out sheets referring to himself as “doctor” and pretend to have found a “cure” for cancer.

- He even insisted that his mistress, Nancy, would live in the same house with his family who even gave birth to 2 kids in the same house.

3. He Hired A Soldier To Serve In The Civil War For Him so that he could grow his company.

- Rockefeller was selected but did not take up arms when the Civil War broke out in 1861, his youngest brother was wounded at Cedar Mountain.

- He received an exemption for being the primary means of supporting his family and hired substitute soldiers in his stead, a common practice during the war.

- He said. ““I wanted to go in the army and do my part, But it was simply out of the question. There was no one to take my place. We were in a new business, and if I had not stayed it must have stopped—and with so many dependent on it.” Rockefeller’s commodity business profited handsomely from the Civil War and provided the necessary capital for his entrance into the oil business.

4. He went on to build world's most powerful oil company.

- During the 1860s, government drove the price of oil from 35 cents to over $13 per barrel, when the war began. This led to the wave of drilling oil wells, and by the end of the war oil glutted the markets.

- Prior to the Civil War most kerosene was extracted from coal (coal oil) and it was soon evident that crude oil could be a cheaper source of kerosene. At the same time, establishment of a refinery was relatively inexpensive, as were the costs of operating one. 

- Rockefeller observed that the most expensive cost of refining crude oil was shipping it to the refinery, and then shipping the finished kerosene to market. Shipping was an area in which he was already expert at managing costs.

5. He used cheap ruthless tactics to stay on top.

- John maintained Standard Oil's dominance in the oil industry by utilizing predatory pricing to undercut competitors, driving them out of business by selling oil at a loss until rivals could no longer compete.

- Rockefeller also secured secret, preferential deals with railroads, ensuring cheaper transportation costs for his company while disadvantaging others. Additionally, he used aggressive tactics such as buying out competitors, often at prices they couldn't refuse.

- These methods, while highly effective in creating a near-monopoly, drew significant criticism and led to public outrage and legal challenges, ultimately resulting in the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911.

6. US govt. break-up his company for unlawful deeds.

- After years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that Standard Oil must be dismantled because it violated federal anti-trust laws.

- The monopoly was broken up into 34 separate entities that included companies that would become ExxonMobil, Conoco, Chevron and Amoco. The court order turned out to be a financial windfall for Rockefeller, who still held a quarter of Standard Oil’s stock after his retirement.

- The individual pieces of the company were worth more than the whole, and as shares of the individual companies doubled and tripled in value in their early years, Rockefeller became the country’s first billionaire with a fortune worth nearly 2 percent of the entire American economy.