had more money in it than he had ever dreamed of making He did not plan to drill a well himself Rather he would profit from building tanks in which well owners could store the oil gushing up from the ground In 1860 he moved his family to the northwestern Pennsylvania settlement of Rouseville Business was soon booming but young Ida hated her surroundings which consisted largely of oil derricks and sunken pits where unproductive wells had been abandoned As she later wrote No industry of man in its early days has ever been more destructive of beauty order decency than the production of petroleum If oil was found if the well flowed every tree every shrub every bit of grass in the vicinity was coated with black grease and left to die Despite the ugly landscape Ida's family continued prospering Soon they were able to move into a home on a hill above the town where the view was a wooded hillside not oil derricks Ida enjoyed exploring these woods until 1870 when her family moved to the nearby town of Titusville Eventually as iron tanks replaced the wooden ones Franklin made he turned to the wells and became an oil producer
Invasion of the Octopus Meanwhile as Ida grew up in oil country John D Rockefeller set his eyes on the area as well In the 1860s the young man established a refinery in his hometown of Cleveland Ohio His business started out small but Rockefeller wanted to be the biggest and the best His company began forcing smaller oil refiners and producers to sell their companies to him Rockefeller then incorporated their refineries and wells into his BUSINESS TYCOON business which eventually John D Rockefeller was born took the name Standard on July 8 1839 in Richford New York His family moved Oil Company As the several times before finally company grew and spread settling permanently in Cleveland Rockefeller's father some people called it the was a con man who scammed money with schemes such as Octopus because it seemed pretending to be a beggar to reach everywhere who was deaf and unable to speak In 1855 Rockefeller In 1871 Rockefeller and took a job as a bookkeeper In 1859 he set up a small a few other large refiners business selling grain meat made a secret illegal and other commodities before turning his attention to deal with the railroads oil His oil business eventually forming a company known made Rockefeller the richest man in America He earned as the South Improvement 10 million to 20 million a year at a time when the average Company to carry out American made 500 a year the deal The railroads
agreed to charge refiners who were part of the South Improvement Company reduced rates for shipping their oil At the same time the railroads would raise the rates of all other companies shipping oil The members of the South Improvement Company would receive rebates or money back not only on their own shipments but also on the shipments of their competitors When word of the rate hikes got out Titusville's 3 000 angry oilmen swarmed the local opera house There they held nightly protests Ida later remembered the excitement of those nights as her father and the other men of the town signed a pledge not to sell to Standard Oil In what became known as the Oil War of 1872 angry mobs went so far as to destroy the tank cars of oil producers who gave in to Rockefeller Crusader of the Future The railroad rebate scheme was eventually canceled but Ida later remembered the Oil War of 1872 as the start of her hatred of privilege privilege of any sort It was the first time she realized it was every individual's duty to fight injustice She had no way of knowing this was only the start of her fight against injustice Nearly 30 years later that fight would bring her into conflict with Rockefeller again This time it would take place in one of the nation's most popular magazines
John D Rockefeller made millions of dollars in the oil business and controlled the industry with Ida as the star reporter And in the end the clash would change the course of US business and the role of journalism in American life
