The Personal Relation in Industry

by Jr. John D. Rockefeller

You don’t have to wait for your share; you don’t have to take any chances about getting it. You know that there has never been a two-weeks’ period that you have worked when you have not been able to get your pay from this company; whatever happens, so long as the company is running, you get your pay.

And then the officers and superintendents come along, and they get theirs; they don’t get it until after you have gotten yours (removing more coins).

Then come the directors, and they get their directors’ fees (removing the balance of the coins) for doing their work in the company.

And, hello! There is nothing left! This must be the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company! For never, men, since my father and I became interested in this company as stockholders, some fourteen years ago—never has there been one cent for the common stock.

For fourteen years the common stockholder has seen your wages paid to you workers; has seen your salaries paid to you officers; has seen the directors draw their fees, and has not had one cent of return for the money that he has put into this company in order that you men might work and get your wages and salaries.

How many men in this room ever heard that fact stated before? Is there a man among you? Well, there are mighty few among the workers who have heard it.

What you have been told, what has been heralded from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is that those Rockefeller men in New York, the biggest scoundrels that ever lived, have taken millions of dollars out of this company on account of their stock ownership, have oppressed you men, have cheated you out of your wages, and “done” you in every way they could.

That is the kind of “dope” you have been getting, and that is what has been spread all over the country. And when that kind of talk was going on, there were disturbances in this part of the country because the four sides of this table were not square and the table was not level, there were those who in the streets of New York and in public gatherings, were inciting the crowd to “shoot John D. Rockefeller, Jr., down like a dog.” That is the way they talked.

The common stockholders have put $34,000,000 into this company in order to make it go, so that you men will get your wages, you officers have your salaries, and the directors get their fees, while not one cent has ever come back to them in these fourteen years.