Quotes from Ron Chernow

I remember how fascinated I was with his letters

He held $32.3 million in Morgan capital, which was the bank's major cushion.

Faced with his son's dizzying wealth, he must have sometimes pondered whether to throw off his disguise and resume his Rockefeller identity.

Refiners who used Tidewater were lured away with concessionary rates on Standard Oil pipelines, and Rockefeller swiftly bought up any remaining independent refineries that might be prospective Tidewater customers.

In 1886, Standard Oil set up the Natural Gas Trust, with Rockefeller as its largest shareholder.

For this reason, I have stressed his evangelical Baptism as the passkey that unlocks many mysteries of his life.

Finally, he [John F. Mercer] ridiculed Hamilton as an upstart, a mushroom excrescence, who did not deserve the prominence he had gained.

I made up my mind that, if I could manage it, some day I would give away crisp bills, too.

Like Rockefeller, he advocated self-discipline and deferred gratification.

Yet this was not a feasible option, since he could not do so without shocking Margaret and betraying his own shameful bigamy.

As such, he presided over these sordid municipal skirmishes, albeit keeping a sanitary distance.

This transaction required Bill's signature, but John's relations with his father were so uneasy that he had to ask brother Frank and Pierson Briggs to act as intermediaries.

So long as McKinley was in the White House, Rockefeller had implicit faith that his business interests would be safeguarded.

Thus, Rockefeller and other industrial captains conspired to kill competitive capitalism in favor of a new monopoly capitalism.

Through such trusts, he would convert financiers from servants to masters of their clients.

He saw that money could bring majesty in the moral as well as secular sphere, which excited him more than fancy estates or clothes.

General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway's mouth that came out the back of his head.

Without the federal ratio, Hamilton glumly concluded, "no union could possibly have been formed." Indeed, the whole superstructure erected in Philadelphia rested on that unstable, undemocratic foundation.

With the Tarbell series under way, Rockefeller kept a salutary distance from his new foundation.

He made a practice of never carrying less than $1,000, and he kept it in his pocket.

Two people competed for the position—

He also reserved his father's extraordinary powers, which included the right to allocate profits among partners, arbitrate disputes, fire partners, and determine a fired partner's departing share of capital. These were the trump cards in a private partnership.

With sky-high profits and ridiculously low start-up costs, the field had soon grown overcrowded.

This was nicely illustrated by an anecdote.