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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1920s) John Davison Rockefeller
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
People
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
John Davison Rockefeller
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(MAY 21, 1928)
</p>
<p> "I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you
can, fairly and honestly; to keep all you can, and to give away
all you can."
</p>
<p> So said John Davison Rockefeller, at the age of 60, when he
was fingering the yellowed leaves of a precious document, his
own Ledger A, which he had kept as a 16-year-old assistant
bookkeeper in a Cleveland commission house. That all-inclusive
creed, conceived in youth, expressed at the philosopher's age,
was the one recorded feat of Mr. Rockefeller's imagination.
Otherwise, he has exhibited no great creative imagination. But
give even a street car conductor a mighty creed, give him an
almost perfect mathematical determination to carry it out, and
he will build tracks to the ends of the earth.
</p>
<p> There is every reason to believe that Mr. Rockefeller began
to lay his tracks in Ledger A. For example, note his first
entry: "September 26, 1855-January 1, 1856: received $5.00
(wages). Paid board and washer-woman. Save a little. Gave penny
each Sabbath to Sunday School."
</p>
<p> Today, the figures have changed. The man, approaching his
89th birthday (July 8), does not record them or administer them,
but he knows what they are. No doubt, he has often been asked,
by inquisitive reporters, how many times he is worth his weight
in gold. This can be computed roughly:
</p>
<table>
Estimated fortune..............$ 500,000,000
Gifts..........................$ 539,229,643
--------------
$1,039,229,643
</table>
<p> Muckrakers have made much of the way Mr. Rockefeller bought
out competitors. That was only one of the methods by which Mr.
Rockefeller is said to have built the "trust" that the Supreme
Court of Ohio ordered dissolved in 1892. The others were the
most efficient production methods that had been developed before
Henry Ford.
</p>
<p> In the early '90's, Mr. Rockefeller put his philanthropies on
a wholesale scale. He had always been a devout Baptist, a Sunday
school teacher since he was 20. When a comparatively poor man,
in 1870, he gave $2,000 to help build the Euclid Avenue Baptist
Church in Cleveland. His first huge gift was for a Baptist-
affiliated institution of learning--the University of Chicago
(founded 1892). He plunged into the giving business as
systematically as he had into oil. He trained John D. Jr. to
succeed him in both. And then, in 1911, he entered the business
of pleasure...
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>