God's GoldTHE STORY OF

ROCKEFELLER AND HIS TIMES

BY JOHN T. FLYNN

THE silver 8mine and the goldis mine, saith theLord o Hosts.

Haggai,CHAP. II, VERSE 8

GOD gave memy money.

John D.Rockefeller

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1932, BYJOHN T. FLYNN

All rights reserved, includingthe right to reproduce this bookor portions thereof in any form.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICABY QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, I N C . , RAHWAY, N . J .

Designed by Robert S. Josephy

PREFACE

SOMETHING is due, be]ore we plunge into this story, to thecuriosity of the reader who wishes to knowFirst, why the author chose to write the history of a manwho still lives and whose history, therefore, has not yet been fullymade uf} and

Second, what were the sources of this narrative and how far theRockefeller family has participated in its preparation.

The answer to the first is that the career of John D. Rockefeller,so far as history is concerned, is quite -finished and his been formore than fifteen years. When Mr. Rockefeller has made an endof the business of living, some sympathetic biographer, enjoyingthe confidence of his family, will be able to add many unimportant'personal incidents in the life of a retired country gentleman duringthe last score of years. These doubtless will be interesting, but willhardly add anything to the 'picture about which history is concerned,the materials for which are already available.

The answer to the second question is that the materials havebeen gathered from the vast records of the age in which Mr. Rock-efeller lived, as made up in innumerable legislative and congres-sional investigations and countless court decisions, all of which havebeen carefully read; in an endless array of pamphlets, articles, ad-dresses and letters and in the records of the daily press from thetime of Rockefeller's birth to date, all of which,including the news-papers of Owe go, Auburn in New York, of Cleveland and of NewYork City, Oil City and Titusville in Pennsylvania, have been readand compared for the whole period which this volume covers. Ihave, of course, talked with a very large number of persons whotook part in the events described or who found themselves in aposition to observe them.

For reasons which seem sufficient to the author no applicationwas made to the Rockefeller family for information until the work

vii

viii PREFACEof collection had been completed and the results assembled in atentative draft. I then submitted to Mr. Ivy Leey the representa-tive of the Rockefeller family, a list of forty-two questions cover-ing obscure or disputed points. These questions werey with a fewexceptions, answered quite fully and frankly. After this, the com-pleted manuscript was turned over to Mr. William O. Inglis, awriter and journalist of ability and experience, who spent ten yearsworking with the elder John D. Rockefeller collecting materialsfor an official biography. Mr. Inglis was commissioned by Mr. Leeto examine my manuscript and to note such statements of fact andopinion as he believed to be at variance with the accented Rocke-feller version. Mr. Inglis sfent many weeks in this work and sub-mitted to me one hundred and eighty suggested corrections or crit-icisms. I discussed these criticisms at length with him in a num-ber of very pleasant conferences. In the end I adopted sixty-fourof these corrections. As for the others, I felt constrained to adhereto my own findings and views. Mr. Inglis also supplied me with alarge number of interesting and important personal details and wasgood enough to put at my disposal a very considerable mass of hisown notes on certain highly controversial points.

This course was adopted in an effort to be quite just to the subjectof this history and to his family by making it possible for them tocall attention to inaccuracies before, rather than after, this book ispublished. Where the Rockefeller version of the incidents describedhas been rejected a note has been carried, wherever possible, givingthe other side of the case. This, of course, must be understood alongwith the further statement that in certain important, major epi-sodes, the records and the opinions of the Rockefeller family are soat variance with the interpretations of the author that it has seemedunnecessary to call attention to the difference.

It is worth noting, in justification of this work, that no life ofMr. Rockefeller has yet appeared. Miss Ida Tarb ell's brilliant ac-count of the Standard Oil Company's affairs between 1872 andi88 as well as Henry Demarest Lloyd's earlier volume, were notbiographies. They were attacks; and though they deserve to rankamong the most important documents in our industrial history,they did not pretend to be biographies. Since the writer began workon this volume nearly four years ago, two books have appearedabout Mr. Rockefeller, one a brief journalistic sketch, the other a

PREFACE ixrambling and incoherent attack, chiefly ufon his philanthropies.Countless articles have appeared in magazines and newspapersabout the many most of them violent attacks called forth by theevents of the timey some of themy especially in recent years, ful-some panegyrics. No one has made an effort to examine, impar-tially, the whole record of this extraordinary man?s life and to re-late his character and achievements to his times.

For the story itself I can claim but one virtue; that I have triedhonestly to disengage the character of the subject from the featureswith which both hatred and affection have invested it and to makea true picture of him and the times in which he moved,

J. T. F.Bay side, Long IslandJune 3, 1932

CONTENTS

PART ONE: THE QUIET YEARS

HORNS AND HALO 3

I. MICHIGAN HILL 6

II. THE LAND OF SUPERIOR CUNNING 31

III. "HE WHO SEEKS THE WAMPUM BELT" 4 0

PART TWO: BUSINESS AND RELIGION

I. NEW CONNECTICUT S

II. TWO MEDICINE MEN 53

III. THE CHAIN COLLEGE 57

IV. A BOY WHOLESALER 63

PART THREE: OIL DORADO

I. DRAKE HITS OIL 75

II. A VISITOR AT THE CREEK m 89

III. VEGETABLES AND WAR 98

IV. ROCKEFELLER GOES INTO OIL 105

V. TWO DECISIONS

PART FOUR: WAR AT THE CREEK.

I. THE MAGIC CITY

II. THE HOSTILE CAMPS 124

III. A NEW WEAPON 135

IV. THE DREAM OF MONOPOLY 143

PART FIVE! THE GREAT CONSUMMATION

I. MR. ROCKEFELLER LOOKS ABOUT 17*

II. THE COMBINATION OF BRAINS 175

III. BUILDING STANDARD OIL 183

IV. THE GRAND DESIGN 187

V. THE BATTLE WITH THE EMPIRE 190

PART SIX: GATHERING STORMS

I. THE VOICE OF SCANDAL 199

II. SIGNS OF REVOLT 205

III. THE STORM SPREADS 208

IV. AT THE BAR 215

V. THE HEPBURN INVESTIGATION 2l8

VI. ROCKEFELLER TRIUMPHS 220

VII. CRUSHING THE TIDEWATER 224

PART SEVEN: THE FINAL FLIGHT

I. MOMENTS AT HOME 231

II. THE GREAT STRUCTURE 236

III. THE TRUST IS BORN 248

IV. THE STORY OF RICE 257

V. AN EXPLOSION IN BUFFALO 269

VI. WAR ON THE TRUSTS 277

VII. WAR WEARY 288

VIII. DISSOLVING THE TRUST 297

IX. THE GREAT BAPTIST DREAM 303

X. IRON MEN AND WAXEN LAWS 312

XI. OLD ENEMIES ON THE MARCH 320

XII. LEAVING THE STAGE 325

PART EIGHT: MOUNTAINS OF HATE

I. THE NEW LEADERS 334

II. THE STANDARD OIL GANG 344

III. IN THE LABORATORY OF A CORRUPTIONIST 352

IV. LIGHTING THE WORLD 3 6 l

V. SENATORS IN HARNESS 363

VI. MICE AND MEN 374

VII. THE MUCKRAKERS 385

VIII. GOD'S GOLD 394

IX. ENEMIES CLOSE IN 4 0 5

X. THE BIG STICK STRIKES 4 2 2

XI. MURDER WILL OUT 4 3 3

XII. THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 4 5 3

XIII. MRS. ROCKEFELLER'S DEATH 4 6 2

XIV. THE LAIRD OF KIJKUIT 4 6 5

SOURCES 489INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

OLD ROCKEFELLER MILL 14

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER'S BIRTHPLACE AT RICHFORD, N. Y. 14

WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER AT THE AGE OF 11 15

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER AT THE AGE OF 13 15

CARY, THE FIRST OIL MAN 22

VIEW OF THE ROCKEFELLER COUNTRY 4 6

OWEGO ACADEMY 47

"DR." WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER 47

ELIZA DAVISON ROCKEFELLER 47

FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF CIRCULAR ISSUED BY SAMUEL

M. KIER IN i85O $6BRINE WELLS IN TARENTUM, PENNSYLVANIA 76

ERIE STREET BAPTIST MISSION 78

DEACON ALEXANDER SKED 78

SAMUEL KIER 78

ROCKEFELLER FAMILY GROUP ABOUT 1859 79

COLONEL A. C. FERRIS 79

KIER'S $400 ROCK OIL NOTE 80

COLONEL EDWIN L. DRAKE'S FIRST WELL NEAR TITUSVILLE 82

KICKING DOWN AN EARLY WELL 87

OIL CREEK A FEW YEARS AFTER DRAKE'S DISCOVERY 90

TITUSVILLE, THE NEW OIL CENTER, SHORTLY AFTER DISCOV-

ERY OF PETROLEUM 9 4

TEAMING IN THE OIL REGIONS

WILLIAM A. ROCKEFELLER 303

ELIZA DAVISON ROCKEFELLER

CARTOON FROM "THE MINNEAPOLIS JOURNAL5'

MR. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IN 1888 334

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IN i9OO 335

CARTOON FROM CLEVELAND "PLAIN DEALER" 338

CARTOON FROM "THE PHILADELPHIA NORTH AMERICAN" 348

CARTOON FROM THE "NEW YORK JOURNAL" 350

PART OF LETTER TO ARCHBOLD, WHILE SIBLEY WAS A MEMBER

OF CONGRESS 354

LETTER FROM ARCHBOLD TO GOVERNOR HASTINGS 356

LETTER FROM ARCHBOLD TO THOS. A. MORRISON 357

LETTER FROM ARCHBOLD TO SENATOR JOSEPH B. FORAKER 359

CARTOON FROM "THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS" 364

NOTE MADE BY SENATOR BAILEY TO HENRY CLAY PIERCE 368

LETTERS FROM ARCHBOLD TO QUAY 369, 370

LETTERS FROM ARCHBOLD TO PENROSE 371, 373

CARTOON FROM THE "SATURDAY GLOBE" 410

CARTOON FROM THE "EVENING MAIL5' 425

CARTOON FROM "MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE5' 426

CARTOON FROM THE "DAILY EAGLE5' 430

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IN i9O4 43

MRS. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IN i9O4 43

IDA TARBELL 431

FRANK S. MONNETT 431

GEORGE RICE 431

HENRY D. LLOYD 431

LETTER FROM ARCH BOLD TO PROF. GEORGE GUNTON 44O

CARTOON FROM THE "POST-DISPATCH" 446

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, ABOUT I9O7 462

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER AT THE AGE OF 93 463

CHART: EXPENDITURES OF ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION 476

GOD'S GOLD

PART ONE

THE QUIET YEARS

HORNS AND HALO

FOR FORTY yearsfrom 1872 to 1914the name of John D.Rockefeller was the most execrated name in American life.It was associated with greed, rapacity, cruelty, hypocrisy, andcorruption. Upon it was showered such odium as has stained thename of no other American. Theodore Roosevelt denounced Rock-efeller as a law-breaker. William J. Bryan, his fellow Christian,went up and down the land demanding that he be put in jail. Theattorney-generals of half a dozen states clamored for his imprison-ment. LaFollette called him the greatest criminal of the age. Tol-stoi said no honest man should work for him. Ministers of the gos-pel called the money he showered upon churches and collegestainted. For years no man spoke a good word for John D. Rocke-feller, save the sycophant and the time-server.

Then somehow a kind of languor fell upon the man's traducers.As the years passed there came a mitigation of the old hatreds. Insome way the once hated Rockefeller emerged into a kind of genialsainthood. A newspaper poll voted him one of the greatest Amer-icans. John Singer Sargent, who made his portrait, said that whenpainting him he felt himself to be in the presence of a medievalsaintcompared him to St. Francis of Assisi. His birthday hasbecome a kind of annual newspaper event. One may wonder if theredemption has not been quite as excessive as the damnation.

The beatification of Rockefeller in this second phase of his careermay well reveal to the practiced eye all the mechanism of patientand sustained propaganda. What is not so clear to the casual ob-

3

4 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sserver is that the earlier proscription was equally the work of prop-aganda. It was propaganda even more intense and sustained, butnot so obviously propaganda, because it proceeded, not from a cen-trally organized bureau, but from the outraged interests of thou-sands of little, wasteful, inefficient, selfish business men who at thetime clung to the unworkable methods of the old school and werein possession of the favor of press, political leaders, and all theagencies of opinion. The implements for making and spreadingopinion have changed hands. The result has been to shear Mr.Rockefeller of his horns and fasten a halo where they grew. Per-haps the truth about Mr. Rockefeller lies somewhere between theextravagant abuse of the politically-owned press of the last cen-tury and the extravagant approval of the business-owned press ofthis one.

The story of Rockefeller is not just a tale of piling up a vastfortune. The chronicles of American fortune building are not verynoble ones. The first great American millionaires like Astor andhis contemporaries came from the land. Astor himself laid thefoundations of his fortune trading with the Indians and swindlingthem by the generous use of rum. The millions he later amassedwere got in land grants, many of which were acquired by sheer cor-ruption. The ultimate value in the land was expanded by just hold-ing on and doing nothing. Most of these early aristocratic fortuneswere built by sitting idly upon their acres while the great citiesgrew around them through the energies of other men.

The fortunes of the next generation were for the most partacquired through downright frauds or stock-jobbing operationsclosely bordering upon fraud. Russell Sage laid the cornerstone ofhis by stealing a small railroad from a city of which he was an offi-cial. Upon that foundation he built through a series of land swin-dles and railroad adventures of amazing audacity. The Gould for-tune was reared through a career of almost unparalleled securityfrauds in which one episode was the looting of the Erie Railroad inan adventure which still stands as a masterpiece of knavery. Thegreat railroad fortunes of the Westof Huntington, Leland Stan-ford, Crocker, and Mark Hopkinswere chiefly the fruit of gi-gantic frauds upon the government, upon the public throughstock issues and upon stockholders through schemes directed againsttheir own companies. The Elkins fortune began in land grabbing

H O R N S A N D H A L O 5in the Southwest and ended in widespread utility promotions in theEast. Most of the fortunes of Rockefeller's wealthiest contempo-raries were made through stock promotions, including those ofMorgan and Harriman. And if all of these were not utterly dis-honest they were certainly parasitic, collected without the perform-ance of any important or necessary service to society.

Singularly, no one of these men has come in for the robust ha-tred which was expended on Rockefeller. And yet Rockefeller'sgreat fortune was not only the most honestly acquired but wasamassed in the building of a great constructive producing businessand in the development of a new system in industry. His wealthwas made up of profits taken out of a productive industry, not outof stock schemes or land and franchise raids.

It is therefore not merely the least tainted of all the greatfortunes of his day, but is easily the most important and signifi-cant. To tell the manner of its making is to tell the story of thedevelopment of American business as we now know it. It is totrace the evolution of the economic system under which Ameri-can business now flourishes. For this reason the career of this mancannot be told by limiting it to his own immediate surroundings.His portrait must be painted upon a canvas large enough to include,not merely his figure and those of his immediate collaborators, buta background of the forces in our whole economic life. The storyof Rockefeller and his "crimes" which the last generation relishedwas the story of a brutal big business man projected against a back-ground drawn to include a lot of things which that generation lovedmuch, but which we have come to know were not so desirable andare no longer possible. It was dramatized as the story of the lionand the mouse. It was rather the story of a large, powerful, intelli-gent lion who knew what he was doing in a vastly altered jungleand a whole race of mice, disordered, disorganized, running aboutin circles without any notion of the changes that had taken placein the forest. We know a good deal more about that backgroundnow and by correcting its outlines, its colors, and composition toconform to the facts, the whole picture of Rockefeller and his con-temporaries becomes different. This is the reason why this volumemust be a history of Rockefeller and his times.

Was he an honest man? Was he a great man? What was his chiefcontribution to the world? What was the chief injury which he

6 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sinflicted on it? Did he give to the world more than he took fromit? What were the chief elements behind his success? Indeed washis life a success at all? Could such a career be duplicated now? Theanswer lies of course in the simple facts of his life and times. Theanswer begins in 1839 when Martin Van Buren was President ofthe United States.

CHAPTER I. MICHIGAN HILL

ON A summer's night a horseman galloped up to a small houseon the edge of the village of Richf ord in New York. With-out dismounting he knocked clamorously above the door.A nightcapped head was pushed out of the upper window.

"What's all the noise?" it asked in a sleepy voice."Tell Mrs. Thompson," the horseman replied breathlessly, "to

come over to our house at once. Mrs. Rockefeller is goin' to havea baby."

The man in the window saw that the rider held by the bridleanother horse to carry Mrs. Thompson to the Rockefeller houseon Michigan Hill. In a dozen minutes a woman climbed into thesaddle and, through the darkness and over the uncertain roads,the two picked their way up the hill. Across the twin brooks andthrough the circle of apple trees and they were on the crest ofMichigan Hill and before the cottage of Bill Rockefeller.

Inside Mrs. Thompson found Eliza Rockefeller in the smallroom at the front and to the right of the house on her bed of pain.The room was little bigger than the bed and almost bare. In acradle at the left of the bed another child only 18 months old sleptundisturbed by the groans of the mother. A sperm candle filledthe room with a dim yellow glow and with dimmer moving shad-ows. And in the shadows, near the head of the bed, stood a tall,broad-shouldered young man, handsome, a little frightened andlooking down with a troubled eye upon his frail wife, rigid andwhite with pain, her teeth set as she fought the surging agony.

Before the night was over the baby came. It was a boy. Thenthe broad-shouldered man went out and walked hurriedly acrossthe top of the hill to the house of his father, Godfrey Rockefeller.

MICHIGAN HILL 7But not to his father. He was going to his strong-minded motherto tell her that Eliza had been delivered of a son. Very soon thepair were walking back through the early dawn to Bill Rockefeller'sown cottage.

"What are you going to call him?" the mother asked."Well, we haven't had much talk about it yet. But I know Eliza

will want to call him after her father, John Davison. John's a goodname for a Rockefeller. There's always been a John in every gen-eration of Rockefellers."

And so they called the boy John Davison Rockefeller.

IIALL DAY that big man gazed down upon the indefinite infant witha puzzled look. Now, at the end of more than ninety years, theworld looks no less puzzled at the old man, who was that infant,hidden away amid his five thousand acres of more than regal park,surrounded by a thousand servants, concealed in the depths of themost magnificent estate in the world. No man has been so muchscrutinized j about no man does the world know less. Newspapershave printed more about him than about any American president.For years certain editors kept men continuously on his trail. In adozen sensational lawsuits he has been pilloried and examinedand searched. Twenty times the United States Congress and thelegislatures of various states have investigated him, searching outall the acts of his life. Enemiesthousands of themhave followedevery minute suggestion of wrong-doing and scandal. He has beengrilled, exposed, turned inside out. Yet he has remained actuallyone of the most completely unknown men in American public life.

I l lT H E SCENE we have described took place in the little village ofRichford on July 8, 1839a small village of New York about onehundred and twenty-five miles from New York City.

Some years before this a powerfully built young man, astridean excellent horse, galloped one morning into the village squareof Richford. The square looked then much as it does today. Therewas the broad, triangular green, with its high grass and the roadsmeeting in a fork. On the west side was the store of ChaunceyRich. There was an old hotel at one end of the Green and another

8 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sstore on the left, opposite Rich's. The hotel and both stores arestanding today. There were a good many lumbermen coming intoRichford all the time and farmers bringing in their produce andoccasionally wagons of travelersimmigrants on the move andstriking north for the lakes and across to Ohio. There were alwaysa goodly number in little groups in that busy village plaza.

Into this square rode the big man on the horse. He was a strik-ing figure. His clothes were good. He wore a broad-brimmed hatand long black coat. His horse too was a good one and he rode itlike a true horseman. He reined up in front of a small group nearRich's store and saluted them. Then he drew from under his coata small slate with a pencil tied to it. He wrote on the slate:

"Where is the house of Godfrey Rockefeller?".. He exhibited the slate to the group and made signs to indicatethat he was deaf and dumb. One of the men who could writescribbled a direction under the question and pointed to the narrowwagon tracks leading off to the east and up the hill. That waswhere Godfrey Rockefeller lived. The big man wheeled his horseabout and galloped briskly up the hill.

Thus William Avery Rockefeller, the father of John D. Rocke-feller, arrived in Richford.1 When he got to his mother's home hecontinued to use his slate to the great distress of the whole family.When his joke had gone far enough he broke into a loud laughand announced that he intended to live in Richford.

For many weeks young Bill Rockefeller remained under thefamily roof on Michigan Hill. And for most of this time, whenaround the village square, he carried on his pretense of dumbness.Then he suddenly recovered his speech and spent many hoursevery day near the village green. He wore good clothes, seemedto have nothing to do and no plans aside from amusing himself inconversation.

Now he made up for his recent dumbness, for he became knownas a glib talker, a little given to speech-making. He was but twenty-six years old, but he had traveled about a good deal and this gavehim a marked advantage over the yokels who haunted the littlecommon, most of whom had never been outside of Tioga County.

In a few weeks Big Bill, as he came to be known, was seen no1 The Rockefeller family insists that the elder William Rockefeller went to

Richford with his family and that the story given here is not true.

M I C H I G A N H I L L 9more about the public square. But he had remained long enough tomake an impression and to be the subject of talk. What did BillRockefeller do for a living? That's what the village busy-bodieswanted to know. He seemed to have plenty of money in his pocket.But he said nothing about his business. They put their heads to-gether and allowed it was very strange. But Bill was gone nowand in a few more weeks was out of people's minds.

IVGODFREY ROCKEFELLERBig Bill's fathera thriftless, shiftlessfellow, fond of his tipple, liked to talk about his grandfather, JohannPeter, who planted the Rockefeller seed in America. More thana hundred years before thisin 1722Johann Peter Rockefellerhad come over from the village of Sagendorf in Germany, bring-ing with him his second wife and a goodly progeny by his firstwife. He settled in Somerville, New Jersey, where other childrenwere born. He was a farmer there, though he had been a millerin Germany, and in 1729 we find him purchasing some land inAmwell, New Jersey, where he was to spend the remainder of hislife. He died in 1765, the year an English parliament imposed theStamp Tax.

Johann Peter had five children by his first wife, all born in Ger-many. Two were boys and both were called Johann. Big Bill wasright when he said there was always a John in every generation ofRockefellers. In this one there were twoJohann William andJohann Peter. They were brought with the other children to Som-erville and later to Amwell.

This second Johann Peter married twice. His first wife presentedhim with nine children. There was a John among them. But weare concerned with the fifth, William Rockefeller. This William,born in 1750 in Amwell, married another Rockefeller, Christina,the granddaughter of Diell Rockefeller, in Germantown, NewYork. There are two Rockefeller strains in America. One flowsfrom that Johann Peter, who settled in Amwell. The other flowsfrom Diell, who settled in Germantown. The William whom wehave now reached united both strains by his marriage to Christina.

To this union were born many children. One of them was God-frey Rockefeller, who was born in Germantown just two yearsafter the surrender at Yorktown. Godfrey married Lucy Avery of

io T H E Q U I E T Y E A R SGreat Barrngton and promptly settled there. This pair had tenchildren, the third oldest being that huge fellow named Williamwho appeared on his horse and in his fine clothes and pretended todumbness on the Richford common sometime in 1836 or 1837.This William Rockefeller, who was born at Granger, New York,November 30, 1810, was the father of John D. Rockefeller.

These Rockefellers were a fecund and long-lived strain. Theoriginal Johann Peter lived to be eighty-four. His son, JohannPeter, died at the age of three score and fifteen. His son William'sage is not known. But Godfrey Rockefeller, in spite of a generousdisregard of the laws of health, lived to be seventy-four. WilliamAveryBig Billlived to be at least ninety-six.

This is, perhaps, all that is known with certainty of the Rocke-feller line. But a richly embroidered tapestry of noble and near-royal progenitors has been woven by the inevitable genealogists ofthe millionaire American.

There is in existence an organization known as the RockefellerFamily Associationone of those numerous confederations of mis-cellaneous kinsmen which are preserving the virtues of clan lifein America. The Rockefeller Association, whose members becomemore numerous with each year, now has more than 800. It meetsannually. It has regional branches which hold their own conclavesand in many states there are chapters which foregather more fre-quently. The proceedings of the national body are preserved eachyear in printed reports. And in the last few years they have set up amagazine published quarterly called the Rockefeller Family News,Thus all the doings of the far-flung clan, the trivial performancesof all the aunts and uncles, their small visitations to other membersof the family, are recorded in verse and in prose, which sometimesrises to lofty altitudes.

There is no record that John D. Rockefeller, in whose reflectedglory the association has its being, has ever joined it. Neither is thename of John D., Jr., found on its rolls. When the family meetsin New York, a visit to Pocantico Hills is always the high spot ofthe meeting. The great herd of cousins go to the magnificent baronyof its most illustrious scion. But John D. is never there when theyarrive. The flag is flowna favorite Rockefeller gesture. But thehonors are extended by the superintendent.

In 1906 the family, through the munificence of John D., erected

M I C H I G A N H I L L nat Somerville, New Jersey, a modest monument to the first Amer-ican RockefellerJohann Peter of Sagendorf. There were speechesand the story got into the newspapers. In some way it drifted overto Germany. There a modest little minister, the pastor of a churchat Rheinbrohl, read the accounts. He sat down at once and wrote toJohn D. Rockefeller. There were still Rockenfellers at Sagendorf,he announced, and what was more, the old stone mill where JohannPeter had ground his rye flour was still standing. And moreoverthese Rockenfellers at Sagendorf and all about that part of Ger-many had always believed they were of the same blood as the greatAmerican Oil King. John handed the letter to his brother Williamand William handed it to Mr. Aaron R. Lewis, the genealogist whohad traced the American lineage. Mr. Lewis went to Germany andinvestigated. And in October, 1907, he stood before the assembledkinsmen at their annual convention and revealed to them the resultof his researches and the secret of their existence. It was a storywhich made them swell with family pride. He carried the line backto 940 A.D. The family had been delighted at the simple Rocke-feller origins in Sagendorf. But Mr. Lewis had a more impressivetale to tell. "There is no doubt," he said, "that your family origi-nated in France, down in the Southern part, in that old provinceknown as Languedoc, near the old cities of Montpellier, Nmes,Toulouse, and Beziers.

"I have been able to trace your name back as far as the year 949in the old town of Lodve near where they owned a chateau."

This was a precious morsel. It drew additional flavor from thediscovery that the name was originally Roquefeuille and that therewas a Latin rendition of itRocafolio. And then the whole clanleaned forward breathlessly as the speaker assured them:

"They were titled people (these Roquefeuilles) and married andinter-married with the nobility and associated with the best peopleof their day and generation.

"Away back in the money age," he proceeded, "they had moneycoinsbearing their name."

Money called after Rockefeller 900 years ago! The kinsmensmiled knowingly at that. Then Mr. Lewis begged them to readthe history of France from 1640 and 1690 and then to go back stillfurther and read especially the story of that grim slaughter ofProtestants at St. Bartholomew in 1572. On that dark night the

12 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sassassins murdered that great Admiral and Huguenot leader, Gas-pard Coligny.

"Read how he was murdered," ended Mr. Lewis, "while sittingwounded in his room, his body thrown from a window to the street,the head severed from it and then the headless trunk hung up ina public square for days to be scoffed at."

Then, as these gruesome incidents sank in, Mr. Lewis utteredhis climax:

"It was his grandson, Gaspard Coligny 3rd, who married one ofyour kindred."

These German Rockenfellers at Sagendorf then were old FrenchHuguenots who had fled from persecution. The dramatic fitness ofall this must have fallen with a thrill upon the souls of the Rocke-feller clansmen, for at the moment of its telling1907the hueand cry was raised all over America after their celebrated kinsman,John D. Rockefeller, and with an intensity which must haveseemed hardly less furious than the hatred which did for the un-happy Admiral so many centuries before.

A Cleveland genealogist named Avery has traced the ancestryof Rockefeller's grandmother back to John Humphrey of Massa-chusetts, exiled sword bearer of the parliament which beheadedCharles I and beyond that to the Plantagenets, including 16 Eng-lish kings, one king of Scotland, a king of France and a Germanemperor.

This history does not vouch for the authenticity of this imposingAvery recordwhich has been questionednor for the somewhatfanciful generations of Roquefeuilles unearthed by Mr. Lewis.Providing American millionaires with aristocratic and even regalancestries has become a recognized industry. Perhaps no genealo-gist has disinterred and laid down in his client's drawing room amore extensive quantity-delivery of kings and princes than Mr.Avery did for Mr. Rockefeller.

THIS chronicle has now arrived at what might be called the con-fluence of the royal blood of the Plantagenets and the noble cor-puscles of the Roquefeuilles, which rush together in the veinsof William Avery Rockefeller, the father of John D. This wasachieved through the union of Godfrey Rockefeller with Lucy

M I C H I G A N H I L L 13Avery at Great Barrington in 1786. The Averys were thriftyfarmers and neighbors wagged their heads mournfully when LucyAvery joined fortunes with this careless, restless, tippling man. ButLucy was more than a match for him. Under her strong hand God-frey settled down to make something of himself. He became Sher-iff of Great Barrington, but lingered not long in this eminence, forbefore his second child was born he had changed his base againand was at Granger, New York. Lucy bore him ten children, oneat Great Barrington, three at Granger, three more at Ancram, andfinally three more at Great Barrington to which they had returned.The third of these children was William Avery Rockefeller. Hewas born at Granger in 1810.

After all these moves, Godfrey Rockefeller at fifty was readyfor another change of base. He settled in Richford. What broughthim to Richford is not known. It is a little village in Tioga County,New York, on Owego Creek and about seventeen miles north ofOwego, the county seat. It is near the southern boundary of NewYork State and a little northwest of New York City. It lies aboutfifty miles south of Lake Ontario and reposes in the soft, fertile,undulating country just off the lovely Susquehanna River and justbeyond the reach of those beautiful Finger Lakes which, like thefingers of a giant hand, reach down from Lake Ontario to grasp it.

When Godfrey Rockefeller entered the village it was a pros-perous settlement of fifteen hundred souls. Land was going up inprice. Lumbering was the chief occupation along Owego Creek, butthe village had all the little shops which went to form the self-con-tained community of that day. There was a sawmill, two generalstores, a millinery shop, tin shop, harness, wagon, and blacksmithshops, two grist mills, a small whiskey still, and a church, a hotel,a post office, and a schoolhouse.

Godfrey bought a farm on Michigan Hill, located about twomiles from the center of the village. The houses on the hill wererude farmer homes. Godfrey's, which still stands, was the best ofthe lot. But he was known here as a thriftless man, a poor farmer,a source of endless trouble to his wife. She more than he managedthe farm and the home. There is still standing, a score of yardsfrom the house, a heap of field stonesthe remnant of a stonefence which Lucy Rockefeller built. This rugged woman markedout the line and bossed the job and while two men under her put

14 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sthe heavier rocks in place she carried some of the smaller ones inher own apron.

The Rockefellers worked the farm and some of the boys helped.But Big Bill was never seen there until the day he made his curiousentry into the village with the mockery of dumbness. Nor did heever do any work on the farm. He would be gone for months ata time. Then he would come home, always unheralded and eitherastride a good horse or driving a decent-looking rig. At such timeshe spent most of his days around the grass common. He was full oftales of Indians. He had stories to tell of trips through New Eng-land and all over Northern New York. He used no liquor. Hecould grow eloquent against the rum mill of the town. But hiscompanions observed that no pretty girl passed without a completescrutiny by Bill. He was a handsome fellow, with a fine figure, akind of virile and obvious strength which made him seem biggerthan he really was. Women looked at him with an approving eye.He had a strong jaw and a commanding glance. He was jovial anda good story teller. He liked to tell tales of his own smartnessto laugh at the work of suckers he seemed to meet everywhere.There was just a little bluster and swagger about the fellow. Hekept his business to himself, however. But he was a man of hugeanimal spirits and a quick mind who apparently found his fun alongwith his business as he traveled about.

Whatever Bill Rockefeller did for a living, it was plain that allhis expeditions did not take him great distances from Richford. Hewas often seen up around Auburn, the prison city, in CayugaCounty and frequently roved about the country that skirted OwascoLake. He had a way of captivating the younger people and fillingthe older heads with suspicion. And so there was much talk whenthe neighbors around Niles noticed the swaggering big fellow whodrove up in such a good-looking rig so often to the home offarmer Davison. John Davison was one of the most prosperousfarmers around Niles. These Davisons were a mixture of Scotchand English, a little dourstern Baptists, the kind of people whoare fond of using the word "righteous." Bill would sit for longhours talking to Eliza Davison. In some way she had met him ashe roamed the country-side. She had been brought up in an austereatmosphere by a stern father. But she was not so austere herself.She loved a good laugh and a jolly prank and it was plain to sol-

OLD ROCKEFELLER MILL OPERATED BY JOHANNROCKEFELLER IN ARINHELLER, GERMANY, DURING THE LATTERPART OF THE i 7 T H CENTURY. Lower, JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER'SBIRTHPLACE AT RICHFORD, N. Y. PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1 8 7 3

Right, JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER AT THE AGE OF 13. Left, HISBROTHER, WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER, AT THE AGE OF I I

M I C H I G A N H I L L 15emn old John Davison that this righteous Baptist daughter of hishad fallen in love with this unknown adventurer. As in Richfordthere was much curiosity as to what Bill Rockefeller did. Well, hewas a salesmanor so he saidand he sold medicines and traveledabout to do it. In any event, he satisfied Eliza Davison, though hedid not satisfy her father. And when Bill proposed marriage JohnDavison held out against it. So one day in February, 1837, Billdrove up to John Davison's home in broad daylight in a good rigand Eliza drove away with him to the house of a friend to bemarried. It was not an elopement. It was a quiet marriage butwithout the blessing of the bride's father. A little later Bill andhis wife drove up before Godfrey Rockefeller's home on MichiganHiH.

V I

ON THE road leading over Michigan Hill to Godfrey Rockefeller'sfarm was a new house. It had been built two years before by a mannamed Avery Rockhill, perhaps a relative of Bill Rockefeller'smother. It was strongly made, though a simple cottage. It stoodon the very crest of the hill and commanded a beautiful view ofthe surrounding country and the soft green hills to the West. Justbelow the last rise of the hill are two brooks which meet there andflow off toward Harford Mills. Bill Rockefeller's sportsman's eyequickly observed that there were trout in these brooks. The houseitself was surrounded by apple trees. The treesvery old andgnarledare there yet, for this is a country of old trees. The housewas small, the lower floor being divided into three roomsonemain chamber and two quite small ones. To the lefta kind ofseparate annexwas a kitchen and a woodshed, both of which havebeen removed.1 The second floor is just a half-story attic in whichone must stoop to walk about. There were then and still are twovery large barns. One of these barns has been cut into in its upper

1 The remainder of the house still stands. It was purchased three years ago from

Mrs. Carrie Rockefeller, a cousin who owned and had lived in it, by Mrs. SarahS. Dennen of Brooklyn, to be moved to Coney Island and set up there as a Rocke-feller museum and exhibit. The plan was opposed by the members of the Rocke-feller Family Association and ultimately abandoned. It is a cherished hope of thepeople in this region to have the old Rockefeller farm and adjacent country de-veloped into a "Rockefeller Park" with the house as a central attraction. A gen-erous Rockefeller contribution to this end is eagerly hoped for as the basis of thisdream.

i6 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Swall for ventilation and decoration with three small openings. Onclose inspection it is seen that this is a godless bit of arta decanterand two glasseson the barn of the rum-hating Bill and ElizaRockefeller. A farm of sixty acres stretched back from the house.Here Bill Rockefeller established his young wife. And here justone year after their marriage the first child was bornLucy Rocke-feller, called after her grandmother. Then eighteen months laterthe boy was born whose arrival is chronicled in the opening para-graphs of this story. Two years later another boy, William, ap-peared.

Bill Rockefeller, the father, did no farming. He had a hiredhand who worked a patch of ground and helped around the place.Bill himself was away most of the time, coming home at intervals,always a welcome arrival to his wife and his small brood.

VIIIN THE year 1840, the country was, as Henry Clay said, like an"ocean convulsed by a terrible storm." William Henry Harrison,the hero of Tippecanoe, was the Whig candidate for president.Against him was pitted Martin Van Buren. Up in Tioga Countythe wide circling waves of this turbulent battle were rolling in uponthe forest towns. Around the village common of Richford theyokel statesmen talked about the panic of 1837. Down in Owegothe county leaders were preparing a great meeting.

On the morning of this great event the people of Tioga Countywere pouring in from every roadon horseback, in farm carts, onfoot, their wives and children and hired hands with them, theirblankets and copper pots and dishes of wood and victuals for astay of a day or more.

That morning the population of Richford was on the move.It was a good twelve miles' journey down to Owego and the quietvillage of lumbermen and farmers were aboard their carts andrumbling down to the county seat at an early hour. The air wasfilled with a festival odor. There was a jug of whiskey and a largerjug of cider on every wagon. Richford, as well as all Tioga County,was a drinking community. The remains of the old whiskey still notfar from the green still stand. Everywhere liquor was as free aswater. The village merchants sold liquor and at low prices so thatthe poorest man was able to buy all he could carry. In most of the

M I C H I G A N H I L L 17stores there stood upon the counter a pail of whiskey and a tin cupso that the customer was able to dip out a stout drink for himself.Liquor was kept in every home. "The children were helped mod-erately in their infancy and helped themselves abundantly in laterlife," says an old chronicler. "The house was but indifferentlyfurnished which had not a jug of black strap in its cupboard."

But there was one house where there was no black strap. Andas the farmers moved into Owego that morning there was onewagon in which reposed no jug of cider or whiskey. That was thewagon of Bill Rockefeller. Bill was back for the big meeting atOwego. And this morning, with his wife and little Lucy, then twoyears old and the infant John held close in his mother's arms, hewas on his way with all the residents of Richford.

Into the famous county seat upon the Susquehanna, Rockefeller'swagon, drawn by two excellent horses, moved amid an uproar.Tioga was Whig. Everybody said New York State would surelygo for Harrison and Tyler if it were not for that wicked Tam-many Hall in the big city down state. Around the Awaga Hotelidle crowds were gathered looking up at the place where the greatmen of the county were housed for the moment. Important-look-ing gentlemen in high hats and bottle-green coats went in and out.The streets were filled with a talking, laughing, noisy people, hail-ing each other from a distance, hucksters selling corn and ciderand baubles and flags. Down beyond the public square and acrossthe bridge over the Susquehanna in the open fields the wagonswere camped and women were making ready for the noon-daymeal over the camp spits.

Big Bill saw more than one face he knew. He hailed acquaint-ances with a broad laugh. But Eliza Rockefeller looked with dis-may upon the almost riotous merriment of this crowd. Everywherewere men well-steeped in whiskey or sinking rapidly into that con-dition. There were some Rockefellers there no better than the rest.The air had the odor of wickedness for Eliza. She was not anymore the merry girl of Niles. A young mother of two small chil-dren living in a lonely farmhouse from which her adventuroushusband was almost always absent, she had become a little sad-faced and a little stern. Now she was a troubled woman. She wishedshe had not come.

This was a Whig crowd, filled with enthusiasm for its candidates

18 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R STippecanoe and Tyler Too. But there were a few whose enthusi-asm was a trifle dampened as Eliza Rockefeller's was. There wasmore than one strait-laced, God-fearing, rum-hating farmerwho was disturbed at what seemed the bungling of the Harri-son managers. Harrison to be sure was a cider drinker. But so waseverybody else. Yet somehow there had been so much talk of theGeneral's cider drinking that one might suppose he did nothingelse. The Whigs had played up the fact that General Harrison hadbeen born in a log cabin. Down in Baltimore an editor with a caus-tic pen had replied that Harrison seemed more in his element inhis log cabin with his cider barrel than he would in the WhiteHouse. Everybody had read that in the little weekly Democraticpaper of Owegothe Gazette. The Whigs had replied by makingthe cider barrel along with the log cabin the emblem of the Whigcampaign. The log cabin was all right. But the cider barreltosome that was a godless symbol. And the Democrats were makingmuch of it. But the vast majority of the crowd this day seemed tolike it as they seemed also to like their own cider barrels.

Bill Rockefeller has parked his wagon under a broad elm nearthe river within view of the speakers' stand. And now, just afternoon, there is a general movement toward the courthouse square.The big parade is getting under way. The crowd is forming aroundthe speakers' stand. On the outskirts of the square men and womenare standing in their carts to get a better view. The sound of drumsand fifes comes from the direction of Front Street and the AwagaHotel. The rattle of the drums and the squeal of the fifes growlouder and suddenly the parade emerges upon the square. Thereare Whigs on horseback made up like Indians and others, in theircoonskin caps, dressed as frontiersmen. Then come the big Whigson horseback. Now a great shoutthe float is in sight. There is abroad wagon and on it a small log cabin. In front of the cabin isa cider barrel. Men in buskins stand about ostentatiously dippingout of the barrel with cups and drinking with a flourish to thehealth of the crowd. A shout goes up from the godless rabble.There is something more than mock cider in those dancing men onthe float. The crowd is delighted. Shouts and wild laughter viewith the screaming fifes. Most of the crowd have had their ciderand whiskey for their dinner. Many dance up and down and emityells like Indians and squeal for joy.

M I C H I G A N H I L L 19Here and there a few grim-visaged men and women look with

disgust and horror upon the spectacle. Big Bill Rockefeller standsat the back of his wagon supporting with his powerful arms thewoman in front of him, her shawl wrapped about her and shelter-ing the infant in her arms. She sees this unholy joy with horror.The undying hatred of her life is rum. She remembers all theliquor guzzling she has seen about her, especially since she hascome to Richford. Why does a just God permit such an evil in theworld? When will He drive it forth? She feels a twinge of fearfor the boy at her breast. She presses him closer to her heart. Howlittle she knowsthis strong, resolute, pious womanshe holds inher arms Nemesisthe boy who will be a man and whose gold willsmite the cider barrel and the rum bottle. She holds in her armsthe instrument of God.

VIIIHARRISON and Tyler were elected. Perhaps never again was a manto be elected President who could get votes with a cider barrel.He was inaugurated March 4, 1841. A month later Harrison died.The news reached Richford about the middle of April. Then ElizaDavison was looking forward to the coming of another child.Big Bill was home, as usual, to be by his wife's side. And a monthlater the child arrived. This boy was called after his fatherWil-liam. He was born May 31, 1841. After this Bill remained around,making only a few, brief, swift journeys on his mysterious adven-tures, until the summer. Then one day he went down to the storeof Mr. Rich and announced that he was going away on a longjourney.

"Look after my family's wants, Mr. Rich," he said. "Give themwhatever they require. I'll be gone longer than usual. When I re-turn I will settle as always." A day or two later he drove away leav-ing Eliza with three small children in the small house on MichiganHill. This was a lonely home for this woman. Bears were still inthe forests. Occasionally a panther ventured to the edge of theclearings. Sometimes an Iroquois Indian roamed up from theSusquehanna.

There is little doubt that at this time the Rockefellers were instraitened circumstances. Bill Rockefeller found himself movingthrough occasional patches of mild prosperity. At such times he

20 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Swould return to look after his family. But when he went awayagain the family quickly consumed the money he left. The creditat Rich's store was their sole support. Sometimes it was a grim bat-tle to keep the wolf from the door. Young John, all through theseearly years, must have seen his mother practice economy that ex-tended to every little item. The house itself was a poor place. It wasone of the humblest in the neighborhood. It stands today a wit-ness of this fact. From its roof emerged a brick chimney. Everywell-to-do house had a fireplace, broad and comfortable. TheRockefeller house had a chimney, but no fireplace. The chimneywas just an humble piece of outward show. It can be seen todaywhere it begins, just under the roof of the attic, resting on a woodenplatform and then pushing up through the shingles, making abrave show outside.

Here, in this small cottage, looking out upon a glorious land-scape of soft green hills and luxuriant foliage, this boy spent hisfirst years. Here he lived until he was four years old and his sisterLucy and brother William were respectively six and two. Therewere plenty of Rockefellers just over the hill where Godfrey andhis numerous family lived, and, apparently, in no great state ofpeace. This little John was a strong, quiet, grave-faced child, with ahabit of looking intently at people and things, and a fondness forplaying by himself. Eliza Rockefeller had little occasion to bemerry and slowly grew to be a serious-faced woman. There was nogreat religious activity around Richford. As for Eliza there was nochurch for her to attend. She was not an active church member yetand her husband was in no sense a religious man. A few rods fromthe house was a little one-room schoolhouse. There is such a onestanding there today. It is pointed out to visitors as the first oneJohn D. attended. He never attended school there. Moreover thesmall frame structure now standing is not the one which stoodthere in those days. But the presence of the school and the teacherhelped to fill up some of the lonely days of Eliza Rockefellerwhile her husband was away on his mysterious jaunts. Bill wasnever away for any fixed period. Usually the first notice of his re-turn was the sight of his spanking rig and team coming up the slopeof Michigan Hill. Whenever Eliza looked down the hill; when thechildren looked that way, always there was the thought that per-haps the big, jovial, laughing, handsome father might suddenly

M I C H I G A N H I L L 21appear around the bend of the road. All through the year 1843,Richford folks whose business brought them across that trail, be-came accustomed to the occasional sight of Eliza Rockefeller stand-ing at her door, looking through the apple trees, across the twinbrooks and down Michigan Hill.

IXTHESE were the quiet years. A candle burning in a cottage. Thesound of horses' hoofs upon a dirt road. The muffled thump of thewater wheel at the side of the little mill. These represented thelight, the power, and the transportation of the America of thatearly day.

When night came down upon the Rockefeller cottage a candleof sperm or tallow furnished the light for the brief period afterdark before bedtime. This was the age of the candle.

Though the small boy of 1843, pl a v mg under the apple treesand in the twin brooks of Michigan Hill, gave it no thought,America was at this moment looking with busy eyes for light.Larger factories, railroad trains traveling at night, steamboats onthe riversall these things needed light. The farthest advancemade was in the use of coal gas. Twenty years before Boston streetswere lit by gas. A little later New York, Philadelphia, New Or-leans, and other smaller cities had gas-lit streets. The gas was madefrom coal, but a few companies made it from resin and tar. Evennatural gas had been used to light a few villages. But the country asa whole depended on a few lamps and its candles. Down at Owegoin the beautiful home of Mr. Hewitt there were lamps with theirArgand burners and glass chimneys which burned whale oil. Someof the better homes in the West burned lard oil made in Cincinnati.A few fine old mansions in the South burned cottonseed oil madeat Petersburg, Virginia, and along the Gulf coast resin and tur-pentine were distilled for camphine, a dangerous illuminant. Butthe candle, made from fats or sperm or spermaceti lit almost allthe homes in America. The biggest oil industry was on the NewEngland coast. Its headquarters were at New Bedford. The oilmen went out to sea in ships to fetch their oil from the whale. Andthe great man of that industry was Mr. Gideon Howland, Jr., thegrandfather of Hetty Green.

There was another oil man, far more obscure, but interesting in

22 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sthe light of all that has followed. His name was Cary. Far fromNew Bedford and from Richford, in Crawford County, Pennsyl-vania, Cary had settled on that crazy little trickle of grease andwater called Oil Creek. A queer ill-smelling oil called petroleumfloated on the surface of this creek. The Indians used it as a medi-cine and the settlers about rubbed their joints with it for pain.

(From Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1865)

Cary skimmed the oil from the creek, put it into kegs, hung oneon each side of his horse and rode 150 miles along the AlleghenyRiver to Pittsburgh. There he traded his five-gallon kegs for com-modities, which he packed back to Crawford. In value he got aboutten dollars. At Pittsburgh the petroleum was sold in small quanti-ties to apothecaries who used it for medicine.

Cary was the first oil producer. He was producer and transporter.Occasionally some river man would gather a barrel of oil and de-liver it to Pittsburgh. If he got there before Cary that gentlemanfound the market glutted on his arrival. He was the first to sufferfrom that monster, over-production of oil.

MICHIGAN HILL 23

" T H E SPONGE OF MONOPOLY has absorbed the whole wealth ofthe nation." Thus the Alabama legislature fulminated against thetiny octopus whose feeble tentacles wriggled a little a few yearsbefore John D. Rockefeller was born. This feverish sentence seemsa little absurd to describe the simple economic life of that remoteday. More than any other place in the world the northern states,at least, were committed to the system of individualism which hadgrown increasingly popular since the Physiocrats and later AdamSmith had proclaimed it in the preceding century. These stateswere quite settled that the main business of the state is to keeporder. In the industrial and economic world the great regulatingforce is self-love. Laissez faire, laissez fasser. Economic life willdevelop best when it is wholly unhampered. Free competitionthat was the stimulating and regulating power. Each man follow-ing his own special advantage, driven forward by the desire of liv-ing and for riches, will develop his own forces to the limit to thegeneral advantage of all. Each man does the thing he likes bestand can do best. For the next one hundred years this word "com-petition" will be heard again and again until men will yield to it akind of religious worship. Into such a world John D. Rockefellerwas born like a germ. He would learn quickly enough to despisecompetition. But he would cling to the other word, "individual-ism," after the meaning had gone out of it. His entry into businessand his career after that would be in large measure the story ofAmerican economic development and the war on laissez faire.

The life of that day was so different from our own that it isdifficult for us to picture it. A line drawn along the western bound-ary of New York State, across the northern line of Ohio, Indiana,Illinois, and then southward along the western frontier of Mis-souri, Arkansas, Louisiana, marked the western frontier of all thestates. Beyond Missouri were no states. Michigan, Wisconsin,Kansas, Iowa, were not yet states. Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon,Washington, California, belonged to Mexico. There were justthirty states and the population of all of them was not as great asthat of New York and Ohio today. Boston, Baltimore, and Phil-adelphia all had less than 100,000 people. The bulk of the popu-lation was gathered along the Atlantic coast, save in Ohio where

24 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sover a million people had already settled. But from the Atlanticto the Mississippi there was a thin layer of population everywhere.This population was almost wholly agricultural and those who didnot live on farms lived in small villages, and these villages were ofthe old-fashioned, self-sustaining type. The government was inthe hands of men sympathetic to the agricultural population. Theconditions of life did not favor the growth of large cities. Therewere some good-sized factories; there was steam and there wererailroads. But these things were new and exceptional. They didnot give to the country its special character.

One might find, traveling about, every stage of developmentthe primitive, economically independent farm, the self-sustainingvillage, the small water-driven mill of the merchant-manufacturer,the large corporation-owned factory. In or near Richford all ofthese periods were represented. In the Valley of the Susquehannawere farms where the householders raised their own cattle andswine and sheep. The itinerant butchers slaughtered their meatand the hides were taken to the village tanner and then to thecurrier. The wool from their sheep they had worked into yarnand cloth by the village wool carder. Cotton cloth they bought atthe village store but they made their own clothes, save the finegentlemen who lived in Owego and went up to Auburn or evenacross to New Haven for tailors. They got good iron plowsfrom the factory set up by Jethro Wood, the first man to make ametal plow in interchangeable parts, for Wood lived close by. Butmost of their other farm tools were made by the village black-smith. The saddler and harness maker, the joiner and cabinetmaker, the blacksmith and the gunsmith, the shoemaker, thesesupplied the industrial wants of the village and the open countryabout it. There was a gristmill, a sawmill, and a whiskey still, and,of course, a barber.

But factories were coming. There were even some large plantslarge at least for that day. At Waltham and particularly atLowell huge textile mills employed each many hundreds, chieflywomen. William Morris made locomotives in Philadelphia andeven exported them. The Great Western Iron Works, later theBrady's Bend Iron Co., had an investment of a million dollarsand housed 537 families on its property. A single clock firm sold40,000 clocks abroad. There was about $50,000,000 invested incotton mills and $250,000,000 in factories of all sorts.

M I C H I G A N H I L L 25But even the large factories were not very big measured by

later standards. Thus the Ames Works made shovels, and peoplegasped at the output of 480 shovels a day. But most of the fac-tories were hardly that at all. They were mills or shops where somemachinery was used. They were small affairs run by merchant-producers, men who made their small supply of products and soldthem directly. The tin manufacturer put his pack on his back ormounted his wagon and peddled his wares from house to house.Others sold their output chiefly in the villages and surroundingcountry. Others filled their wagons and carted them to the nearestcity. The iron-mill producer loaded his output into a flat boat,moved it up the canals and rivers and sold directly from the barge.But however small, they were beginning to find themselves andthey were also beginning to cluster around given points. Danburywas a hat town, Gloversville a glove town. Lynn was known for itsshoe factories, Lancaster for its metal workers, Germantown forits knitted stockings, Wilmington and Rochester for their flour.

But chiefly these little plants were found around water-powersites. There were steam factories, particularly in Pennsylvania. Butin New York and New England the water wheel was the powermachine. Along the valley of the Blackstone, for instance, be-tween Worcester and Providence in 1840 there was a continuousstring of factoriesninety-four cotton mills, twenty-two woolenmills, thirty-four machine shops and iron works. Steam had beenused as far back as 1803 for pumping out mines and twenty yearsbefore steam engines were being manufactured in Pittsburgh. Nowin Pennsylvania perhaps half the factories were run by steam. Butin New York, New England, and New Jersey water was king.

The railroads had come but as yet they performed no very im-portant service in freight transportation. The farm cart and stage-coach were as yet the chief means of travel and for heavy freightthe barge and steamboat on the canals and rivers and lakes. Thissteamboat and canal development had greatly enlarged the life ofthe people and expanded their trading areas. But now the railroadswere to influence the course of business and life. It is easy to seewhy men lived in small neighborhoods and limited their businessto local markets when it cost four dollars to send a barrel of flouroverland from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. With the horse, over-land freight cost twenty to sixty cents a ton mile. Early railroadcharges soon fell to three cents a ton mile.

26 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R SNow these forcesmachinery and railroadswere to set the

young nation upon a new course. The year of Rockefeller's birthmarks the end of the old era and the beginning of a new one. Thecountry, without being aware of it, was under the dominion of newforces which were gathering. Everything was in motion. Alwayssince the end of the Revolution the endless migrations west wereunder way. The wagons were on the move first beyond theAlleghenies, then beyond the Mississippi, then on beyond to Ore-gon. From New York and Connecticut the caravans moved to Ohioand every day the carts and covered wagons rumbled along the roadpast the square of Richford, up to Lake Erie. Everything was inferment. New peoples were pouring into the countrya half mil-lion in the ten years before Rockefeller's birth, three times thatmany in the next ten. Now, added to the migrations, there was afurther movementjust moving and shifting about. Girls wereleaving the farms to go to the textile mills in the near-by towns.The new things were making changes in the lives of the people.The grain fields were moving west. New cities were springing up inremote Ohio and Missouri and Indiana. The rule of old aristocratswas over and new men, men of the soil, men of the log cabins, hadtaken hold. The rustle of life was in the air; the invisible windsthat sweep through peoples, stir them, and hurry them forwardwere blowing over the land.

The older people shook their heads. Factories were breaking upthe American home, they moaned. Senator Isaac Hill, of Vermont,addressing the conscript fathers, spoke feelingly of the good oldtimes when every family raised and spun and wove materials forits own clothing. "Now large factories supported by overgrown andunscrupulously managed capital had annihilated the household in-dustry." Over in the House, Representative Christopher Rankin ofMississippi, bewailed the "death of so many small establishmentswhich might separately and silently work their way into honorableexistences." "Now," he moaned, "one great establishment rises onthe ruins of all the surrounding ones."

Thus they looked with fear upon these little corporations andtheir plants employing five hundred or a thousand people, capi-talized at half a million or more and engaging the activities ofonly a very small percentage of the population. How little theysupposed that a boy was then playing barefooted in a home-made

M I C H I G A N H I L L 27muslin suit on a village farm who would before another half cen-tury passed, amass a fortune sufficient to buy out with a fifth of hiscapital every factory great and small that affrighted the souls ofthe America of 1840.

XII T IS true that one generation always nurtures the germs of theforces which will dominate the next one; one social system breedsthe things which control the one which succeeds it. In 1840 therewas present, even in that scarcely launched small factory age, al-most all of the devices which Rockefeller and his contemporarieswould use to build the era of mass production. At that very momentEngland was repealing some thirty or more old regulatory laws tomake way for the golden age of unregulated competition. But atthe same time all of the tools which Rockefeller would use to rearhis industrial empire and undertake privately to supply the regula-tion of trade where the government had abdicated were in use.Not only was the corporation being developed, but the widespreadsale of stock to provide the funds, while at the same time a fewgentlemen at the center usurped the control, was already under-stood by a few. By 1840, the fifteen original owners of a Massa-chusetts corporation called the Merrimac Company had been ex-panded to 390 stockholders all over New England. Already it wascharged that a clique of Boston stockholders had learned how toperpetuate their control by having the stockholders sign proxies intheir favor. They held stockholders' meetings in small rooms andcalled many meetings of various companies at the same hour todivide the opposition of the independent stockholders who ownedshares in various companies. In this way the affairs of most of themanufacturing companies in Massachusetts were under the do-minion of less than a score of Boston capitalists. One man is saidto have been a director in twenty-three companies. These financialmagnates also controlled a Massachusetts life insurance companywith a capital of $500,000 and with that they dominated nearlyten times that amount of investment funds.

They had already carried out a corporate merger and inventeda holding company. Lowell, Moody, Appleton, Kirk Booth, andothers brought about a merger of the Boston Manufacturing Com-pany, the Merrimac Company, and the Pawtucket Canal Company

28 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sin order to combine the processes of the first, the capital of thesecond, and the water power of the third. Developing more waterpower than they needed and controlling the process patents, theyproceeded to sell the excess power and rent out the patents. Theymanufactured textile machinery and set up as a subsidiary a build-ing concern to erect textile plants. Thus they would help financethe formation of a new company, put up the building, supply itwith machinery, sell it a site, and furnish the water power. Allthis in addition to their own business which was thus a perfect ex-ample of an integrated industry. Moreover, in the process theybuilt the first tailor-made industrial cityLowell, Massachusettsand to unite their various holdings the principle of the holdingcompany was introduced. In addition to all this they formed apatent pool.

Lowell and Moody and others continued to carry on experi-ments in perfecting textile and power machinery, thus establishingthe first industrial research. They introduced company hospitals,libraries, improvement circles, night schools, clinics, and an ex-tensive housing program and a very remarkable magazine editedby the girl employees which brought high praise from CharlesDickens and was the parent of the long line of house organs andcompany journals now so numerous.

One thing had not yet appeared. Along with machinery and therailroads and the development of corporation finance it was to bethe most powerful factor in the magic development of the nextfifty years. This was the uncovering of the vast natural resourcesof America. Perhaps no one thing, economically, makes such a dif-ference between the America after the Civil War and the Americaof 1839 as this. It is a common notion that this immense continentand its riches lay here almost like an open paradise of naturaltreasures. But when the Rockefellers lived at Richford our naturalriches were almost unknown. American blacksmiths made shoesfrom iron gotten mostly from Great Britain. Our first textile millsused cotton which they imported. It was the presence of the millswhich encouraged Southerners to plant cotton. Such copper andother metals as we required came from abroad. The tin makers ofConnecticut got their sheets from Europe. Our rum makers im-ported molasses from Great Britain. And our tanners had to get

M I C H I G A N H I L L 29most of their hides from other countries. Even woodstrange asit may seem in a land of primeval forestsbegan to be scarce. Forthe little steam engines burned all that was in the neighborhoodand transportation was far too costly to permit of the carriage ofwood. Our chief wealth was in grain and this was located alongthe Atlantic seaboard though now the grain fields were movingwest. The making of flour and whiskey was the chief manufactur-ing supported by our own produce. We had a little iron and somecoalindeed a little of everything but not much of anything. Menhad not yet begun to scratch under the surface of our mountainsand valleys. But they were to begin this soon. And that was to markthe next great change in the lives and industry of the people.

XIIT H E NEW nation had already harvested its first crop of millionaires.There were no less than twenty-five of them. The most importantof them were land barons. John Jacob Astor led the list with afortune of $25,000,000. His son, William, was reputed to have$5,000,000. Next was Stephen Van Rensselaer with $10,000,000.The well-known names of Henry Brevoort, Gouverneur Morris,Peter G. Stuyvesant, Peter Schermerhorn, James B. Lennox, andWilliam Crosby follow, each worth from one to four million andall immortalized in the names of New York streets. There were twobankersIsaac Bronson and John Masonworth around a millioneach. There were some tradersmerchant-adventurers of the oldschool in New York, Philadelphia, and BostonStephen Hunt,John Bohlen, Samuel Appleton, Peter C. Brooks, John Bryant,John P. Cushing, Thomas H. Perkins, and Robert G. Shaw. Therichest of theseStephen Girardhad died the year before inPhiladelphia leaving about $7,5oo,OOO.

The industrialists were fewAmos and Abbot Lawrence, textilemanufacturers worth together $5,000,000. David Sears in Bostonwas something quite newa millionaire stockholder in many enter-prises. Equally new was Jacob Little, the first professional securityspeculator, the first bear, and possessor of the dubious glory of in-venting the short sale. August Belmont had just arrived from Cuba,the agent of the Rothschilds, the first of that line of bankers tohandle the flood into America of foreign funds into our railroadand utility investments. There is not a single descendant of this list

30 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sof twenty-seven millionaires of 1839 who qualifies for a place onthe roll of the nation's business leaders today.

Some of the names on the list are familiar. The descendantsof most of these men are still among our wealthiest families. Butthis only serves to emphasize that while they may retain much ofthe wealth piled up by thrifty ancestors, they do not continue toexercise a control over our industrial or financial affairs. The wealthmay remain, but it is no longer dynamic. Its fecundity is enor-mously diminished. Its possessors are merely rich men 5 they arenot powerful men. Still less are they dominant leaders.

XIIIT H E WEEKS following Bill Rockefeller's departure wore on intomonths. The winter of 1843 came down with all its rigorsandthis was a cruel winter. Eliza Rockefeller looked across the appletrees and down the trail toward the village many days. But BigBill Rockefeller never appeared. Lucy was a handsome child offive, John an active, large boy of four, the baby, William, was al-most 18 months old. And in this little group the endless questionwas when will the father come home. Across the hill the otherRockefellers would ask if there was news from Bill. Apparentlythere was no great bond of affection between Eliza and her hus-band's family. They were a different breed from herself. Theywere a hard, restless, worldly lot. There was plenty of liquor drunkamong them. Occasionally she would see one of them go reelingover the hill past her door to Godfrey's home. Jacob Rockefeller,Bill's youngest brother, was the most persistent tippler. In oldman Pierce's store in Richford today is preserved an old ledgerfrom Rich's store where the Rockefellers traded. One day Richsaid to Jacob Rockefeller that he would give him five dollars if hewould come into the store sober once. Jacob owed a bill and wentinto Rich's store to pay it. He was sober and Mr. Rich, true to hispromise, gave him a credit of five dollars on his bill. And there isthe entry to this day on Rich's ledger"Allowed Jacob Rockefel-ler, for not drinking, five dollars."

Amid these neighbors much of Eliza's merriness was leaving her.The cares of motherhood, the loneliness, the long winter days andnights waiting for her husband's return had sobered her face andwritten some lines in it. She had lapsed into the religious mood of

T H E L A N D O F S U P E R I O R C U N N I N G 31her serious forebears. She disliked Richford. It was a godless place.Many years later John D., when he was a great figure, told hisfashionable Cleveland minister, Dr. Eaton, that he was glad hehad not grown up in Richford, that it was an irreligious and godlesstown, and the daughter of that same storekeeper Chauncey Richpublicly took him to task for the statement. But his mother wasweary of Richford and her in-laws down the road. And she grewimpatient of Bill and his long absences. Then one day in Novembera black figure patterned itself against the powdery snow down theroad to Richford. There was a hurrying and scampering amongthe children. In a few minutes Bill was driving a handsome riginto his dooryard. He wore better clothes than he had ever hadon. He had plenty of money in his walleta great wad of it. Hehad already stopped at Rich's store and paid his whole billnearlya thousand dollars. The children clambered over his giant figure.Eliza wept and later poured out her woes. She wanted to be nearerher own people. Bill agreed to make the change and before longthe Rockefellers were on the move for their next home in Moravia,about forty miles northward toward Lake Ontario. Eliza had beenangry with him. And yet she must have loved him. Beyond a doubtthis man who had taken her against her father's wishes and inspite of her trim, puritanical training and his own roving, adven-turous, mysterious ways, exercised a powerful influence over hermind. As he came home now, full of news and of money, with hisfine horses, settling up all his accounts and looking like a figure offashion and romance, her heart melted. This was November. Ninemonths later, when they were in Moravia, another child was born.Bill had been forgiven.

CHAPTER II. THE LAND OFSUPERIOR CUNNING

THE HOUSE which William Rockefeller provided for the fam-ily was about three miles north of the village of Moravia.Moravia was at the time a small settlement of perhaps notmore than five hundred inhabitants. It had a cotton mill run bywater power that employed a hundred people. The Moravia Hotel

32 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Swhich still stands was its chief ornament. Built in 1831, it is ahuge, box-like structure with a great porch running about itswhole length. These large early hotels, out of proportion to theirvillages, are explained by the heavy traffic by horseback and riverboat and stagecoaches in those days. Men broke their journeys bynight in hotels, as they do now in automobile travel.

The town is built on an expanse of rolling upland broken by thedeep and narrow valleys of Owasco Inlet and its tributaries. Rocke-feller's house was on the Lake Road. On a sloping terrace itlooked out over Lake Owasco, the smallest and loveliest of thecelebrated Finger Lakes. It was a country of abundance with manygood farms raising grain and truck and cattle and hay. The woodswere filled with game and in Lake Owasco were pike and pickereland bass and trout. This lovely country, filled with glens and fallsand gorges, was the home of the famous Six Nationsthe Mo-hawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, Tuscaroras, and Cayugas.Here near Owasco the Cayugas made their home. The county wascalled Cayuga County. Cayuga means "Land of Superior Cun-ning." Here, then, William Rockefeller proceeded in his odd mo-ments to sharpen the wits of his boys and chiefly that silent, search-ing lad named John.

The house was a much better one than the cottage they had leftat Richford. Moreover this one Bill Rockefeller bought. Therewere a hundred acres of farm land behind it. It was a better placefor Mrs. Rockefeller because her father's home was on the otherside of the Lake and near by were neighbors on each side of herhome. On one side was the Rosekrans family, on the other side theHewetts. Their descendants still occupy those houses. The Rocke-feller house is no longer to be seen. It was destroyed in 1926 byfire when being used as a convict camp.

Big Bill went on with his old businessselling medicinesandhis old ways, his long absences, though he spent more time withhis family now. He mingled more freely with his neighbors. Tur-key shoots were a favorite sport of the day and Bill, who loved agood rifle, never missed a turkey shoot when he was home and henever failed to delight his boys with his great skill as a shot. Hetook some part in local affairs. He was an advocate of building anew school and somehow was charged with the commission tolocate it. The dispute over the site Bill settled by declaring it should

T H E L A N D O F S U P E R I O R C U N N I N G 33be located in the precise center of the district. And this he pro-ceeded to ascertain by an original method. He drove his rig fromnorth to south and then from east to west, counting the revolu-tions of the wagon wheels. Then he repeated the process, drivingonly half the number of revolutions north to south and east towest. This gave him the center. It turned out to be near his ownhome, a fact which he observed with a twinkle in his eye.

There was a hired man on the farm but not a great deal of farm-ing was done. Bill's chief occupation was his selling. But, he al-lowed, he turned a penny now and then trading horses. And hebought up some timber rights and hired a gang of men to cut thetrees and haul them down to Lake Owasco, where they were raftedto Prison City as Auburn was called. This was just a flyer in lum-ber, not a regular business. He still was a little mysterious. Hisneighbors were never quite sure what his business was and theywagged their heads about it.

But for all his swaggering, wandering, extravagant ways, and hislong absences, this odd, fun-loving man, given a little to brawlingand with a ready eye for a good-looking woman, loved his familyin his strange way. He knew how to play with the children and hehad a special weakness at first for his son John. He took the boysdown to Owasco Lake, taught them how to swim and row a boat.He showed them how to drive a horse, to ride in the saddle and tohold a gun. He supported his family, though in a manner uncer-tain and harrowing to his poor wife. He was by turns flush withmoney and in want. Always he came home with plenty of moneyand with a new team of horses. Moreover he brought with himgreat tales of the Indians he had met and the great figures of theday he had seen and of the wonders of the railroads and steam-boats and huge water wheels. But gradually there accumulated onhis head a weight of suspicion which filled the whole countryside.

IION A chest in the living room stood a little blue bowl. Here, whenJohn was seven years old, went two York shillingsthe first moneyhe had ever earned. Precocity in finance is as common as in litera-ture. The man who founded the House of Rothschild began to beinterested in coins at the age of ten. Hetty Green opened her firstbank account when she was eight and at ten could name offhand

34 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sthe prices o most New York Stock Exchange securities. RussellSage was a successful wholesale merchant at twenty-four. John D.Rockefeller picked up stones on a neighbor's farm and was paid twoshillings. His first real business venture was to come later.

One day, as he stood near the house, the boy saw a turkey peer-ing cautiously about her, sniffing the wind, pushing her long neckin different directions with great stealth. The country boy did nothave to be told what this meant. He knew the turkey was prepar-ing to "steal her nest." He ran at top speed to his mother with thenews. Eliza told her excited son that if he would follow the tur-key and find her brood he might have them and raise them forhimself. This was not such an easy task. It meant stalking themother turkey. She eluded the boy for two days. But she littleknew the spirit of the patient mind that shadowed her. She wasperhaps the first victim of that relentless, ruthless patience withwhich this boy would pursue greater objectives in the years tocome. In the end the young turkey fancier entered the woodshedwith a huge basket and in it his cargo of young turkeys.

Among the pursuits of that primitive region was driving wildturkeys to market. Men came through at intervals like drovers,pushing ahead of them huge flocks of the birds. The flocks scam-pered ahead of their drivers, by day filling the countryside withtheir clamor. At night they darkened the trees near the farmhousewhere the turkey drover roosted for the night. Thus John, theyoung turkey man, had a ready market for his turkeys when thenext drover came through. He continued to manage his flock, sell-ing off some of them and building on the foundation of York shil-lings in the blue bowl on his mother's mantel.

I l lTHESE were troubled, difficult days for Eliza Rockefeller. Notlong after the family settled in Moravia a fourth childMaryAnnwas born. Two years later Eliza bore twins. One of thesetwins was Frank, who was to play so strange a part in the life ofhis famous brother. The other was called Francis, a frail child de-manding incessant care. With six children to care forthe oldestlittle over sevenMrs. Rockefeller's cares were many. For somereason she mixed very little with her neighbors. They were astrange crowd.

T H E L A N D O F S U P E R I O R C U N N I N G 35But the childrenall save Francisgrew amazingly. They were

growing to be large-boned and powerful. John was not robust anddeep-chested like William, but he had a large frame thoughthere was little flesh on it. This Finger Lake region is a land ofbig men and big trees and of long-lived men and trees. All throughthe region one is shown ancient treesthe great giant elm at Wa-terloo believed to be 350 years old, the Patriarch Elm beside theOld Indian Trail, another veteran of 350 years, and a famous treeat Naples which local authorities believe, perhaps without sufficientdata, to be the oldest tree in the world. As for men, the crumblingtombstones at Harford Mills tell of its hardy octogenarians. Andas for strength and size, they used to tell in Moravia of old JohnSabin, who could lift two cider barrels filled with cider by holdingthem with his fingers in the bungholes. The boys went swimmingin Owasco Lake and brought trout and bass home to their motherto cook. William and Frank were given to waywardness. Theywere hard to control. People said they were like their father. ButJohn was like his mother. He was quiet, reserved, shy, serious. Hehad a narrow, long, lean face, lacking in mobility of expression andsmall bright eyes that looked with great intentness at one. And ashe grew older he grew closer and closer to his mother. The chil-dren went to school in the little near-by schoolhouse which Billhad planted so conveniently. But the schooling was very slight.The teacher was there for but a few months in the year. The sourceof their scholarship was those old Peter Parley books then as muchin use as McGuffey's books were at a later day.

IVSTRANGE stories were going about Moravia about horse stealing.Eliza Rockefeller had liked very little the godless neighborhoodof Richford. She now found that she liked less the even more god-less neighborhood in which she lived. A stranger collection ofneighbors was never gathered together in a quiet rural setting.Before long stories began to connect the names of these neighborswith the horse thefts. Rockefeller's hired man, Scott Brower, wasunder suspicion and people whispered the name of Big Bill himselfas implicated in the conspiracy. Some said he acted as the fence,receiving the horses in his large barn and then running themacross the country through a deep gully still to be seen near the

36 T H E Q U I E T Y E A R Sruined foundations of the old Rockefeller cottage. These rumorswere not long in blossoming into definite indictments. Severalof the neighbors were arrested. No charge was made against Billhimself and he returned home in the midst of the scandal withsomething of the air of a man who was not afraid. The men ar-rested were convicted and sent to State's prison. And to this daythere are people in Moravia who will tell you that Bill escapedbecause he knew how to cover his tracks. This is doubtless unfair toRockefeller. There is no evidence of any sort connecting him withthese horse stealings. But the whole episode left a stain on his nameand made life in Moravia difficult and painful for his wife.

To deepen the shadows about her the youngest childFrancisdied about this time. And the sorrow of Eliza Rockefeller was in-tensified and complicated by a new group of rumors which wentaround about her husband's relations with women. She was now,under the weight of many cares, turning more and more towardreligion and to the stern morality of her forebears. She was a proudwoman and as the shadows gathered about her she exhibited astrength of character which commanded the respect of her neigh-bors. But she clung to her wayward husband and there are nostories in the neighborhood of any serious trouble between them.

T H E LAKE ROAD which passed the Rockefeller home led to PrisonCityAuburn. On the other side of the lake was the Plank Roadalong which the endless caravans of pioneers moved toward LakeErie and across to Ohio and further West. But when the weatherwas good those who wished to save the toll fees traveled by theLake Road. Young John could see the wagons moving, scores ofthem every day, in that ceaseless westward migration which hadbegun thirty years before. By this road the silent boy would sit inthe long summer evenings. To get down to Lake Owasco he had tocross the road. And always, like his mother, and his older sister,as he sat there or wandered across the road he cast a glance towardAuburn hoping perhaps his father's horse might come swingingaround the sharp curve.

Big Bill came home in May. He arrived in great good humorand with his pockets full. At the moment Moravia was in greatexcitement over the wonderful thing which had happened in Cali-

T H E L A N D O F S U P E R I O R C U N N I N G 37fornia. A man had found gold on his ranchGen