The Cost of a Fortune

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 10, 1905

The Cost of a Fortune

In the July and August issues of McClure’s Magazine Miss Ida M. Tarbell, well known through her history of the Standard Oil Trust, has contributed a study of the character of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, the head of the Standard Oil Company, which is a remarkable example of minute analysis and merciless condemnation.

After studying the business methods of this richest private individual in the world from his first boyish transactions through his operations in building up his great monopoly, Miss Tarbell sums up the case against his influence in the world in a masterly manner. It is a notable utterance. We quote the following:—

Rich indeed should be the returns to the public for what it has cost to build up a fortune like Mr. Rockefeller’s. But what has Mr. Rockefeller given the public in return for the code of business principles he has taught it, in return for the havoc their enforcement has cost, in return for the hypocrisy and cynicism he has fostered?

He has built hospitals and colleges and endowed schools. True, and those helped have become his open apologists, by taking what they call the “large view,” or the “charitable view,” or by deliberately shunning a consideration of the subject, quietly not seeing in it a topic for discussion. Does it pay to have those who are entrusted with the very sources of our intellectual and moral life blinded or silenced to the ethical quality of the practises of our daily life? Will it pay our colleges to put over their doors the teaching of one of our present-day moralists, “Never discuss politics or religion if you would succeed”?

He has led a life devoted to charity and the church. True, and the principles of the religion he professes are so antagonistic to the principles of the business he practises that the very world which emulates him has been turned into hypocrites and cynics under his tutelage; while, in the world which looks on, charity itself has become hateful to many a man—a cloak to cover a multitude of sins. Others actually withdraw their bequests from institutions which accept his funds. (It has been stated on the best authority that three wills making bequests to one of our leading universities have been changed because this institution has accepted money from Mr. Rockefeller.) Not only has charity been tainted by the hypocrisy of his life, the church itself has been polluted, and many a man has turned away from its doors because of the servile support it gives to the men of whom Mr. Rockefeller is the most eminent type. Does all this pay?

There is no shirking the answer. It does not pay. Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises. From him we have received no impulse to public duty, only lessons in evading it for private greed; no stimulus to nobler ideals, only a lesson in the further deification of gold; no example of enlarged and noble living, only one of concealment and evasion; no impulse to free thinking, only a lesson in obscuring vital ethical issues by dressing them in the garbs of piety and generosity. None of those higher things which the public has a right to demand from the man to whom it permits great power are returned to it by Mr. Rockefeller. For Mr. Rockefeller has none of these things to give. He has nothing but money, and never was there a more striking example of the impotency of money! He has neither taste nor cultivation, ideals nor potent personality. He is not a great man, not a human man. He is a machine—a money machine—stripped by his overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes a man worthy of citizenship. He has not made good. He can not make good. It is not in him. He has nothing the aspiring world needs. On the contrary, that for which he does stand is a menace to our free development, not only or chiefly our free development in commerce, but, vastly more important, our free development in citizenship and in morals.

And Mr. Rockefeller is not the only one of his kind. He is simply the type pre-eminent in the public mind of the militant business man of the day. From bankers down to street venders we have in operation the code which he has worked out so perfectly, and to which he has given the sanction of piety. And this code, so repugnant to the sense of fair play and so demoralizing to intellectual honesty, has worked its way into every activity of life, until with a growing element of the country success is the justification of any practise, until no price is too great to pay for winning. In commerce “the interest of the business” justifies breaking the law, bribing legislators, defrauding a competitor of his rights. In politics, winning the election justifies supporting an Addicks, breaking international laws, enduring slanders, bribing voters. In athletics you

may break an opponent’s collar-bone if it will win the game for your team. In church and college you may close your mouth to national demoralization if it will bring you endowments. On every side of us the Rockefeller practise of separating morals strictly from the business in hand is winning adherents and defenders.

Those who have read the undisputed facts of the history of the oil business in this country, and the sworn testimony of witnesses in the various legislative and congressional investigations of Mr. Rockefeller’s methods, will be almost forced to assent to Miss Tarbell’s view of the case. What a price to pay for world riches! But the worst is not yet. The seed which has been sown is already springing up. A new code of morals for the business world has been practically substituted for the old one. A determination to get rich at all hazards seems to have taken possession of many, and there is too little moral power to resist the terrible temptations to betray trusts of the most sacred character. The present shocking revelations in life insurance circles serve to emphasize these facts.

One becomes sick at heart as he contemplates the picture which is presented in strong outline day after day, and he is compelled to believe that this order of things can not last much longer. “The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall, and not rise again.”