KEEPING HIS HEAD
John D. Rockefeller looked the entire field over carefully and calmly. Never for a moment did he lose his head. His Cleveland bankers and business friends had asked him to purchase some wells, if he saw fit, offering to back him up with $75,000 for his own investment [he was worth about $10,000 at the time], and to put in $400,000 more on his report.
The business judgment of this young man at twenty-five was so good, that his neighbors were willing to invest half a million dollars at his bidding.
He returned to Cleveland without investing a dollar. Instead of joining the mad crowd of producers, he sagaciously determined to begin at the other end of the business,—the refining of the product.