Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Laura Spelman was a member of the first graduating class of the Cleveland High School, and has always retained the deepest interest in her classmates. After graduating, and spending some time in a boarding-school at the East, she taught very successfully for five years in the Cleveland public schools, being assistant in one of the large grammar schools.

At the age of twenty-five Mr. Rockefeller married Miss Spelman, Sept. 8, 1864. Disliking display or extravagance, fond of books, a wise adviser in her home, a leader for many years of the infant department in the Sunday-school, like her father a worker for temperance and in all philanthropic movements, Mrs. Rockefeller has been an example to the rich, and a friend and helper to the poor. Comparatively few men and women can be intrusted with millions, and make the best use of the money. With Mr. Rockefeller's married life thus happily and wisely begun, business activities went on as before, perchance with less wear of body and mind. It was, of course, impossible to organize and carry forward a great business without anxiety and care.

In Cleave's "Biographical Cyclopædia of Cuyahoga County," it is stated that, in 1872, two years after the organization of the Standard Oil Company, "nearly the entire refining interest of Cleveland, and other interests in New York and the oil-regions, were combined in this company [the Standard Oil], the capital stock of which was raised to two and a half millions, and its business reached in one year over twenty-five million dollars,—the largest company of the kind in the world. The New York establishment was enlarged in its refining departments; large tracts of land were purchased, and fine warehouses erected for the storage of petroleum; a considerable number of iron cars were procured, and the business of transporting oil entered upon; interests were purchased in oil-pipes in the producing regions.

"Works were erected for the manufacture of barrels, paints, and glue, and everything used in the manufacture or shipment of oil. The works had a capacity of distilling twenty-nine thousand barrels of crude oil per day, and from thirty-five hundred to four thousand men were employed in the various departments. The cooperage factory, the largest in the world, turned out nine thousand barrels a day, which consumed over two hundred thousand staves and headings, the product of from fifteen to twenty acres of selected oak."

Ten years after this time, in 1882, the Standard Oil Trust was formed, with a capital of $70,000,000, afterwards increased to $95,000,000, which in a few years became possessed of large oil-producing interests, and of the stock of the companies controlling the greater part of the refining of petroleum in this country.

Ten years later, in 1892, the Supreme Court of Ohio having declared the Trust to be illegal, it was dissolved, and the business is now conducted by separate companies. In each of these Mr. Rockefeller is a shareholder.

Mr. Rockefeller has proved himself a remarkable organizer. His associates have been able men; and his vast business has been so systematized, and the leaders of departments held responsible, that it is managed with comparative ease.

The Standard Oil Companies own hundreds of thousands of acres of oil-lands, and wells, refineries, and many thousand miles of pipe-lines throughout the United States. They have business houses in the principal cities of the Old World as well as the New, and carry their oil in their own great oil-steamships abroad as easily as in their pipe-lines to the American seaboard. They control the greater part of the petroleum business of this country, and export much of the oil used abroad. They employ from forty to fifty thousand men in this great industry, many of whom have remained with the companies for twenty or thirty years. It is said that strikes are unknown among them.

When it is stated, as in the last United States Census reports, that the production of crude petroleum in this country is about thirty-five million barrels a year, the capital invested in the production $114,000,000, and the value of the exports of petroleum in various forms amounts to nearly $50,000,000 a year, the vastness of the business is apparent.