Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist

Allan Nevins, a major American historian, wrote a two-volume biography of John D. Rockefeller published in 1940 and revised it as Study in Power in 1953. He had access to Rockefeller family and Standard Oil records, and he wrote explicitly against Ida Tarbell's account, which he considered polemical and factually unreliable in places.

Nevins's argument is that Rockefeller's consolidation of the oil industry was economically constructive rather than predatory in the main. He holds that the refining industry in the 1870s suffered from destructive overcapacity, that prices were falling below cost and firms failing regardless of Rockefeller's actions, and that consolidation brought stability, scale economies and dramatically lower kerosene prices for consumers. He documents the operating improvements: the scale of the refineries, the integration into barrel manufacture and transport, the pipeline system, and the export organisation.

He does not deny the railroad rebates or the pressure applied to competitors, but he treats them as the common practice of the period rather than as exceptional. The philanthropic material covers the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation, and Nevins treats the systematic approach to giving as a genuine innovation. The book is sympathetic and readers should note that. Ron Chernow's Titan, published in 1998, used both the Nevins material and sources unavailable to him and reaches a more balanced verdict.