Fate had placed Rockefeller in Cleveland in the days when the oil
business had got well under way. In the early sixties a score or
so of refineries had started in this town, many of which were
making large profits. It is not surprising that Rockefeller,
gazing at these black and evil-smelling buildings from the
vantage point of his commission office, should have felt an
impulse to join in the gamble. He plunged into this new activity
at the age of twenty-three. He possessed two great advantages
over most of his adventurous competitors; one was a heavy bank
account, representing his earnings in the commission business,
and the other a partner, Samuel Andrews, who was generally
regarded as a mechanical genius in the production of illuminating
oil. At the beginning, therefore, Rockefeller had the two
essentials which largely explain his subsequent career; an
adequate liquid capital and high technical resources. In the
first few years the Rockefeller houses--he rapidly organized
three, one after another--competed with a large number of other
units in the oil business on somewhat more than even terms. At
this time Rockefeller was merely one of a large number of
successful oil refiners, yet during these early days a grandiose
scheme was taking shape in that quiet, insinuating, far-reaching
brain. He said nothing about it, even to his closest associates,
yet it filled his every waking hour. For this young man was
taking a comprehensive sweep of the world and he saw millions of
people, in the Americas, in Europe, and in Asia, whose need for
the article in which he dealt would grow more insistent every
day. He saw that he was handling a product which was becoming as
much a necessity of life as the air itself. The young man reached
out to grasp this business. "All of it," we can picture
Rockefeller saying to himself, "all of it shall be mine." Any