An ode to ole John…
Found this really insightful description of my most admired business leader, John D. Rockefeller. A man who dominated the late 19th Century and whose wits and will alone created and consolidated the energy industry as we know it. No one in modern history could rival what he had achieved, not Gates, Walton, Buffet, Carnegie or even Perot could reach the heights that he had scaled.
Ida Tarbell’s write up on Mr. Rockefeller’s character:
Now, it takes time to secure and to keep that which the public has
decided it is not for the general good that you have. It takes time and
caution to perfect anything which must be concealed. It takes time to
crush men who are pursuing legitimate trade. But one of Mr.
Rockefeller’s most impressive characteristics is patience. There never
was a more patient man, or one who could dare more while he waited. The
folly of hurrying, the folly of discouragement, for one who would
succeed, went hand in hand. Everything must be ready before he acted,
but while you wait you must prepare, must think, work. "You must put
in, if you would take out." His instinct for the money opportunity in
things was amazing, his perception of the value of seizing this or that
particular invention, plant, market, was unerring. He was like a
general who, besieging a city surrounded by fortified hills, views from
a balloon the whole great field, and see how, this point taken, that
must fall; this hill reached, that fort is commanded. And nothing was
too small: the corner grocery in Browntown, the humble refining still
on Oil Creek, the shortest private pipe line. Nothing, for little
things grow.
