The firm of Rockefeller & Andrews was then established, and this was
really my start in the oil trade. It was my most important business
for about forty years until, at the age of about fifty-six, I retired.

The story of the early history of the oil trade is too well known to
bear repeating in detail. The cleansing of crude petroleum was a
simple and easy process, and at first the profits were very large.
Naturally, all sorts of people went into it: the butcher, the baker,
and the candlestick-maker began to refine oil, and it was only a short
time before more of the finished product was put on the market than
could possibly be consumed. The price went down and down until the
trade was threatened with ruin. It seemed absolutely necessary to
extend the market for oil by exporting to foreign countries, which
required a long and most difficult development; and also to greatly
improve the processes of refining so that oil could be made and sold
cheaply, yet with a profit, and to use as by-products all of the
materials which in the less-efficient plants were lost or thrown away.

These were the problems which confronted us almost at the outset, and
this great depression led to consultations with our neighbors and
friends in the business in the effort to bring some order out of what
was rapidly becoming a state of chaos. To accomplish all these tasks
of enlarging the market and improving the methods of manufacture in a
large way was beyond the power or ability of any concern as then
constituted. It could only be done, we reasoned, by increasing our
capital and availing ourselves of the best talent and experience.

It was with this idea that we proceeded to buy the largest and best
refining concerns and centralize the administration of them with a