Book Review: "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr" by Ron Chernow
Thorough but Inadvertently Makes the Case Against Anti-Trust Laws
Overall Rating: 4.25/5
When I read Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society, I noticed that Sowell had a much different opinion of Rockefeller and Standard Oil than those presented by Richard White in The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 from the Oxford Series on United States History. To resolve the matter, I resolved to do a "spot check" on Sowell's claims to see whose opinion was closer to the truth. After procrastinating on this, a message arrived in my Inbox informing me that Ron Chernow's biography of Rockefeller was on sale for only $5. Was this a sign that this was the book I was meant to read? Almost certainly, it was merely a coincidence, but it did seem like the book would present me with more than enough information to get to the bottom of the different views of the Gilded Age's "Robber Barrons." It would, however, require more reading than the "spot check" I had initially intended...
Chernow's Goals
At the outset, Chernow states that he wants to cover more aspects of Rockefeller's life than are typically covered by other books that focus on Rockefeller's business career. For instance, Chernow decries the lack of coverage of Rockefeller's long retirement years. Indeed, Chernow reaches Rockefeller's somewhat early retirement about halfway through his book. As stated at the outset, Chernow's other big goal is to try to explain the seeming "contradictions" in Rockefeller's personality and his resultant actions.
Breadth of Coverage
Chernow definitely succeeds in covering much more of Rockefeller's life than his business career. Rockefeller's philanthropy takes up about as much space as his business career; Rockefeller's family is described in sometimes exquisite and sometimes excruciating detail; There is also much discussion of contemporaneous writings and feeling regarding Rockefeller.
Explaining Rockefeller's Seemingly Contradictory Personality
Chernow achieves a home run on his second big goal---to explain the "contradictions" in Rockefeller's personality. Chernow describes how devoutly religious Rockefeller was from a very early age and how he always tried to act according to Baptist principles. Rockefeller regarded his business success as a sign that he was acting in God's favor. Rockefeller also felt he was merely meant to be a good steward with the money he earned: his primary obligation was to give it away to help better the world.
The third crucial belief explaining Rockefeller's actions was that he did not see competition as inherently good. Indeed, his early experience in the oil fields---and he was fortunate enough to be working very close to the first discoveries---led him to believe that competition was not inherently good: in the case of oil, it just led to overproduction, most businesses going bust, and harm from this that could spill over into lenders. Thus, in Rockefeller's mind, he was on a mission to dominate the oil markets and replace competition with cooperation. His success showed that God favored him likely because he would follow his Christian duty to give away the resultant wealth. A surprising fact, given this, is that Rockefeller regarded Standard Oil's contribution to the world of making oil and derived products widely and cheaply available as a far more extraordinary accomplishment than his philanthropic work.
Rockefeller's Mother and Father
Beyond his core beliefs, or more likely the source of them, Chernow feels that Rockefeller's seemingly contradictory personality resulted from having parents who, in most ways, were quite the opposite. Rockefeller's father was a literal frontier’s con-man who could have walked straight off the pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Rockefeller's mother, by contrast, was a devout Baptist. Chernow sees Rockefeller's devotion to philanthropy, religion, and family arising from his mother's character and his ruthlessness in business deriving from his father's antisocial traits.
Chernow mentions that pathological liars can miss out on great achievements they otherwise may be more capable of than most by getting caught up in their petty scams. Along these lines, it is fascinating to think of Rockefeller and his con-man father, given that we now know that CEOs are more likely to exhibit "dark triad" traits than the general population. At the same time, it is also hypothesized that personality disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder, run along a spectrum. The traits are beneficial in small amounts: e.g., a businessman pushing the rules as far as they will go but stopping just shy of going over. It is when they occur in too extreme amounts that they are harmful.
Other Family
Chernow's accounts of Rockefeller's family, including his siblings, in-laws, children, and grandchildren, add a personal touch to the narrative. However, at times, the exhaustive details are overwhelming. The extensive coverage of Rockefeller Jr is intriguing, painting a picture of a competent heir who, despite his weaknesses, manages to rise to critical occasions. While some anecdotes veer into gossipy territory, the overall depiction is that of a loving, devoted family man.
Philanthropy
In terms of philanthropy, Chernow portrays it as ultimately consuming even more of Rockefeller's energies and worries than Standard Oil. Chernow describes how Rockefeller wanted to affect the greatest good by supporting the most fundamental issues: for example, the lack of quality education for black people in the South and a lack of quality medical research facilities in the United States. Chernow describes how Rockefeller's goal was to create entities that would survive his death and exist long into the future. Chernow's coverage here is excellent. Except for going into a little too much detail about the founding of the University of Chicago, it did not suffer the problem of coverage just for the sake of completeness that coverage of Rockefeller's family did at times.
Rockefeller's Kindness
Overall, Rockefeller is portrayed as an extremely and genuinely kind man who was genuinely modest in his dealings with people at all levels of society and always on guard for wealth harming his adherence to his Christian principles. Chernow has some anecdotes that are particularly successful in making this point. One anecdote is how Rockefeller, though he expected Junior to track every penny and never waste money, reacted when Junior had to inform him that he had lost 1 million dollars he did have in the stock market. The other describes Rockefeller's reaction to an employee, not knowing who he was, reacting to some exercise equipment that Rockefeller brought into the office.
Weaknesses in Covering Rockefeller's Business Career
Overall I rate the coverage of Rockefeller's life outside of Standard Oil as 5/5: in some cases rather tedious but still excellent overall. Unfortunately, beyond explaining how Rockefeller's ruthlessness in business arose without causing him to feel any contradictions with his Christian principles, I did not feel that Chernow's coverage of Standard Oil was as strong as the rest of the book:
Anti-trust Laws: Axiomatically Good?
The issue appears to be that Chernow presupposes that competition in business is inherently beneficial, as are anti-trust laws. There may be better places to get deep into economic and ethical analysis than a history book. However, although there is a consensus that anti-trust laws are sound in principle, it is by no means universally believed that the case is so axiomatic as not to require any discussion. I did not feel that Chernow did a good job of describing any net harm done by Standard Oil. Yes, competition was suppressed, but there are not enough details or concrete examples to show how that was net detrimental to society. Standard Oil's anti-competitive practices did not seem to harm its innovativeness: new uses of petroleum products were constantly being discovered, and Standard Oil could not and did not rest on its laurels. Rockefeller's perfectionism and desire to make as much money as possible to give to charity would never have allowed for that.
After Rockefeller stepped away, Standard Oil did raise prices on domestic oil products to offset price cuts they had to make to compete overseas. At the same time, however, a tariff limited foreign competitors' ability to compete with US oil producers. These facts raise the question of whether the problem really was Standard Oil or whether it was government intervention limiting competition.
Ultimately, although it took time, people did find ways to compete with Standard Oil such that Chernow admits that the ultimate Supreme Court decision to break up Standard Oil was like closing the barn door after the horses had already escaped. Indeed, it seemed that Rockefeller ultimately paid nothing in the way of "punishment" for his business practices. Indeed the breakup likely benefitted him as new managers were now needed making way for young folks with fresh ideas to come into the business.
Chernow's Conclusions
Overall Chernow is supposedly emphasizing the "dual" character of Rockefeller and, in the book's conclusion, thinks that maybe the good outweighed the bad and God may have allowed him into heaven. Presupposing the existence of a Christian God, the case that it is even close does not seem to have been made. Indeed, the evidence presented demonstrated that Standard Oil and its actions were undeniably a net benefit to consumers. Additionally, Rockefeller accrued the largest percentage of the profits made from oil. The question arises-—if there had been more competition, would his competitors have been as philanthropic as he was?" Chernow shows that Rockefeller was far and away the most generous philanthropist. Hence, the answer seems a clear "no."
Lingering Questions
The strongest case against Rockefeller's business practices involves imposing exclusivity agreements on food and supply store owners. These owners were told to carry only Standard Oil products, under threat of facing Standard Oil-backed competitors who would sell non-oil products at cost or even a loss to undercut them. This does, indeed, seem unfair. Hence, after reading the book, some residual questions were:
Is the feeling that a business practice is unfair sufficient to justify anti-trust laws preventing it?
In the case of food and supply stores, were they done great harm by being forced to carry only Standard Oil products?
If the business practices were bad but resulted in a net benefit to society, is the typical argument for anti-trust laws turned on its head? Now there is a right to fair competition even if that does not result in the greatest economic benefit to society. By contrast, the argument generally seems to be that the right to do what you want with your property and through contracts is limited if it does great net harm to society or, in principle, could have even if it did not occur in your particular case.
A final question is: Did the United States get lucky with Rockefeller? If his and Standard Oil's existence does make a case against anti-trust laws, is this just an outlier contradicting the general trend?
Conclusion
Titan delivers a thorough exploration of Rockefeller's life, with his business career accounting for about half the book's content. While the narrative can occasionally become too exhaustive, and readers may reach differing conclusions regarding Rockefeller's anti-competitive behavior, the book provides an excellent recounting of Rockefeller's life, including the early days of the Rockefeller family.
Thank you, Leonard.