John D. Rockefeller Jr.

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874, in Cleveland, to May 11, 1960, in Tucson) was the son of John D. Rockefeller Sr., founder of Standard Oil, and Laura Spelman Rockefeller. He graduated from Brown University in 1897, married Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (daughter of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island) on October 9, 1901, and, three years after her death in 1948, married Martha Baird Allen on August 15, 1951.¹ Estimates of his net worth were 995 million dollars in 1928, 379.6 million in 1938 and 336.5 million in 1950. His children were Abby, John D. Rockefeller III, Nelson Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, Winthrop Rockefeller and David Rockefeller; five sons established the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1940, and he gave it 58.9 million dollars.¹ His first employment was in his father's office at 26 Broadway, where he worked with the Reverend Frederick T. Gates.¹

Colorado Fuel and Iron Company

The Rockefeller interest in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company dated from 1902. In his written statement to the Commission on Industrial Relations in January 1915 he put the cash investment at about 6 million dollars, the dividends received on the stock since 1902 at 371,000 dollars (about two thirds of one percent a year), and the wages the company had paid in the same period at more than 92 million dollars.² He added that the decision of the company's officers on recognizing the union "was reached without any consultation or communication with me," and that he had no knowledge of it until after the strike had been declared.²

On April 6, 1914, he testified before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Mines and Mining (House Resolution 387, 63d Congress), where Representative Martin D. Foster of Illinois (the chairman), James F. Byrnes, John M. Evans and Richard W. Austin questioned him, with Starr J. Murphy present beside him.³ He gave his father's holdings in the company as 139,807 of 342,355 common shares (about 40 percent), 7,943 of 20,000 preferred shares (about 40 percent), 14,450,000 dollars of the 33,437,000 dollars of Colorado Industrial Company first mortgage 5 percent bonds (about 43 percent) and 366,000 dollars of 5,638,000 dollars of the company's general mortgage 5 percent bonds. He said that he held only the shares that qualified him as a director, and that he was "one of my father's representatives in the care of this and other of his personal investments."³ The common stock had never paid a dividend "since our relationship to the company"; the preferred stock had paid 35 percent of its accumulated arrears and 4 percent of the current dividend in 1913.³

He named three directors as his father's immediate representatives: himself, Murphy and "J. D. Green," who were on the staff of his father's personal office. Lamont M. Bowers, chairman of the company's board, he described as one "who might be said indirectly to represent our interests," and J. H. McClement as an independent New York businessman who represented the other stockholders as much as the Rockefellers.³ The index of the Commission's published record lists Bowers as "member advisory staff of John D. Rockefeller, sr."⁴ Asked by the chairman whether the three were "dummy" directors, he answered, "We have not usually felt ourselves that."³ The only annual meeting of stockholders he had attended was held in Denver, he estimated, at least ten years earlier; he signed the minutes of directors' meetings when they were sent east, and he received his information on the strike from correspondence with Bowers and J. F. Welborn, the company's president: "we invariably stand by those officers until we have reason to believe that we have been mistaken in our judgment regarding them."³ Later in the examination he told the chairman that he was a director of the Rockefeller Foundation "and, in fact, to be the chairman of that board," and, asked what steps he had taken to look after the conditions among the company's 10,000 employees in Colorado, answered that he had done "the very best thing that I could possibly have done in the interest of the employees, quite as much as in the interest of the large investment which I represent."³

The chairman asked why the "killing of these people, the shooting of children" had not led him to communicate with the other directors. Rockefeller answered that the issue was a national one and that "we stand ready to lose every cent we put in that company rather than see the men we have employed thrown out of work." He continued: "There is just one thing, Mr. Chairman, so far as I understand it, which can be done, as things are at present, to settle this strike, and that is to unionize the camps; and our interest in labor is so profound and we believe so sincerely that that interest demands that the camps shall be open camps, that we expect to stand by the officers at any cost. It is not an accident that this is our position." The chairman asked, "And you will do that if it costs all your property and kills all your employees?" Rockefeller answered, "It is a great principle."³

In the Commission's New York hearing in January 1915 he identified Jerome D. Greene as the other member (besides Murphy and himself) of his father's personal staff in 1914 and as a director of the company that year, one who "gave his time more to the foundation work" and so had less personal touch with the company than directors of longer standing. Greene was secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation.⁵

Ludlow and the Letters to Bowers

The tent colony of striking miners at Ludlow was destroyed on April 20, 1914. In the Commission's hearings the counsel of the United Mine Workers of America, Edward P. Costigan, read from the report of three Colorado militia officers. The report stated that "practically all National Guards were enlisted about the middle of April among the superintendents and foremen, the clerical force, physicians, storekeepers, mine guards, and other residents of the coal camps," that Lieutenant K. E. Linderfelt broke the stock of his Springfield rifle over the head of the prisoner Louis Tikas, and that two women and eleven children were found smothered.⁶

In May 1915 Chairman Frank P. Walsh read to him letters from the autumn of 1913. Bowers had written on September 29 that several mines were "working from one-half to two-thirds capacity" and that, undisturbed, the company could keep its steel works running and "supply our railroad friends with coal." Asked who the railroad friends were and whether his father held Southern Pacific securities, Rockefeller answered "I don't know" to each question, and added that he thought the phrase referred only to the railroads with which the company did business.⁷ Walsh then read a letter of October 6 from Rockefeller to Bowers: "We feel that what you have done is right and fair, and that the position which you have taken in regard to the unionizing of the mines is in the interest of the employees of the company. Whatever the outcome may be, we will stand by you to the end." A letter of October 10 to Bowers said the company's "strong and just position will not lack backing at this end."⁷

Walsh had read back to him in January 1915 the passage of his April 1914 testimony containing "we expect to stand by the officers at any cost" and "it is a great principle." Rockefeller answered that it concerned "the right of every man to determine for himself whether he should join the union or not."⁸ Asked whether his attention had ever been called to claims that the company's officers violated Colorado law, he said it had not; asked whether he would vote to discharge an officer persistently violating the law, he said, "If all the facts justified that belief, I should."⁸

The strike was called off on December 10, 1914. On December 16 David Griffiths, formerly the state coal mine inspector, was named an intermediary between the company and its employees, and on January 5, 1915 a notice invited the miners to elect one representative for every 250 employees to meet company officers in Denver.²

Ivy Lee

Ivy Lee testified before the Commission on May 22, 1915. Walsh read to him a letter from Rockefeller of June 10, 1914: "Several points in my memorandum, however, could well even more properly be used in the letter from Gov. Ammons to President Wilson, which you are proposing to prepare as soon as the major's memorandum reaches you." The governor was Elias M. Ammons; the major was Edward J. Boughton of the Colorado militia, whom Walsh described as the advocate general who presided over the military court at Trinidad (Lee said he did not know that) and whom Lee first met in New York in mid-June. Lee said Greene, "of Mr. Rockefeller's office," had seen Boughton first and that the suggestion that the governor write to the President went to Boughton through Greene. Lee agreed with Walsh that Greene was then also a director of the company, and answered "Yes, sir" when Walsh said, "You took his place, I believe?"⁹ Lee wrote to Rockefeller on June 11 that the best course was to give the governor's letter "our attention," and on July 2 that he was preparing "a very brief statement of the case which will command public attention."⁹

A New York Times clipping submitted to the Commission by Edward L. Doyle, a witness for the miners, quoted a statement from the Rockefeller offices at 26 Broadway, issued December 7, 1914, that Greene "had withdrawn temporarily from his activities as a member of John D. Rockefeller's personal staff and that Ivy L. Lee, executive assistant to the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, would shortly take up his duties."¹⁰ Rockefeller told the Commission in January 1915 that Lee's membership of the staff and his salary began on January 1, 1915; that before then Lee had cooperated with the committee of three Colorado operators and with the company in presenting the facts, with the consent of the president of Lee's company, whom Rockefeller had seen; and that the staff consisted of Murphy, Lee and himself, of whom he alone drew no salary.⁸

Walsh asked Lee whether John D. Rockefeller Sr. had paid him 6,000 dollars from private funds for work to January 1915. Lee answered that the whole expense of the publicity campaign "was repaid to me from Colorado" and that, on his information, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company had paid the greater part of his salary up to January 1 on behalf of the other operators.⁹

In 1934 Lee appeared before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the McCormack-Dickstein committee) on his retainer from the German dye trust, I. G. Farbenindustrie. In the House on February 27, 1935, Representative Samuel Dickstein said that Lee had told the committee he felt certain the information he supplied to the dye trust was reaching government officials, that Lee received 25,000 dollars a year for each year of the contract, and that Lee had left a son in Germany as his contact man at 33,000 dollars a year.¹¹

The Rockefeller Foundation's Industrial Relations Division

The Rockefeller Foundation was incorporated by Chapter 488 of the New York Laws of 1913, which became law on May 14, 1913; the Act named as members John D. Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Gates, Harry Pratt Judson, Simon Flexner, Murphy, Greene, Wickliffe Rose and Charles O. Heydt.¹² The Foundation's own account to the Commission said that the Colorado disturbances "impressed the President of the Foundation with the great need and public importance of finding an effective means of preventing such conflicts and caused him to urge a far-reaching study of industrial relations." Its executive committee resolved on August 13, 1914 to appoint William Lyon Mackenzie King to study industrial relations from October 1, 1914, at a salary the Foundation omitted from the published answer "as being information of a confidential nature." The arrangement had been made in conferences "principally" between King and the president and secretary, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Greene.¹² In his January 1915 statement Rockefeller said he had begun to secure King's services at the beginning of the previous June.²

The same document stated that the Foundation "is, moreover, a large owner of corporate securities," and its Schedule D listed the securities contributed by John D. Rockefeller and held on December 1, 1914. The schedule included 2,000 Colorado Industrial Company convertible bonds (book value 1,600,000 dollars), 7,000 shares of Colorado and Southern Railway first preferred (378,000 dollars), 20,000 shares of the Consolidated Gas Company (2,600,000 dollars), 24,845 shares of the Southern Pipe Line Company (5,703,308.88 dollars), 7,000 shares of Continental Oil (1,330,000 dollars) and 100 bonds of a Southern Pacific branch railway first issue. The total funds of the Foundation on that date were 103,930,817.19 dollars.¹²

The Foundation's report for 1928 lists Rockefeller as chairman of the board of trustees and of the finance committee; Jerome D. Greene was elected a trustee that November.¹³ The members and trustees in 1936, with Rockefeller as chairman, were Winthrop W. Aldrich, John W. Davis, Lewis W. Douglas, John Foster Dulles, Raymond B. Fosdick, Walter S. Gifford, Greene, Ernest M. Hopkins, Max Mason, Thomas I. Parkinson, John D. Rockefeller III, Walter W. Stewart, Harold H. Swift, George H. Whipple, Ray Lyman Wilbur and Owen D. Young.¹⁴

The Foundation's reports for those years list a grant of 75,000 dollars in 1928 "towards erection of building" for the Institute for Psychiatric Research in Munich, whose building opened that year; grants numbered RF 31045 and RF 33082 for research in neurohistology, serology and biochemistry there, on which 2,258.80 dollars was paid in 1936; small grants in 1936 to Professors O. Bumke and H. Spatz of Munich; the continuing payments in 1931 to Cornell University Medical School for Dr. C. R. Stockard's "studies in eugenics and heredity"; and general expenses and a research program for the Institute of Pacific Relations in Honolulu and for its American Council in 1936.¹³¹⁵

Bureau of Social Hygiene

In 1910 he served on a New York grand jury that investigated "white slavery," and he told the House subcommittee in 1914 that he had been its foreman.³¹⁶ The grand jury's work led him to establish the Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1913, and his statement of January 27, 1913 said that investigating bodies are "generally composed of busy people, who cannot turn away from their own affairs for any great length of time to carry on reforms."¹¹⁶ He contributed 5.4 million dollars to the Bureau before its dissolution in 1940.¹ The Bureau gave 309,000 dollars more for a Laboratory of Social Hygiene at the Bedford Hills Reformatory (1912 to 1918), which tested inmates for venereal disease and made physiological and psychological assessments intended to define a physical profile of the "criminal type." The Bureau's files show no evidence of sterilization as part of the Laboratory's program; New York's sterilization law for "eugenic purposes" was in force from 1912 to 1920, during which the state sterilized one man and 42 women.¹⁶

Katharine Bement Davis, who had led the reformatory at Bedford Hills, became the Bureau's general secretary in 1917. After the Bureau's trustees objected to her proposal that it undertake sex research on its own account (a comment of December 6, 1927 by Leonard V. Harrison is quoted in the research essay), she retired on January 1, 1928; Rockefeller then reorganized the Bureau and appointed Fosdick to lead it.¹⁶ Since 1922 the Bureau had paid for research chosen by a committee of the National Research Council on problems of sex; in 1931, "at the suggestion of the Bureau of Social Hygiene," the Rockefeller Foundation took over those grants for the period beginning July 1, 1931. The Bureau also financed the Council's committee on drug addiction, which in 1928 recommended study of the codeine alkaloids as non-habit-forming substitutes, with the chemical work assigned to Dr. L. F. Small at the University of Virginia.¹⁵ The Bureau's grants had all concluded by 1933, and it was formally dissolved in 1940.¹⁶

Standard Oil of Indiana

Before the 1929 annual meeting of Standard Oil of Indiana, Rockefeller, a minority stockholder, examined the testimony of its chairman Robert W. Stewart before the Senate Committee on Public Lands about the Continental Trading Company bonds, talked with him and asked him to resign. Time reported on January 28, 1929 that Stewart had testified "I never had anything to do with the distribution of any bonds" and later "I know about the disposition of $759,500 of these bonds," that the Senate had charged him with perjury and contempt and that juries acquitted him of both, and that Rockefeller, who according to his own account had received Stewart's promise to comply nine months earlier, "sailed for Egypt last fortnight, but left behind him a letter to stockholders, expressing loss of confidence."¹⁷ The company had 9,160,000 shares held by about 58,000 holders, and the vote was set for March 7 at Whiting, Indiana. Time listed the acting Alien Property Custodian, Howard Sutherland (proxies for 12,000 shares seized from Germans and Austrians in the World War), and A. P. Giannini (32,000 shares) among Rockefeller's supporters, reported that the house of J. P. Morgan and Company was "authoritatively said to be advising clients to support" him, and noted that the University of Chicago, "object of many Rockefeller benefactions," was expected to vote its 30,000 shares with him; the company's president Edward G. Seubert and its board voted unanimously for Stewart, and Time reported that Standard Oil of Indiana profits for 1928 were estimated at 80 million dollars.¹⁷

The Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society states that Rockefeller retained Charles Evans Hughes to lead his lawyers and that Stewart retained Frank J. Hogan, who had defended Edward L. Doheny in the Teapot Dome case, and that Hughes's staff published a 69-page statement of Rockefeller's case. According to the society, Rockefeller did not attend the meeting and sent his brother-in-law Winthrop W. Aldrich with about 200 eastern stockholders; the Rockefeller side claimed 57 percent of the proxies; Stewart conceded, "I'm afraid, my friends, that the 'noes' have it, if the vote is taken by shares"; and the society quotes the Gary Times that Stewart "was plucked out of the chairmanship."¹⁸ The society's account names Harry F. Sinclair as one of the four oil company heads who created the Continental Trading Company in 1921.¹⁸

On November 15, 1933 the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, in hearings conducted by its counsel Ferdinand Pecora on the Chase Securities Corporation, heard Bertram Cutler, who described himself as having been associated with the Rockefellers for thirty-two years "as financial adviser." Cutler testified that in November 1928 the entire holding of 3 or 4 of the so-called "Rockefeller charitable funds" in the Prairie Oil and Gas Company, roughly 38 million dollars at the prices testified to, was sold to Blair and Company, that he carried on the negotiations, that he had referred the Prairie Oil president, William S. Fitzpatrick, to the bankers when Fitzpatrick said he would have liked to buy some of the stock, and that he had spoken to Hunter Marston of Blair and Company about it. He testified that he knew nothing of a syndicate in Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation stock in which Fitzpatrick later shared. Asked whether the Rockefeller interests held Sinclair Consolidated stock after the March 1932 consolidation of the Prairie companies with it, he answered that they held "a very substantial amount," "the amount Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., might have received for stock of the Prairie Co. that he owned," and guessed the whole at about 1,000,000 shares.¹⁹

Chase National Bank

Time of January 2, 1933 reported that after the 1930 exchange of stock among the Chase National Bank, the Equitable Trust Company and the Interstate Trust Company, "John Davison Rockefeller Jr. then became the biggest stockholder," a position Albert Wiggin had held until then, and that his wife's brother, Winthrop W. Aldrich, president of Equitable, became president of Chase. The same article said that Aldrich "led the fight to oust Robert Wright Stewart from Standard Oil of Indiana" and "makes no bones about representing the interests of his in-laws," and that whether the Rockefellers were behind Wiggin's resignation was "still a moot question."²⁰

On October 17, 1933 Wiggin testified before the same committee. Asked by Senator James Couzens who the largest stockholder was, he consulted an associate and answered "John D. Rockefeller, Jr."; asked whether that was how the bank came to be known as the Rockefeller Bank, he answered, "I think so." He said the Chase had about 89,000 stockholders. His letter of December 21, 1932 to the executive committee, read into the record, stated that in 1930 "through the merger with the Equitable Trust Co., John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as the largest holder of Equitable stock, became, through the ensuing exchange of stock, the largest stockholder in the Chase," and that Aldrich had become president of the bank and later vice chairman of its governing board.²¹

Purchases through Intermediaries

Colonial Williamsburg began in 1926 after the Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin, rector of Bruton Parish Church, approached Rockefeller in 1924. He bought properties with Goodwin as his agent and communicated by coded telegram; one, authorizing the purchase of "another antique referred to in your long letter," was signed "David's father." The town was told in June 1928, and the restoration eventually covered 85 percent of the original eighteenth-century area, with more than seven hundred buildings that postdated 1790 demolished.²² He gave about 56 million dollars to the restoration and related projects.¹

In Wyoming the Snake River Land Company was the purchasing agent he created "to mask his association and keep land prices affordable." It bought more than 35,000 acres of Jackson Hole for about 1.4 million dollars.²³ A Senate subcommittee held hearings in 1933 on allegations that the company had used illegal tactics, and the Park Service history states that the company and the Park Service were exonerated.²³ After holding the land for fifteen years Rockefeller wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that, absent acceptance of the gift on terms long discussed, "it will be my thought to make some other disposition of it or to sell it in the market to any satisfactory buyers." On March 15, 1943 Roosevelt proclaimed the 221,000-acre Jackson Hole National Monument.²³ Representative Frank Barrett's bill to abolish it passed both houses, and Roosevelt withheld his approval in a message of December 29, 1944 that referred to lands "acquired by private interests, for ultimate incorporation in the monument."²³²⁴ The Rockefeller land remained private until December 16, 1949, and the act of September 14, 1950 merging the monument into Grand Teton National Park included the compromise that "in the future presidential proclamation could not be used to create a national monument in Wyoming."²³ He gave 17.5 million dollars to the Jackson Hole Preserve; Laurance Rockefeller, as its president, made the 1949 gift of the valley land to the federal government on his father's behalf.¹²⁵

Gifts and Building

He joined the plan for Rockefeller Center in 1928, leasing the major part of the land from Columbia University; its first fourteen buildings were erected between 1931 and 1940, and on November 1, 1939 he drove the last rivet in the U.S. Rubber Company Building.¹ The International Education Board, founded in 1923, gave more than 21 million dollars, including 1.4 million toward the 200-inch telescope on Mount Palomar, 357,000 dollars for the mathematics faculty at Göttingen, 283,000 dollars for Niels Bohr's work on atomic structure and 3.2 million dollars for the Oriental Institute.¹ His park gifts included 3.6 million dollars to Acadia National Park, 5.9 million dollars for Fort Tryon Park and 15.7 million dollars in all for The Cloisters, 10.2 million dollars to the Palisades Interstate Park, 2 million dollars to the Save the Redwoods League, 1.6 million dollars at Yosemite and 164,000 dollars at Shenandoah.¹ He helped establish the United Service Organizations in 1941 and the National War Fund in 1943, which raised more than 321 million dollars; in 1944 he became chairman of the advisory committee of the United Negro College Fund and gave it 5.2 million dollars; in 1955 he gave securities valued at 20 million dollars for Protestant theological education.¹ In December 1946 he gave 8.5 million dollars for the purchase of the land for the permanent headquarters of the United Nations on the East River.¹ His total charitable giving is estimated at 537 million dollars.¹