Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist
The major revisionist defence written against Tarbell.
Summary
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.
Key takeaways 7
- Nevins argues that oil refining in the 1870s suffered from destructive overcapacity that consolidation resolved.
- Standard Oil's scale, integration into transport and barrel manufacture, and export organisation produced genuine cost advantages.
- Kerosene prices to consumers fell dramatically during the period of Standard Oil's dominance.
- Railroad rebates were general industry practice, and Rockefeller obtained better terms because he offered guaranteed volume.
- Rockefeller's philanthropy applied systematic institutional methods rather than individual charity, which Nevins treats as a genuine innovation.
- Nevins wrote against Tarbell's account and identifies specific factual errors in it, while writing from an evidently sympathetic position.
- Rockefeller's management method was consensus among a small executive group rather than personal direction of operations.
Who should read it
Readers of business history who want the sympathetic scholarly counterweight to Tarbell, best read alongside Chernow's later synthesis.
Where it sits in the reference 2
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