Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackCrayon
before you make him out to be a hero and a saint, think about how many people died because of standard oil.
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How many people did Standard Oil murder during Rockefeller's time?
I just read his wikipedia entry, he was a religious man, gave 10% of his earnings to the church from the time he was an enterprising boy.
He was ruthless in business believing his company could run the oil industry better than 1000 smaller independent companies and he was correct about that, the result was regular people getting oil products at a reasonable price. He believed industry like life in general was governed by Darwinism, survival of the fittest. As time went on he accepted that this was not a popular opinion and rolled and continued to profit with the punches.
Along with Andrew Carnegie he literally invented modern philanthropy, the greatest contributor to the establishment of medical science, wiped out two killer diseases.
His family were staunch abolitionists on slavery and endowed several African American colleges in the South.
If the wikipedia is more or less a basic biography of the man he was a great man. The good he brought to this world far outweighed his transgressions.